Do You Think This Is Strange?

by Aaron Cully Drake

  A toilet.

  —

  Listen: On December 18, 2010, I read a study by Dr. Charles Gerba that found that a flushing toilet sends a plume of aerosols into the air. These aerosols, contaminated with fecal matter, bacteria, and viruses, can dissipate about the room for hours, settling on everything exposed: doorknobs, sink fixtures, and any person who walks into the bathroom.

  I told my father about the aerosols. It was the first thing at the top of my mental stack when he asked me to tell him something I had done that day.

  “How was your day at school?” he asked.

  “Good,” I replied, a mouth full of mashed potatoes.

  “Tell me three things about your day,” he said.

  I chewed slowly. He stared at me, expressionless. Waiting.

  So I told him about the fecal aerosols. I was reluctant to do it: I expected he would want a discussion about proper hygiene. This had the hallmarks of an opportunity to learn. Instead, he laughed loudly, slapped the kitchen table with his palm, and called it a shitstorm.

  “That should have been the title of the article,” he guffawed to himself.

  —

  These were the thoughts that stomped about my mind, like tenants looking for the super. When I surfaced, when I opened my eyes, all three boys were looking at me.

  This happens far more frequently than is safe. Time skips on me. I become lost in thought; I’m pulled into a vortex of exploding ideas and questions. One pediatrician suggested that much of my behaviour could be attributed to sleep deprivation.

  “He could be having microsleeps,” he told my father, as I stared blankly at the wall. “He’s probably having one right now.”

  “Jesus,” my father said. “That’s just great.”

  I wasn’t microsleeping this time. I stared at the three boys with stains on their jeans, and they stared back at me with expressions mute, uncertain of who I was, what I was doing, why I was standing in the middle of the aisle, holding a lunch tray, staring back at them.

  “What are you looking at, sport?” Danny Hardwick said, and the air in the room seemed to disappear. I tried to reply: What was I looking at? I was looking at them. My throat constricted and I felt my chest tighten. “What are you looking at, sport?” and I was thinking something I hadn’t thought for a long time.

  I walked into the next room of my mind.

  —

  Years before, I wasn’t sure when, I had heard those same words. Now the threads howled at me to connect it to the moment. But I couldn’t make the bridge, which was a problem. I don’t have difficulty connecting to older memories. I don’t forget things. To know someone had said What are you looking at, sport? but not know who said it was highly unusual. It was even concerning.

  It was distressing.

  In my mind, a picture rose before me, a fragment of a memory. This is what I saw: low clouds reflecting the light of a darkening day straight above me, rain falling on my face. A light shining in my eye.

  What are you looking at, sport? said the voice behind the light.

  But the voice was buried down in my mind.

  Here, now, the hubbub of the cafeteria all around me, I stood, digging back to connect the voice to a face. I heard Danny Hardwick snicker, then his friends did the same. He started to say something but stopped. He reached into his pants pocket and took out his vibrating phone.

  “Dave just got home,” he said to his friends. “He’s got some stuff.”

  “Let’s go then,” said the boy with the red hair, and they all stood up.

  As they walked by me, Danny Hardwick gave me a light slap on the cheek.

  “Take it easy, Silent Sam,” he said, and his friends laughed.

  I didn’t say anything. My throat was too dry.

  What are you looking at, sport?

  WHAT ARE YOU LOOKING AT, SPORT?

  Listen: Someone said that to me before. Someone looked at me and said, What are you looking at, sport? and they didn’t really care what I was looking at.

  When Danny Hardwick said it to me, I felt a surge of adrenalin, a spike of fear exploding below my lungs. My pulse quickened, my breathing became ragged, and I turned inward, chasing the thread. In a flicker, I was lost to the moment.

  Who said that?

  My mind jumped back in time. I think the principal of Templeton College said it. He said it to me as I stared out the window.

  But that’s not right. He said, What are you looking at, Mr. Wyland? And then he expelled me.

