Juncture 1.9

That fucking car. Why was I so terrified of that fucking car?

I was just going insane, right? So I don’t actually know that I’m going to die. I’m just going to finish with my classes, and finish my detention, then I’ll go home.

Unless…

I shifted in my seat. What if all of this weird shit wasn’t just my increasing lack of sanity? What if I was developing some sort of superpower? I could have the ability to see into the future, like a psychic. That would be cool.

But it didn’t make sense. If I really did have some sort of psychic vision, then why didn’t I see or hear Mr. Fetter? I didn’t remember him at all. I remembered going to English class as usual, and dealing with Mr. Hodgkins. Besides, I’d have to be psychotic to think I had superpowers. Superpowers don’t exist. Superheroes don’t exist. I was a normal person, who just happened to be losing his fucking mind.

Ms. Gladly said something to me, and I heard it in that same whispering voice in my head. It shocked me out of my thoughts a little bit, but even before I could gather my wits about me, I was already responding. Or rather, my body was responding. Another weird sensation that I couldn’t do anything about. It was as if my body and my mind were two different entities. My body still had that feeling I had before Mr. Fetter’s class, that can’t-ness, that unwillingness to change from what I remembered.

My mind, however, was free as a bird. By which I mean it was trapped in a cage, but able to do whatever it wanted in there. I couldn’t escape from what was happening, but I could think whatever I wanted about it, and maybe I could use that to my advantage.

Ms. Gladly kept talking, and I responded again, but it had even less of an effect on me this time. I could think almost totally uninterrupted by outside business. My body was on autopilot.

I could use this to my advantage. Assuming I had until the end of the day to figure out this problem, I could use all of that time to find a solution.

…

Several hours and two classes later, I hadn’t come up with a solution. I thought through every different angle I could. But as time passed, things stayed the same as the way I was remembering them. Now it was nearing the end of detention. It was dark outside, clouds had gathered, and I was completely terrified. I had long since come to the conclusion that even if I was going crazy, if things were happening the same way as they did before, I would still experience the car.

I didn’t know what would happen after that, but I knew it wouldn’t be good.

Barbara was sitting opposite me in the classroom, playing classical music from an old laptop as she texted on her phone. It was the same song as last time, and I still didn’t know what it was. It was tense, a lot of fast, short notes building up on top of each other before giving way to long, slower chords.

It wasn’t helping me think, is what I’m getting at.

The room itself was a small corner room with only a few desks and a dusty chalkboard. As far as I knew, it wasn’t used for anything except detentions, which was good because nobody would be able to learn in it.

Barbara’s phone blared an alarm. Detention was over.

“Alright, Marc. Thanks for behaving yourself. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

Barbara turned off the alarm, closed her laptop, and put her phone in the purse she had next to her seat. She stood, and said, “Alright, Marc. Thanks for behaving yourself. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

She left the room. Shortly after, I stood up, grabbed my bag, and walked out after her, my body exhibiting the tension from anger I remembered feeling. I exited the building.

…

I sighed as I looked at the sheets of rain directly in front of me. I was just under the lip of the school building. I pulled my hood up and began to trudge my way forward. The rain was so heavy I could barely see five feet in front of me. I looked back, and the school was a dim, watery blur, made up almost entirely of the light it was emitting. I turned forward again and kept moving.

No, no, no, no, no

The cold had gotten to me, and my teeth were chattering. I started swearing under my breath to keep them from clacking together.

Please, no, please god no
I kept walking.

The landscape around me became wetter and wetter, with the rain accumulating on the ground and rising higher. It reached a point where it was hitting my ankles and soaking into my shoes. My socks were waterlogged in a matter of seconds.

I kept walking.

Please, no, no, no, this can’t happen
I was repeating the swears over and over like a mantra. In the distance, I heard a soft honk, but it was too far away to make out clearly.

NO!

I kept walking.

The rain got worse the further I walked, as if nature itself was working its very best to ensure that I was miserable.

Nononononononononononono

I kept walking.

It kept raining.

Nopleasegodnonothiscan’thappenIdon’twanttodie

I kept walking. Suddenly, I heard a sloshing noise behind me. I barely managed to turn my head when something slammed into my chest. I flew backward, and heard a sharp crack as my head hit the pavement.

The pain was unbearable. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t see. Everything was black, and everything was pain. Right before my eyes closed I saw the lights of the car that hit me fade away. My last thought was just a long, drawn out scream.

…

…

…

“Mr. Antony, if I have to ask you one more time to not fall asleep in my class, I’m kicking you out!”

What?

Everything was still dark, but I felt a cool surface underneath my cheek. I lifted my head up and blinked at the sudden brightness.

Oh fuck.

Squinting, I looked around. Students were staring at me, a couple were suppressing smirks.

