Cygnus and Christopher

Chapter Two

The hall had an almost tangible buzz to it. People yelled. Papers were thrown about, falling to the floor to be trampled by passers bys. Some teachers tried to manage the chaos while others simply accepted defeat and watched it all unfold. I stood and gazed down the hall for a few seconds, the day crescendoed around me. I was unsure if I wanted to join or resist the atmosphere.

There was probably hundreds of sheets of paper I could have tossed into the growing white dust devil. I imagined a future where I torn notes from their binding, like a wolf tearing at a injured elks throat, and hurling them wildly. That future didn’t happen though, a different one did. One where I unzipped my backpack only to quickly re zipp it without removing a single item and then slipped into the nearest restroom.

Some noise found its way into the bathroom. But it felt dampened and distance. It was like the difference between being in a thunderstorm and watching one on the television. Even though the lighting and thunder was broadcasted to me through the bathroom door, the occasional crack or flash would make my skin jolt into a map of mini mountains. The lone bathroom stall became a bomb shelter I stood in waiting for this metaphoric war to end.

It seems curious to me now how I distinctly thought of it as a war, but I have no idea who was fighting who, or what winning or losing exactly meant. And what about me? Was I just a bystander? Can you even be a bystander in a war that only existed in your exaggerated imagination?

When I did leave the bathroom I nudged the door open. The hallway came into view like a runway carpet unrolling. Each inch increased the panorama of the aftermath. Notebook pages, handouts, protractors, and pens all left behind. Monuments disposed on the ground, the only reminders of the students who shed them like exoskeletons, scripts students rejected, finally abandoning a play they never auditioned for.

There wasn’t many kids left when I stepped back into the hall. Most of them had gone home or to friend’s houses. That is what I planned to to do, find Christopher and head to his place.

I first met Christopher when he pulled me from a burning helicopter and we parachuted to safety. We were five and it happened on the playground. In some ways he’d been pulling my from burning helicopters for about a decade and a half by the time we graduated. I had started to wonder how many parachutes he could fit into the backpack he carried.

Travelling from the bathroom to my locker I realized how dense the building was with memories; the bench where I got nervous and bit my thumb until it bled, the nurses office where I got a band-aid for my bleeding thumb, the lunchroom with the thirty second food fight that I hid under a table for the duration of, a bean bag chair in the library where I sat and read books, and other locations that connected with a feeling even though it was hard to recall any particular events.

My locker was at the end of a hall in the middle of a row, locker number five hundred and forty. Those three digits were blurred beneath a piece of tape. Attached to the tape was a piece of paper, hanging like a christmas ornament, letters scribbled on it with a yellow glitter pen, “Be back soon. Christopher.” Typically, he would of sent me a text, but I broke my phone a few days earlier and had not gotten a new one. I folded the note and put it into my backpack. So many papers and writings were disposed that day, but for some reason I was trying to hold on to things.

In the middle of cleaning out the locker someone called my name. Rick stood right behind me, I am not sure how he got so close to me without me noticing. “Cygnus, how are you doing?” His two eyes were mostly pupils and would rapidly shake from side to side every now and then. “Okay.” He smiled and nodded, his teeth grinding together. I wondered if he was waiting for a longer response, just nodding and smiling ,while I stood between him and the row of lockers. At some point he decided he would have to be the one to continue the conversation. “Cool cool. Well, I am having a party at my house tomorrow and I think it would be good if you could come.” Rick threw parties often, and I usually enjoyed them. The were on the smaller end and most the people there would all know each other. “I’ll talk with Christopher, but I think there is  a decent chance I will go.” He gave me a hug, “awesome,” and then continued on to wherever he was going. I imagined him as a rabbit bouncing away. The rapid appearance and disappearance of Rick felt like the bit of a dream where the plot alters suddenly, but you don’t realize it until later. Once he was out sight I posted up against my locker and slid into a seated position on the floor.

Dust particles floated, illuminated by large sun rays coming in through the windows. With glared vision I could almost believe the hall was a desert. Dirt slowly piling on a city of my youth. Dust collected on upturned hands.

If I was a cowboy in a film I would have rode off into the sunset, striding into the end credits. I wasn’t a film cowboy though. I stayed sitting on the floor, dust on my hands, shoulder slouching from their weight. I felt on the altar with the desert, about to share our vows, when an objection came as racing footsteps.

“Come on, no time to explain gotta go now.” Christopher’s open hand pointed down towards me. There was hesitation on my part. Then he gave an asymmetrical smile, the right side of his lip curled up and his right eye squinted. Something about that smile almost made me feel nauseous, like he knew exactly what was in my head. All it took was a slight extension of my hand for Christopher to take it and yank me to my feet.

We raced across the school. Almost backtracking the route I had just walked. Speed changed the experience of the environment. I had boarded Christopher’s train and was going to take it wherever the tracks went, ride it to some beautiful end. We exploded out of the double doors. The parking lot burst into vision, mostly empty. On the far end of it was Christopher’s car. He speed ahead, laughing, and with a jump he slid across the hood of his car. Things lined up so it looked like his body was going to disappear in the distant yellow disc, a black silhouette swallowed by its flames. Instead he slid off the other side and smoothly got into the drivers seat. As I approached, Christopher opened the side door and I dropped in to the passenger seat. I was still buckling up when Christopher started the car and pulled out of the parking lot.