  I think Chad Kennedy said it. Outside my locker at Templeton College, he pushed me, I pushed him, and it was all because he said, What are you looking at, sport?

  But that’s not right. He said, What are you looking at, you dick? and I didn’t know how to reply. It’s always safest to repeat the same sentence back if you don’t know how to reply.

  What are you looking at? I said, and he pushed me.

  I couldn’t remember who called me “sport.” Now a thread fixed firmly in my mind, an unanswered question to which I would have to return until it was resolved.

  For now, I niced the thought, sent it to the bottom of the stack. The threads didn’t complain.

  What is Saskia Stiles doing here? they asked me.

  AND NOW SASKIA BEFORE ME

  Saskia remained at my table, no change in posture or expression, as if the three boys had never been crowding her. She continued to write in her journal. I hoped it was a poem.

  Ten years ago, the last time I said goodbye to Saskia Stiles, she was writing a poem. The last words I said to her were “Goodbye, Saskia,” and I waved. “I’ll see you later.”

  She put down her pencil. “GoodBYE, Freddy!” she shouted, infused with an excitement reserved for the vessels of seven-year-olds. She shouted, “I forgive you!” Then she went back to her poem. “ONCE upon a very merry time,” she said loudly as she wrote the words. “Once. Once upon a VERY! MERRY! TIME!” and she wrote some more.

  A poem now, a poem then. Poetry bookended her absence from my life.

  I put my tray down on the table. She didn’t notice, or at least didn’t acknowledge me. She scribbled furiously. The words came in short sprints, bursting from her, pulsing out like blood from a ruptured artery. Once it was complete, she tore whatever she wrote from her notebook, crumpled it, and tossed it aside.

  In between poems, she ate carrot sticks and stared at the table, ignoring the random hubble and bubble of everyone else in the cafeteria. Blond hair hung around her face. She rocked back and forth in time to her music.

  She didn’t look up at me, and gave no indication she knew who I was. So I ate my lunch. In the lunchroom to my right, the janitors ate sandwiches and disagreed with each other’s insights. I tried not to think about their hands. I had no success.

  Saskia wrote aggressively, as if she were late for a bus. She didn’t look at me, and she neither nodded nor said hi, hello, or how are you. But she was excited about something. After a minute, she put down her pencil and lifted her hands in the air, like she was being robbed. She rapidly opened and closed—open and clenched—her hands. She picked up her poem, looked at it, put it down, and froze, staring at it for a moment. Then she began writing again. A minute later, she ripped the paper from her pad, crushed it into a ball, and let it fall to the table.

  Then she squeaked.

  I’d never heard anyone squeak before. I had heard people make sounds that were intended to mimic a squeak, but those were not squeaks. Squeaks are shrill piercing sounds emitted by small animals with tiny voice boxes. Humans can’t squeak.

  Nevertheless, Saskia Stiles squeaked.

  After a few minutes, in which I ignored Saskia and she ignored me, she stopped writing altogether, and her hands dropped, relaxed. She opened her backpack and pulled out an iPhone. After turning it over in her hands a few times, she began typing in bursts, replacing pen with keyboard.

  Perhaps she was nervous or intimidated. I understand that ignoring one another is a standard ritual between teena
ge boys and girls. I’m not sure of its purpose, but I’m good at it. I’ve never had a girlfriend, yet I’ve still mastered the art of ignoring other people. It’s been hard work.

  As I ate, I stared at the wall in front of me. It was blank, except for a poster in the far right corner—an image of a chimpanzee holding both its hands in the air in the appearance of victory. The poster read: YOU CAN DO IT! It offered no clue as to what it actually was. I think it may have been bananas. That would interest a chimp.

  On the table, equidistant between us, her balled-up poem lay. I saw a single word, peeking out.

  hello.

  Her pen rolled off the table and she bent under the table to pick it up. I reached out, took the crumpled scrap of paper, and put it in my pocket. She straightened back up, and we continued our silence together.