Oh, fuck.

I was back in Math class.

That was the second time.

Juncture 1.8

As soon as I left the room I headed toward the bathroom. I hadn’t gone since early this morning and I desperately needed to pee. Unfortunately, the closest bathroom was in the exact opposite direction of my next class, so I had to hurry.

I went right, against the wave of students filling the hallway, and pushed my way through to the bathroom door. I opened it and walked in. Almost immediately, the pungent smell of public school restrooms assaulted my nostrils, making me crinkle my nose in disgust. I attempted to breathe through my mouth, but I pictured the fumes coating my tongue, and I switched back to nose-breathing.

I quickly stalked my way to the urinal and did my business. Then I walked to the paper towel dispenser, ripped a sheet off, and held it as I pushed the little handle down on the urinal to make it flush. I tossed the paper towel and began to vigorously wash my hands. As I was doing so, I looked at the mirror above the sinks.

As with every time I was in the bathroom, I tried to evaluate my appearance. My hair, though messier than usual, didn’t look too bad. One or two strands were falling out of place from where I coaxed them toward this morning, but other than that it was okay.

I brought my eyes down to my clothes – or what I could see of them in the mirror. I was wearing a dark blue button down shirt. It was kind of rumpled, but that happened with most of my clothes, since they were usually pre-owned. Over that I was wearing a black thing that was like a cardigan, but it had a zipper instead of buttons. I didn’t see any obvious stains, so it all checked out.

I looked back up at my face. I grimaced, baring my teeth, and didn’t see any stuff in my teeth. There was nothing coming out of my nose either. I looked up at my eyes.

They looked tired. That was normal, but today was particularly bad. There were pronounced bags under both of my eyes – dark blue, black, and purple crevasses. My eyes themselves though – they looked a little different than they did normally. There was a silvery gleam ringing several times through my irises. It looked as though there was a reflection of something that I couldn’t see, some ethereal light coming at me from inside the mirror.

I blinked, and it was gone.

I finished washing my hands, dried them with what many people would probably consider to be too many paper towels. But they’ve never tried to dry their hands with this school’s towels.

I left the bathroom and began heading toward my next class. It was chemistry, which meant it was back toward the science wing of the school, closer to my math class than my English class. As I passed by the English classroom again I peeked inside. Mr. Fetter had left already.

I kept walking. I heard the bell, which meant I was late. Shit.

This had happened last time too. I came late to class, and the teacher got pissed at me. Luckily, she’s cooler than most of my other ones, so I didn’t get sent to the principal’s office for a third time today.

I made it to the door of the chemistry classroom, and grabbed the door handle.

Marc, how many times do I have to ask you not to be late?

Shit.

Unbidden, my hand turned the handle, and opened the door.

The class was already seated, with the teacher, Ms. Gladly, standing at the front of the room in full scientist attire. Lab coat, goggles, gloves, she was even holding up two test tubes filled with liquids. Both her and the entirety of the class looked at me.

Ms. Gladly sighed, carefully put the test tubes down on their wire bases, and pulled up her goggles. She rubbed her eyes tiredly, and said, “Marc, how many times do I have to ask you not to be late?”

"I’m sorry, I really had to go to the bathroom after English."

Shit. Why was this happening again?

I opened my mouth, and tried to say anything that wasn’t what I knew I was going to say. But the sensation returned in full force, and I couldn’t say anything else.

“I’m sorry, I really had to go to the bathroom after English.”

“Just sit down quietly, okay?”

“Just sit down quietly, okay?” Ms. Gladly asked, and pulled her goggles down over her eyes again, “Now, where was I? Oh, right, litmus tests…”

I zoned out as I found a seat in the middle of the room. Luckily, it was on the end of an aisle, so I didn’t have to climb over anybody.

Why had the sensations returned? Or, rather, why had they stopped earlier? I was distraught. I had such a short respite during English class, why had it ended now?

“Now, when you put this piece of paper in an acid, it’ll turn red, and blue if you put it in a base,” I heard Ms. Gladly say in my head, shaking me from my thoughts. The ghostly voices kept distracting me from my thoughts, which just added more probability to the “I’m going insane and I know it” theory.

I kept asking myself why this was happening. Was it stress? Was it some mental hang-up I’ve had since I was a kid showing up now for some reason? None of the answers I came up with sounded good.

I looked at my hand, the one with Josie’s drawings all over it. It was extremely intricate, and it managed to distract me from my inner dialogue. I tried following the lightning-like designs, and noticed that they all ended up pointing to the same area on my hand, near the inner palm.

Funny. I knew that my path also ended up pointing to the same event.

The car.

