Death As We Know It

QUATRE: LE SUCCÉS

The four of us sat shoulder to shoulder, awaiting the decisions of those who had the power to potentially ruin everything we had worked on for the past ten months: The panel selection team.

We had submitted The Project, which had become the official name for it among our small group, and the majority of the student body, nearly two months previous, but of course, the team needed time to decide and evaluate each project. We had been staring at the mail slot in my dorm for the past hour or so, each of us silently praying that the ensuing letter contained good news, news that the last ten months of our lives hadn't been a complete waste. Music played faintly in the background, but no one was paying attention to it, despite having had a (friendly) argument over it, where Ahmet argued on the case of indie folk, and Journ with Britpop. Yevan remained impartial, quietly suggesting retro. I stayed silent, although I think I would've preferred silence, to be honest. Quietly, so quietly that none of us even noticed, a small letter, smaller than a regular envelope slid through the crack in the door, and fell to the carpet with a muffled thump Nobody paid it any attention, until Journ, who had been leaning into Ahmet, digging his shoulder into Ahmet's arm, jumped up suddenly, and, crossing the room in two long strides, snatched the envelope with a bony hand. He fumbled with it for a few seconds as the rest of us gathered around him, Yevan and I behind, Ahmet laying a hand on Journ's shoulder. That was something I always noticed about the two of them. They were always touching in some way, however minimal, as if they couldn't bear to be separated, even for one second. Looking at them always caused that same pang of envy to ripple through my veins, as I wondered if I would, if I could ever be that good of friends with someone. Journ, having repressed the shakiness of his hands, finally tore open the letter, discarding the jagged top. I watched it flutter to the ground. Journ's eyes scanned the letter quickly, before reading it out to us in a voice that sounded casual, but I knew was being very carefully controlled. I read it over his shoulder.

Participant(s),

We thank you for participating in the annual ILIAC, and we hope that this experience has both enlightened and furthered your learning. We are pleased to tell you that you have been selected to represent your school, New England College, in this year's showcase in Swansea, Wales. We ask that you arrive two days pre-showcase in preparation, and respect the eventual decision that will come to pass. We thank you for your time.

Sincerely,

Charles Harmon,

ILIAC chairman

Yevan audibly gasped, but besides that, the room went completely silent. Even the music in the background seemed thousands of lightyears behind us, a relic of some ancient world that the four of us no longer belonged to. We were different. Changed. Same in body, wholly different in mind. Ahmet? He was no longer Ahmet, he was The Doctor, the one who had kick started this whole thing. Journ? He wasn't Journ, no, but instead the young man who had spent hours building countless mechanised diagrams of the human body, in the hopes of understanding like Ahmet and I did. He was The Engineer. Yevan felt like an odd name now, completely inappropriate in our given situation. There was only The Cellist, who had given us the fundamental theory that we had built the whole project upon.

And me? I did not know then, nor do I know now, who I was, or who I am. I was simply irrelevant. Did the others view me as I now viewed them? Completely changed in some way in which they looked the exact same to everyone else, yet to them, was I unrecognisable? Was I still Dustin Demeret? With good looks and a stupid middle name? (Reginald-Pierre. You can laugh) Or was I the businessman? The CEO? The international affairs student? I realised then that while I separated all of these things from myself, as some form of coping, they must've viewed me as a stuck-up boy with the rich daddy. Simply the thought of that made me want to rip off my face and adopt another, some other preferable identity. Anything that wasn't mine.