  While I ate, I stared at the wall, and a red digital clock counted the time. My mind kept returning to the ball of paper in my pocket.

  Why did you take it? the threads asked.

  I don’t know, I replied.

  What is it?

  I don’t know.

  —

  I only glanced at Saskia twice. Enough to remember a girl from ten years ago, hold a snapshot of the past firmly in my mind’s eye, then map it over a picture of the girl in front of me. She was the same, she was different.

  She had more freckles. Her hair was longer. She was thinner. She was older. Taller.

  Prettier.

  She was the same. She wore a white wool cap like the one she wore then. She was different. She wore grey Bose headphones overtop of the cap. Her jacket was pink, which was her favourite colour then. But her shirt was white with red polka dots; she never wore polka dots at group therapy. Ten years ago, she didn’t have a journal. Now, she leaned over one and made quick short drawings and wrote patches of words.

  The Saskia of today wasn’t smiling. The Saskia Stiles of my memory smiled. Although the Saskia before me seemed so much like the Saskia in my memory, she was also strikingly different.

  At once, a new thread began in my mind: Why? Why is she different? Why isn’t she smiling?

  Why do these questions seem so important?

  I sat, silently, and absorbed her. She was the same, she was different.

  She wore no makeup, no jewellery.

  Her eyes were—

  She hadn’t looked at me, but I didn’t have to look at her to know how blue her eyes were. I remembered their colour from the last time I said goodbye to Saskia Stiles. Back then, she looked up at me from the table where she was writing a poem. Back then, she looked up at me and smiled, and I saw her eyes. The colour of blue ice, shed from a glacier and spilled into the bay.

  I’ve never forgotten.

  I don’t forget anything. I’m not supposed to.

  I finished eating and stood up.

  This is what I said to Saskia, the first words I said to her in ten years, the same words I said to her the last time I saw her: I said, “Goodbye, Saskia, I’ll see you later.”

  She didn’t reply. I saw the barest flicker of her eyes, the slightest lifting of her head. Like a flash of lightning, I saw the blue, then it was gone, and she was looking at her phone again.

  THE POEM AS A BOOKEND

  Outside the cafeteria, I took out the balled-up piece of paper and unwrapped it.

  hello

  is there anybody in there

  I didn’t know if it was a good poem or not—I am not a poet. But I knew it was a short poem, and I think that reduced the probability it was bad.

  Ten years ago, she worked on a poem as I left, and I never knew what it was about, because it was unfinished when I put on my coat and left. Although she insisted on reading out every poem in a loud voice, she zealously guarded its secrets until it was complete.

  I said goodbye and that I would see her later. It wasn’t much, but she loved hearing those words from me, because she knew exactly how to reply. She treated it like an epiphany. Laying down her poem, she stood up and followed me to the door, then stopped, hopping up and down. Her hands opened and closed on either side of her head. My father always said that it looked like she was quoting herself.

  Ten years ago, she hopped up and down, her eyes wide, trembling, barely able to contain her excitement. “GoodBYE, Freddy!” she shouted at me. “I’ll see you LATER.”

  On that last day, we parted like it was any other day, the only difference being that I had shown her where I lost my front tooth, and she tried to touch the gap between my teeth.

  “Your TOOTH!” she shouted. “What happened to your TOOTH!”

  That was the only thing different. There was no final reckoning.

  She didn’t know that she would not see me later. She hadn’t heard her mother talking to my father earlier, like I had, and she didn’t see that they both acted angry. Speaking in low sharp whispers, that rose louder and louder. Saskia didn’t see when her mother said goodbye to my father, and my father said good riddance to her, and then she said he needed to go somewhere and cool off. And he said she needed to go somewhere and fuck off, and neither of them said, “I’ll see you later.”

  Instead, Saskia Stiles stood at the door, hopping up and down, waving as she quoted her forehead, and said “GoodBYE, Freddy!”