Juncture 1.7

All of the students in the room gave a sigh of disappointment that Mr. Fetter had figured out the problem that easily. For his part, Mr. Fetter didn’t look smug or glad about the fact that he had solved the problem so easily. As far as I could read his expression, he seemed disappointed that we hadn’t come up with a harder puzzle.

“Okay, so what is it?” asked Simon. He was presumably asking in case Mr. Fetter didn’t know, and was trying to trick us into telling him. I thought it wasn’t necessary, there was no way Mr. Fetter was trying to trick us. That seemed below him.

“The first criteria is this: When I ask you a question that has a yes or no answer, you answer with the opposite of the correct answer. Am I correct?”

“Yes…” Simon said, lengthening the word as if it would hold off the inevitable conclusion.

“Then the second criteria is that you answer any question that is not binary correctly. Am I right?”

“Yes,” Simon said.

“Excellent,” Mr. Fetter exclaimed, “And now that we are all mentally limber, we can begin class. Please take your seats, if you will.”

The milling group of students pulsated slowly toward the seats in the back of the room. I took the seat I had been sitting in previously, and Josie sat next to me. The next closest person was Jock, who took the seat directly in front of me. Everyone else sat closer to the front of the room than they were before. It seemed as though Mr. Fetter had won their interest.

“Now, if you could kindly tell me what you have been reading, we can get to work. We have a good amount of time left until the period is over, and I will not tolerate slacking off,” Mr. Fetter announced to the room. Kirsten raised her hand and I stopped paying attention.

Things inside my head had calmed down a good amount since Mr. Fetter had showed up. I could still hear the ghostly whispers of what had happened previously, but I had to focus to hear it with the same intensity as I had earlier.

“… We will have to find you a new environment to learn, since Mr. Hodgkins will no longer have you in his class. For now, you can go to the library during this period each day and work on homework. Of course, this is more of a gift than a punishment, so I am also assigning you three weeks of detention, starting tonight.”

I shuddered at the memory. I still had detention tonight, but I wouldn’t be digging myself any further into an irredeemable hole. With the luck I’d been experiencing since Mr. Fetter showed up, I could possibly even avoid the car. First off, I would try to find someone who could give me a ride back. That would be the best solution. If everyone left before I got let out, I would wait until the rain cleared up.

The car was the biggest problem I had right now. If I could bypass that, everything could go back to normal.

I hoped.

…

…

I pushed my focus outward, back to what was happening in the class. Mr. Fetter was writing long sentences up on the dusty chalkboard behind him. I assumed that they had to do with what we were supposed to be reading in class. It was some book about early modern China, and I got maybe two pages in before I had given up.

I tried to separate the letters on the board into words, but they were too small and close together. After several moments I stopped trying. Instead, I looked around at the other students in the class. To Mr. Fetter’s credit, most everyone except me was looking at the board with their books open. Some were even taking notes.

I looked over at Josie. She had a piece of paper torn out of a spiral notebook, and she had been doodling all over it. Swirly designs and fractal patterns covered the surface, sectioned off by the light blue lines crossing the paper. Currently, she was extending the designs onto the back of her hand.

If experience was anything that I could go by – and it wasn’t a sure thing currently – her arm would be covered in just a few minutes. After that, she would extend to the nearest surface she could use that wasn’t technically vandalism. That was usually whoever was sitting next to her at the time.

Sure enough, after several seconds, she reached out and grabbed my right hand, pulling it over onto her desk. I zoned out again.

...*cough*

Oh right. At this point I was sitting in the library, alone except for the librarian, a young, somber woman named Emily, but who insisted that everyone call her Ms. Carter. Hardly anyone acquiesced, but that didn’t stop her.

I had coughed out of boredom more than anything. It was the last several minutes of the period, and as everyone knows, those tend to feel just as long as the rest of the period combined. I had been staring at the book I was supposed to be reading for a while, trying to get the words to stay still long enough to read a page or two, but I was so angry that it was futile.

I looked back over to my hand. Josie had drawn a large eight in the center of the back of my hand, and had drawn lightning-like designs sparking out from it, spreading from the center to the tips of my fingers. She was right up to the last joint of my thumb when the bell rang, signaling the end of her art class. I pulled my hand away, picked up my bag, and joined the queue of people slowly heading for the door. I looked toward the desk in front, and saw Mr. Fetter looking at everyone leaving. He made eye contact with me for a split second, and I was startled by the bright color of his eyes. They were almost blindingly green, and I broke off the contact as soon as I had made it, and walked out the door.

Juncture 1.6

We all looked at one another, waiting for someone to break the silence. I had some ideas for what “disease” would be fun to do. Finally, Jock broke the silence.

“What if we just don’t say anything,” He asked in his deep, accented voice. He had moved from France to Bristol Woods in the past year, and had managed to make enormous strides in English, to the point where you couldn’t really tell he had an accent unless you already knew about it. When nobody responded, he kept talking, “We don’t answer his questions, what is he going to guess we have?”

