Come What May

1. city

CHAPTER ONE

CITY

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• tuesday, march 2nd •

Liminal spaces have always fascinated me.

A space where you've left something behind, but you're not entirely in something else either, the threshold between two realities, a transition space, the fine line between the was and the will be.

Where the current location, in itself, doesn't matter, it's the before and the after that does. Where reality is altered, where time doesn't exist. Neither here nor there.

A friend's living room during a sleepover. When everyone else is asleep, and it's just past four in the morning, and the only sound that's keeping you company is the ticking of the clock and the pigeon that sits on the ledge of the balcony. Fourteen.

Schools during breaks, be it winter or summer, when you're the only person who circles the eerily empty hallways, where for once, you can hear your voice bouncing off the walls instead of the constant chatter of students. A ghost town when no classes are in session. Sixteen.

Low-lit hallways of a hotel at three in the morning. When no one else is around, the doors to all the rooms are locked tight and there isn't a single wink of light that peeks out of the gap between the door and the floor. Nineteen.

Hospital waiting rooms from eleven in the night to five in the morning. The saturated antiseptic that attacks your sinuses almost as soon as you breathe in, the garish white of the overhead lights on linoleum floors that numb your sense of sight, the plush chairs that somehow, don't feel as plush when you're seated on them. Twenty one.

Airports at exactly midnight, with the hushed buzz of tired voices around you, the knowledge that you have a destination, a stable place to be. With queues that don't stretch for eternities and security check lines that aren't completely crowded or cacaphonic, because everyone is in their own little bubble, and everyone wants to get on the plane and get to their destination. Twenty three.

I want to get to my destination. But the person at the front of the queue doesn't seem to have the same idea, their hands lethargically rummaging through their carry-on bag as they hunt for something, their boarding pass, most likely.

An involuntary, loud sigh escapes my lips as I glance down at the boarding pass in my hand, the one that I had taken out of my bag before showing up to the airport, because I actually care about other people's time.

Evidently, this person doesn't, and I watch as they continue to hunt through their bag, their glasses falling off their face as they do so. They're doing it so unbelievably slowly, and so leisurely that it draws another sigh from my mouth, a louder one this time.

Loud enough to cause them to turn around and shoot me a quick glimpse, a tiny smirk twitching on their lips as they shake their head and turn around.

Then, they go back to their business of searching, taking their sweet time to push their glasses up the bridge of their nose as they give me another smile, a sarcastic one that causes a pinch of annoyance to build up inside of me.

However, the mild annoyance that had begun to fester in the pit of my stomach only builds when they crack their back and neck, the snap of their back faintly audible to me from all the way at the back of the queue, and proceed to remove their glasses, wipe the lenses, and put it back on.