Sea of Stars

Chapter Three: Evening Primrose

Spring 2011, 4 March, 0400

At four in the morning, the town of Maelstrom slept. Spring brightened the air with clouds of flowering cherry blossom petals falling like rain. The cicadas were shrill, echoing in the otherwise lonely silence.

From his wakeful slumber Levi stirred awake, his sheets damp with sweat. As he gazed out of the window into the night sky, he saw the moon winking mockingly at him. You'll soon be as round as me. Go on sleeping. I dare you. That was it.

He got off his bed and, with a fleeting glance at his two younger brothers asleep on their bunk bed, lay on the floor. He began his leg raises. One, two, three. His hip flexor muscles burned as he completed his tenth rep of twenty leg raises on the right side, then he flipped on the other side and began the left leg. Neck slick with sweat, Levi lay prone on the ground, panting like an overweight beached whale.

Then he flipped onto his back and began the crunches. Crossing his arms over his chest, he drew his navel into his spine and began the crunches. He clenched his teeth and glanced over at the two sleeping figures as his hip bones ground into the floor, making ironic crunching noises. He stopped, then got a blanket from his bed and laid it under his back to reduce the noise.

The sun began its ascent, leaving a vivid golden streak across the sky. Two hundred crunches, two hundred push-ups till his arms burned, ten sets of three-minute planks. By the end of it all, a wet Levi-shaped patch stained the wooden floor and he mopped it up with the blanket.

His tailbone dug into the ground as he encircled his left wrist with his first and third finger on his right hand, pulling the circle up his sweaty arm. Not enough. He did the same with his right ankle, which only came up to less than a third of the circle. God, this was not good. Levi flipped onto his side and began the sideways leg raises, two hundred reps per leg.

Fifteen minutes later, he'd finished and his alarm clock blinked a neon green 06.34. With a cursory glance around, he jumped back into bed, pretending to be asleep, before the 06.35 alarm rang and he silenced it. His brothers were yawning, and the sun was almost up.

Levi brushed his teeth and dressed for school. As he set the kettle to boil, he prepared one tea bag for his cup and two scoops of cocoa powder in each of his brothers' mugs. He took the butter out of the fridge to soften and unwrapped two pieces of bread from the plastic.

He returned to the bedroom, where he gently roused his two brothers with aching arms and heavy eyelids, all the while thinking, Maybe I should have made coffee instead. His brothers emerged from their cocoons of blankets to brush their teeth, and the kettle finished boiling.

He poured steaming hot water into his brothers' mugs, stirring them and adding milk, before he proceeded with his own, no milk, no sugar. He could very well have gone with hot water, as he did most mornings, but after the wakeful slumber he'd had last night, he felt he needed a boost to aid his concentration. Coffee would do a number on his empty stomach. As his brothers got dressed, he toasted the bread, and by the time they were seated and ready for breakfast, the toast was perfectly warm and crispy, oozing with soft golden butter, a cup of chocolate beside his brothers' plates.

Timothy, the older twin, grinned toothily at Levi while Thomas fidgeted in his seat. "Thank you for the breakfast!" chorused the two as they sank their teeth into the bread.

Levi smiled, eyeing the buttered toast. A hundred and five calories, and for the hot chocolate a hundred and ninety.

"Eat up," he told them and watched them devour their breakfast as he sipped his tea - only three calories.

***

Spring 2011, 4 March, 0901

It was the end of the Economics lecture. Students filed out of the lecture theatre into the hallway, creating a massive student 'traffic jam' as the crowd inched forward minutely.