“After a few questions, he’d probably figure it out. That’s not really hard to guess, Jock,” said Kirsten, “It’d just be, ‘Hey, what sickness do you have? Oh, are you not talking, is it that you’re not talking?’” she mocked, bringing her voice low in an attempt to imitate Mr. Fetter’s baritone pitch.

“Well what idea do you have?” Jock asked

“Simple,” she replied, “Whenever he asks one of us a question, we answer with the opposite of the right answer.” She grinned

I couldn’t see a problem with it, so I said “That sounds good.”

A few people around the circle nodded their heads and muttered their assent. It seemed as though we all agreed, when suddenly an issue popped into my mind. I opened my mouth to say it, but right before I could speak, Simon piped up:

“No, no, no, no, no, that doesn’t work. What if he asks a math problem? He’d figure it out immediately!”

We lapsed into silence again as the more contemplative students thought about the problem at hand.

As the silence bore on, I was drawn back into thoughts of what had happened before this class. The sudden switch from weirdness to normality was staggering. I truly didn’t know how to react. I was just taking events in stride, not thinking too much about what was going on. But this? Having this substitute give us a game? It was so overbearingly normal that I wanted to laugh. But then I heard:

“Marc! Back again so soon?” So it wasn’t over as easily as I thought. I was still hearing the ghostly voices from what I remember happening in the dream. But they weren’t having any effect on me like they were before this class.

I shook my head. It was no use focusing on the odd memories. It would be better to just distract myself with classwork, and maybe not get kicked out this time. It shouldn’t be difficult, I wasn’t anywhere near as unhinged as I was last time. In retrospect, I had definitely over-reacted. Oh well, can’t change the past, I thought. Having come to that conclusion, I put my mind back to the problem at hand.

If Mr. Fetter asked a question that didn’t have an opposite, we wouldn’t be able to answer it. It clicked.

“This isn’t that difficult, guys,” I said, “We can answer the opposite to yes or no questions, and answer other questions properly. That way if he asks something like a math question, we can answer it right.”

Simon looked at me as though I’d stepped on his grave. He was clearly shell-shocked to see that someone had thought of a solution before he had. The thought put a smile on my face.

“That sounds good,” he said. “I can’t see anything wrong with it.”

“Cool, so should we call him back in?” someone asked from the cluster. It was Mo, a short kid who tended to stay quiet and out of sight in every class but gym, in which he would become a completely different person. He was incredible at any given sport we would play, and he knew it.

I shrugged, and said, “Sure.” Mo walked over to the door and pulled it open. He stuck his head out in the hall and looked out for Mr. Fetter, who was standing a ways away to the left. Mo pulled away from the doorway and held the door open, and Mr. Fetter walked through. All of the students were silent.

Mr. Fetter looked around, and said, “I forgot to add a rule for clarification. When I guess what the illness is, I will phrase it as ‘your symptoms are blank,’ and you answer with ‘confirm’ or ‘deny’. This will have no impact on the game. So, how are you doing today?”

Lars answered, “Fine.”

Mr. Fetter turned to face him and nodded. He aimed his next question directly at Lars.

“Did you all work together while I was out of the room?”

“No.”

Mr. Fetter nodded again, lapsed into silence for a few seconds, and turned to face Shani.

“What time is it?” Shani looked at her wrist, noticed she wasn’t wearing a watch, and then pulled out her cell phone.

“It’s 2:17, sir.”

“Thank you, Shani, and there’s no need to call me sir,” He answered, “Mr. Fetter will be fine. Now, Jacques, was it?”

“Everyone calls me Jock,” Jock answered.

“Alright then, Jock. What color is the sky right now?”

Jock walked over to the window, looked up, and answered, “Gray.”

Mr. Fetter nodded again.

“Simon,” He asked, “Does the illness involve yes or no questions?”

“No, it does not,” Simon answered.

Mr. Fetter continued; “Does the illness involve lying?”

“No,” Simon said.

Mr. Fetter turned and looked at me.

“Marc, how long do you think I was out of the room for? Just a rough estimate.”

I answered, “Probably like three to five minutes? I don’t really know, I wasn’t counting.”

“That’s fine,” he answered, “Mohammad, when I asked Simon if the illness involved yes or no questions, did he answer in the affirmative?”

“Yes,” Mo answered. I heard Simon sharply inhale, and I realized what had happened.

“You’re sure?” Mr. Fetter asked, “He answered my question with a yes?”

“Yes,” Mo replied. Mr. Fetter nodded, and said, “Alright, I believe I have figured it out.”

Juncture 1.5

It was completely silent for several seconds. The man at the front of the class looked around, and repeated:

“Marc Antony?”