  Ten years later, Saskia didn’t say goodbye to me when I left the lunch table.

  —

  I folded the paper carefully and put it in my pocket. Then I stopped thinking about it. It was now time to have a discussion with Jim Worley and agree that his chair had magic powers. Then it was time to read my book.

  Then it was time for chemistry class.

  CHEMISTRY CLASS WITH A FROTHY MIND

  Mr. Pringle, my chemistry teacher, looked at me for more than ten seconds. My cut-off point is five seconds. He looked at me for twice as long as he should have. Then he looked away and said nothing, and I was left to wonder why he was looking at me. And argue with the threads that burst into my mind.

  Are you about to be expelled again?

  No. There has to be a compelling reason to expel me.

  Did you insult him?

  I don’t talk to him.

  Like that makes any difference. You find ways to insult silently.

  Ignore. I am going to ignore this.

  No, you aren’t.

  —

  Everyone refers to Mr. Pringle as Mr. Chips behind his back. He is a grumpy man who doesn’t like talking to students. As a result, we usually got along fine. I sat at the back; I did my homework, took notes, and didn’t ask questions. In return, he left me alone. That was the unspoken deal.

  But at 1:35 PM, halfway through my chemistry class, Mr. Pringle looked up from his desk and stared at me. People do this to me often, and I am adept at ignoring them. But it wasn’t to be the case this time. My mind was already troubled. Threads already elbowed through the door, asking questions, making guesses, explaining themselves.

  I found myself reading the same page in my textbook over and over again. I wanted to lose myself in the monotony of balancing equations, but the threads were too loud.

  Whither Saskia? they said, in summary.

  Why didn’t she smile?

  Does she remember you?

  In the maelstrom of these questions, Mr. Pringle chose to look at me, and I was perturbed. His face was inscrutable. There were no telltale signs of anger, fear, happiness. His expression was unreadable.

  You’re not an expert on interpreting facial expressions.

  I’m observing that I can’t interpret his facial expression. If I could, this would be a less notable incident. Should we forget what happened the last time we ignored facial expressions we didn’t recognize?

  We don’t forget those things.

  Therefore—

  Therefore, you’re talking about an incident where there was a specific look on their faces. You’re referring to an incident where they had expressions and you didn’t interpret them.

  How is this different?

&n
bsp; Mr. Pringle had an expression that you recognized. It’s an expression you’ve seen over and over again.

  Where?

  Every time you look in the mirror.

  Possibly.

  Indifference. You saw indifference.

  I may have seen indifference. I may have seen something else.

  You’re not observant.

  I am.

  Says someone who stares at a clock that isn’t there.

  I only look at it to stop you from talking to me.

  Not true. You only look at the clock because you don’t want to look at anything else.

  Because you won’t give me peace.

  Because you won’t say anything otherwise.

  How about I say this? Shut up.

  Not productive.

  I will talk to you later.

  Yes. You will talk later. You will talk to all of us later.

  “Freddy?” said Mr. Pringle, seemingly from the end of a long hallway.

  I pulled myself up from the depths of my own mind to see him staring at me from his desk, with a puzzled expression.

  I looked around. Everyone else was doing their homework. My pen was in my hand, but my pad was empty. I looked back at Mr. Pringle.

  “Did you have a question?” he asked me.

  “No.”

  Don’t call him Mr. Chips.

  Stop it.

  Really. Mr. Chips. Don’t say it.

  “You were looking at me,” Mr. Pringle said.

  “You were looking at me,” I said and put my head down, beginning my exercises.

  “Because you were looking at me.”

  Mr. Chips. Mr. Chips.

  I bit the inside of my cheek. Focus on the bite. Focus on the bite.

  Mr. Chips.

  “Well?” he asked.

  “What?”

  “Were you looking at me?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  I clenched my teeth together. “I don’t know.”

  “If you don’t know why you’re looking at me, don’t look at me.”