Mind and Matter

01 | Emerson

He let out an obnoxious yawn and slumped into a chair at the kitchen table, rubbing at his tired eyes.

"Don't get started on that, Emerson," he said, holding up a hand. I gave him a look, but he only yawned again and stretched, before grabbing the box of cereal on the table. It was the type no one actually liked—bran flakes that tasted like lightly-sweetened cardboard—yet Max seemed to blindly pour some into a bowl and begin eating them without any milk.

"Right, well, have fun being late on your first day of high school," I told him with a shrug, grabbing the milk carton from the fridge and setting it down in front of his face. He looked up at me with a dazed expression, as if what I just did was a highly unusual act, and went back to eating his dry cereal.

"He's weird," Mason loud-whispered into my ear, stepping on his toes to reach me. He lowered his voice even more. "Maybe that's why I get to have two siblings."

I headed to my room one last time before heading off to school. I made sure my notebooks were arranged neatly in backpack and slipped in another one just in case. I grabbed my phone and then looked in the mirror, fussing with my hair and my dress. I had on a navy A-Line dress, and I knew if I didn't leave the mirror soon, I'd spent the next ten minutes trying to get it to sit perfectly right. I sighed and smiled into the mirror, giving myself a quick mental pep talk about getting through this long day.

It was a hot late August morning, the birds faintly chirping in the distance and the sun shining in the cloudless sky. I took it as a good sign for the day ahead and headed down the street of my neighborhood with Mason skipping in front of me. As we made it to the end of the street, I averted my gaze to the blue house to the right. Mason noticed me stopping in my tracks and circled me impatiently.

I made out a person at the beginning of the driveway, but from my angle, I could hardly make out any of their features. All I could observe was the fact he was tall and wore dark clothing, like a single storm cloud on a sunny day.

Mason tugged at my wrist.

"Em," he said, folding his arms across his chest and staring down at the sidewalk.

"Yeah?"

"I'm kind of nervous for second grade. I heard it's really hard, but Mom said it won't be. Is she right?" I almost wanted to laugh at the question but then remembered how big of a deal that was for a young kid.

"Why do you think it's going to be hard?" I asked him.

He shrugged. "Well, Caden last year said we have to learn something called decimals. I don't even know what those are."

"That's not until fourth grade, actually."

His face seemed to light up. "Really? Yay! But I also heard we have to read Shakesbeer. Isn't he like five million years old?"

"Well, four-hundred-fifty-ish if he was still alive, but no, of course you're not going to read Shakespeare in only second grade. Where did you get that idea from?"

"You."

"Don't worry, kid, not everyone is as weird as I am."

He nodded happily and dashed ahead of me as we approached the school gates. The large brick building still had a homey feel to it, with a colorful playground in the front and back full of squealing children. A supervisor smiled when we approached her, and Mason seemed eager to leave me already.

The school we attended was a large private school, split into a lower, middle, and upper school. The students were mainly the obnoxiously preppy type, and the dress code banning all things blue jeans didn't help. As I dropped off Mason and walked towards as the gates of the upper school, the dress code became even more apparent: guys in plaid shorts with button-ups and polos and girls in flowy sundresses or colorful shorts.