I slowly raised my hand. He caught it as he scanned the room, nodded, and put a check next to my name in his book.

“That’s quite an interesting name, Mr. Antony. Are you named after the Marc Antony?”

I was simultaneously relieved that I wasn’t in trouble for anything, and dumbfounded as to what he was referring to. “Which Marc Antony are you talking about?”

“Marc Antony, the Roman general? Surely your name isn’t simply coincidence?”

“Nope,” I shook my head, “I don’t know where my name came from. I never knew my parents”

Some people in the class began to squirm and fidget, as if the fact that I was a foster child made them uncomfortable, which I found ridiculous. If I could talk about it, and I was living it, then they shouldn’t have an issue with it.

“Ah,” the substitute said, “I’m sorry to hear that.”

“It’s fine.”

“Anyway, your name carries a lot of weight behind it young man. Marcus Antonius was the general who some consider to have single-handedly brought about the Roman Empire. You’ve heard of Julius Caesar, have you not?” I nodded my assurance.

“Yes, good. Well, Marcus Antonius, or as he is known dialectically in English, Marc Antony, was one of the three people who avenged Caesar and helped Caesar’s son Octavian ascent to the throne. Octavian, now going by the title Augustus, changed Rome from a republic government to an Empire.”

I was severely underwhelmed. I thought, no I knew that something was going to happen. The deviation from what I was remembering was so out of sync with everything else that I didn’t really know how to react to it. Nothing I had ever experienced in my life was anything like what was happening. Or rather, what was happening before, but had stopped as soon as this stranger walked into the classroom.

I still didn’t know what was happening. Since the feeling of doubleness had gone, everything seemed to make less sense than it had while I was in its grasp. Even though it was almost definitely just me going insane, I was able to grasp the slim, irrational hope that I had suddenly gained psychic abilities, or some other shit like that. How cool would that have been?

Of course, I didn’t actually believe that. It was clearly just insanity. But a guy can dream, can’t he?

The man at the front of the classroom finished calling names, and he wordlessly put the book back in his briefcase. He pulled out a small moleskin journal, opened it to a page I couldn’t see, and put it on the desk. Finally, he spoke again:

“Good morning class. Mr. Hodgkins is not here today, therefore I will be your substitute. My name is Mr. Fetter. Unfortunately, I do not have access to the syllabus for today’s class, so I am unaware of any work you were assigned.”

Simon, sitting in the front row, started to raise his hand before the person sitting next to him grabbed it firmly and brought it down. Half of the students gave Simon a death stare in unison, and he shrunk back in his seat, squirming uncomfortably. Mr. Fetter looked in his direction, and then quite obviously looked away. With that, he had gained appreciation from at least half of the class.

”Mr. Antony, please tell me why you would choose to ignore the assignment?” I heard Mr. Hodgkins’ reedy voice play in my head. The memories were still there, even if the sensations weren’t. In them, I was about to get into a huge argument with Mr. Hodgkins in front of the class and get kicked out again. Twice within two periods, a new personal worst.

But I didn’t hear Mr. Hodgkin’s voice, since he wasn’t actually present. Mr. Fetter had continued talking.

“…don’t have any assignments due today, I will have to come up with an alternative plan of what we shall do during this period,” At this he paused, and looked contemplatively up at the ceiling. He raised a finger and continued to speak, “However, before we do that, I must insist on an activity, in order to allow me to learn your names, and to help you all get comfortable. Everyone, please come up to the front of the classroom.”

Everyone in the room began to haphazardly shuffle their way up toward the front of the classroom. I stayed toward the back of the pack, since I had already received enough individual attention from Mr. Fetter during roll-call. I was fine staying inconspicuous for the rest of the class.

"Out of my classroom Mr. Antony! I will not deal with your belligerence anymore! Don’t bother coming back next class either, I will not allow you to enter!”

I ignored the ghostly sounds happening in the forefront of my memory. As long as they would stay there, I could pretend I wasn’t crazy to everyone else, so it wouldn’t matter whether or not I actually was.

The gaggle of students formed a loose oblong shape, with Mr. Fetter standing in the center. There was enough room to stand comfortably with your arms by your sides, but you couldn’t really move without bumping into somebody else.

“As my experience has taught me, students work far better together if they are banded against an authority figure,” Mr. Fetter said, “To that end, we will be playing a game I like to call Contagion. I will be taking upon myself the role of a doctor, and you are all my quarantined patients. I will exit the room for a minute, and you come up with the symptoms of your disease. It could be forming each sentence alphabetically, it could be moving whenever you are asked a question. My only caveat is that you introduce yourself by name when I speak directly to you until I can remember.”

He started walking toward the door, and as he was opening it, he turned back, and said, “Don’t worry if your criteria seem too difficult; I’m smarter than you may think.”



He turned and left the room.

Juncture 1.4

I barreled through the door adjoining the inner and outer offices and slammed it shut behind me, causing Barbara to drop the phone in surprise. I mentally apologized – she hadn’t done anything deserving of this, but there was nothing to do about it, I couldn’t change what was playing out.

I exited the outer office and slammed that door too. A few more people had entered the hallway since I had been in the office, and they were milling about, heading to their classes. Against my better wishes, I headed toward my next class.

English class. I hated it, and not just because the teacher was kind of a prick. My dyslexia prevented me from making any real progress in the reading we were assigned, and it made writing essays nigh impossible. Occasionally we would have a class focusing on debate; those were the enjoyable ones. I may not have been able to write, but I could definitely argue. Today wasn’t going to be one of those days though. I remembered from before – after the whole fiasco with the principal, the rest of the day stayed at the same level of awfulness.

The walk to English class wasn’t far from the principal’s office, but then again the school wasn’t that large. The furthest you could have from any point to another was maybe a seven minute walk. This one was about three, and I was walking fast, apparently blowing off steam from the encounter.

I’m not pissed, but I’m definitely acting like it. It was as if my body was producing the endorphins that it would be if I was emotionally involved in the shouting match in the principal’s office. Although, now that I thought about it, it made sense that I was stressed; after all I was going crazy, or a close equivalent.

I was so engrossed in my inner dialogue that I nearly missed the door to the English classroom. I backtracked a couple of steps and walked in. The small room was packed with around twenty desks, which left almost no room to maneuver. Even worse was the fact that almost all of the seats were filled, except directly in front. I liked to sit in the back during English, since there was a much smaller chance of being called on by Mr. Hodgkins. I sat in the closest available seat, and waited for him to show up.

…

…

…

Several minutes passed, with the people around me engaged in casual conversation. I heard the muted bell through the door, and the room got quieter. Mr. Hodgkins was usually very timely, but today, as I remembered, he would be several minutes late.

“Hello again students, please open your books to page fifty one. I am assuming you all did the reading, so we have no need to go over it.” I heard, in Mr. Hodgkins’ reedy, dry voice.

…

…

…

The door opened. A short man I didn’t recognize entered the room. He was wearing a dark navy suit, with a hat keeping most of his face from view. He was carrying a leather briefcase in his left hand, and he closed the door with a soft click with his empty hand.

“Marc, what are you doing?” I heard someone say next to me. It was Josie. She could be considered one of the closest acquaintances I actually had in school. I didn’t consider us friends, because we never actually hung out outside of class, but I felt fairly comfortable being around her during school.

At her words, I realized that I was leaning forward, slack-jawed and gripping the edge of my desk. I coughed and unclenched my hands, leaning backward at the same time.

This didn’t happen last time. This isn’t supposed to be happening.

I opened my mouth to talk, fully expecting the same insane compulsion to take effect again, but the words flowed out of my mouth with no more resistance than usual: “I think I’m going crazy.”

I shouldn’t have been able to do that.

“Yeah you’re going crazy, we have a substitute! It’s a free period!” She exclaimed excitedly.

“Uh… yeah. Have we ever had this sub before? I don’t remember him at all.”

We didn’t have a substitute today. Mr. Hodgkins was here, and we got into a huge argument. I got kicked out again. Then… detention. Then the car in the rain.

“No, I think he’s new,” Josie said, “But he looks like he’ll put up with whatever we want to do.”

I looked back at the man. At this point he had taken off his hat and was in the process of taking several books out of his briefcase. He looked up and scanned the room, and I got a look at his face. I would describe it as tired, fatigued. The face of a man who had lived enough to fill several lifetimes. His eyes were heavy lidded, his cheeks hung low on his weathered face.

He sat down in the desk, pulling one of the books closer to himself and opening it. He flipped through several pages, and stopped once he had found what he was looking for. He started calling out names he was reading from the page. I knew from experience that this class had several last names that began with ‘A’, so I wouldn’t be first, like I was in some others.

“Abraham, Kirsten?”

A smallish girl with overly-large glasses who sat close to the front piped up with a soft “Here.”

The substitute nodded, and wrote a check next to her name.

“Allan, Lars?”

Lars, a seventeen-year-old with a professional football player’s physique spoke in a rumbling voice, “Present.”

The substitute put a check next to his name. He opened his mouth and paused suddenly. His forehead creased as he looked at the name. He studied it for several more seconds with a perplexed look on his face. After several second have passed, he continued to speak:



“Marc Antony?”

Juncture 1.3

Trepidation filled my heart as I walked into the principal’s office. I knew that nothing good was going to result from this meeting.

“Sit down Mr. Antony, we have a lot to discuss.”

Principal Saunders was sitting at his large wooden desk, the kind that would seem large and imposing were he not bigger than it was. As it was, he made the desk seem tiny, folds of his fat wrapped around the desk. He looked awful. There was no nice way to sidestep the issue, he just looked awful. He was wearing an uncomfortably bright orange dress shirt underneath a tweed jacket, the kind with the elbow pads. However, on his short, stubby arms, they reached somewhere down to the middle of his forearms, and he actually had to roll up the sleeves. His hair was, for lack of any better terminology, Homer Simpson-esque, to the point where, if you were to look close enough you would be able to count the individual strands in his combover.

The worst part was his face. He had bright red cheeks that constantly looked like he had just finished a whole marathon, and the uneven layering of stubble didn’t do much to cover it. You could say he had a weak chin, but then again you could also say that he didn’t really have a chin whatsoever. Finally, he had tiny, piggy eyes underneath overly-large glasses.

I was snapped out of my reverie to the sound of him clearing his throat.

“Sit down Mr. Antony, we have a lot to discuss,” He said, gesturing to the chair in front of his desk. I sat. He continued speaking, “So I heard you were removed from class again. Making this the fourth time in the past two weeks that you’ve caused a teacher to remove you from their learning environment.” I nodded and opened my mouth to respond, but he bulldozed over me, “Now I don’t know what’s causing these repeated incidents, but they cannot be allowed to continue with this regularity.”

I waited until he continued talking, but he just looked at me expectantly. I was supposed to answer him, but he hadn’t asked a question. So I just sat there, looking sullen at him like I remembered doing the last time.

About thirty seconds passed in complete silence. During that time, I stared directly at him, trying to make him uncomfortable. I didn’t expect it to work, because it didn’t work last time, but I still felt the same small rush of satisfaction when he was forced to continue talking. He coughed.

“Ahem… as I said, I don’t know why you insist on being a distraction to the rest of the class. I know that you’ve given up on learning, but your fellow students have not.”

When I went through this last time, I had felt as though he was trying to get a rise out of me with that, like I wasn’t trying my goddamn hardest every day I was in this school. In retrospect, he was faced with a situation in which a kid was being, well, difficult, but I wasn’t in a state of mind to see things from his perspective. That probably explained why I said what I said: “Fuck them, that’s why.”

“Excuse me, Mr. Antony, I will NOT tolerate that language in my office. Especially not from a delinquent such as yourself! If you cannot behave, then I will have to lay down the law!” Principal Saunders fumed at me.

“Yeah, you’re good at anything that involves laying down, aren’t you?” I smirked internally. When I get stressed or angry, I get really witty and tend to start mocking people and make quips about things. Of course, these tended to get whomever they were aimed at pissed at me, which only put me in a worse mood, continuing the cycle.

Yeah. I’m kind of an asshole sometimes.

“Yeah, you’re good at anything that involves laying down, aren’t you,” I asked. Principal Saunders’ red face turned an almost uncomfortable shade of magenta as he struggled to find a dignified response to my comment. I kept talking, and thought to myself, “If there was ever a time where I needed to not say what I’m going to say, it would be now.” Internally, I desperately tried fighting the compulsion, to be able to change even a word, even a fraction of the venom with which I delivered the verbal assault, but my efforts were for nothing:

“In fact, I bet just the thought of not having to move gets you hot and heavy, doesn’t it? Oh wait, I forgot; you already are. Never mind, then,” I delivered the angry words airily, as if I were commenting on the weather rather than brutally insulting the one man who could destroy any chance I had at a real future. I was kicking myself in my head, but of course the compulsion didn’t allow me to stop talking, because that would be wrong. That couldn’t happen. My hands clenched hard out of frustration, hard enough to draw blood.

“So I’m assuming you’re gonna lay down the law at this point, so I may as well keep going, huh? Nothing? Alright good,” I kept talking, as Principal Saunders floundered, trying to find a way to end my tirade. “Fuck this school, and fuck everyone in it. You think I’m not trying, do you? You think that I don’t take my classes seriously, because why else would I keep getting kicked out? You’re talking to the one person in school who has literally every factor going against him. I get kicked out for not reading? I. Can’t. I get kicked out for missing a homework assignment? In what home am I supposed to do the fucking work? I can’t do it in mine, that’s for sure.”

“In fact, every single time I’ve been kicked out there’s been a good reason, but you and the teachers all choose to ignore it,” I was ramping up the volume, and I got up out of the chair, walking toward the desk. “I don’t know why you decided to run a school, but you chose the wrong profession. Principals are supposed to have at least an ounce of empathy, but you don’t have any! You don’t care! You-“

“Detention!” Principal Saunders shouted, his tone matching my own, his voice querulous, as he managed to get the one word out.



“Fine by me,” I growled, and I stormed out of the office.

Juncture 1.2

I sat in the principal’s office, clenching and unclenching my fists. The bench I sat on was one of the kind that didn’t have a back, so I was forced to sit leaning forward, my elbows on my thighs. If I was here for a while this position would start to get uncomfortable.

It would.

I didn’t pay that much attention to the sensation however, since I was incredibly distracted. I was apparently losing my mind. And the alternative was even worse. If what I dreamt was true, I was going to get run over and die.

Occam’s razor though, I was probably just losing my mind.

I kept sitting on the crappy plastic bench, waiting for something, anything to change from what I remembered of my dream. Tiny movements apparently didn’t make much of a difference, as far as I could tell. I was able to look around. I looked up and caught Barbara, the principal’s assistant, looking back at me with a stern look in her eyes. She looked back down at her computer and continued typing.

Something is going to fall off of her desk. She’s going to ask me to pick it up

A few seconds after that thought popped into my head, she reached over to her left for her mug of coffee, and accidentally knocked over a small cup that was filled with pens and pencils. She sighed and looked up.

“Mr. Antony, if you wouldn’t mind…?” She asked, gesturing at the scattered writing implements on the floor with her free hand. She took a sip of her coffee and waited, expectantly. I got up, knelt down on my hands and knees on the blue and brown carpet, and began picking up the pencils. I put them all back in the cup, stood back up, handed Barbara the cup, and went back to the bench. As I sat down, she said something into her coffee that I decided to take as a measure of thanks.

Several more minutes passed. Nothing happened in this interval, except for Barbara occasionally looking over her computer monitor to ensure that I wasn’t up to anything. For my part, I sat there.

“Would you like to take something to fiddle with? I know people get bored waiting for Principal Saunders in here.” She would be referring to the small pile of, for lack of a better word, toys that she kept on her desk. She had them there for those students with attention deficits bad enough to necessitate such measures, but she did try to offer them to everyone.

”Would you like to take something to fiddle with? I know people get bored waiting for Principal Saunders in here,” Barbara said, gesturing at the toys. I nodded.

“Thanks,” I said, as I got up, picked up a Rubik’s cube from the pile, and sat back down with it. I didn’t know how to solve one, but I was pretty good at getting at least one side done. I sat with it for a few more silent minutes. It did manage to help distract me from the issue of my apparent oncoming madness. Kind of. What didn’t help was that I wasn’t solving it by myself, I was just remembering the steps I took beforehand that allowed me to solve it.

The red/blue edge goes here, then the corner, then twist the middle…
I finished the cube, and found myself waiting more than I remembered I was supposed to. I began to shuffle the cube aimlessly, just to have something to do with my hands. At first, my fingers resisted, as if something else was forcing them to keep still, but the sensation faded as I continued. Another symptom of early-onset dementia, I supposed, but I couldn’t do much about it.

She’s going to get a phone call, and then call me in to talk to Principal Saunders

Right on cue, her cell phone rang, and she picked it up on the second ring.

“Hello? Oh, hi, no I’m not busy. I’m just watching some kid who got kicked out of class. No, no idea why.”

“I’m right fucking here, don’t pretend I don’t exist” I heard myself say a second before my lips parted and I muttered it myself. I attempted to stop it, but the same sensation I had with the cube affected me. To my credit, I did manage to lower the volume from what I heard in my head a lot. Barbara shot me a look, then rolled her eyes and continued to chatter to whomever was on the other side of the call.

That sensation again. I didn’t know what it was, but it was almost like a compulsion, like I was supposed to be doing the things I was hearing. I tried to say something, anything, but the words wouldn’t come out of my mouth, and the compulsion came back full strength, but this time in reverse; a strong feeling that I could not be talking now, that it was wrong. I kept my mouth shut.

I didn’t know what was going on in my head, but I was determined to stop it if I could. Maybe after today I would go see a doctor, or a therapist. Hell, I’d even call a fucking psychic because this whole situation was way out of my league. I kept prodding the compulsion, trying to do things that I shouldn’t be doing. I tried whispering quietly, just one long, lingering ‘s’ sound. At first, the sound refused to come out, but I pushed as hard as I could, and eventually, just barely, I managed to hear myself. Barbara kept talking, unaware of my accomplishment.

Next I tried coughing. Same thing. If I pushed my will, I could cough quietly, almost inaudibly. Successful experiment. Next I went up a notch. I tried talking in a regular voice. No dice. No matter how hard I tried, the words just wouldn’t come out. I gave up.

While I was experimenting, Barbara finished her phone call and checked her computer.

“Mr. Antony, you may go in to see Principal Saunders now.”

…

…

…

Just as I was beginning to wonder what was taking so long, Barbara looked up from her screen and said the words to me.



“Mr. Antony, you may go in to see Principal Saunders now.”