ten

                                        

                                              
MARCH
EVERYTHING IN THE cafeteria sounded like it was underwater. The pale walls, the smooth, polished floors, the glaring, patchwork posters and the scattered white tables all looked like they were draped underneath a veil of sheer, glossy fabric. The fluorescent lights were as grim and white as the needle-point, eye-watering sunlight from a grey sky. The chorus of noise never quite reached him, never touched him, and never seemed to rise or fall, only ever remaining at the same level of awful din, and the faces were as blurred as everything else, distant and hazy and unidentifiable. There wasn't a single face that differed from any other.
With glazed eyes, starry and vacant, he stared at nothing, his left cheek resting against a loosely curled left fist and a right arm resting along the lunch table while his friends talked and talked and talked. All of their words spilled into each other until they flooded him; drowned out and muffled and meaningless, buzzing in his ears like the ring of a gunshot. A song he couldn't remember the name of was playing in his head on an infinite loop.
Lately, he had not known what to do with himself. Lately, every tomorrow was shapeless. He could not imagine a moment that had not already happened. He could not conjure the image of a life that he had not already lived. Every morning, he woke up earlier than his alarm and stared at his white bedroom ceiling. Every morning, he used all of his energy to lift up his hands over his face so he could turn them over and inspect them and wonder what to do with them. What was he to do with any of it?
A thought of abandoning the rest of the table struck him. He thought about getting up and leaving without saying anything, walking through the front doors and letting the calls of his name slip underneath him like lapping waves. He thought about becoming nobody so that he would never have to respond to the call of a name again. He thought about being a nameless face and leaving the rest of himself behind to become something entirely instinctual, to become a creature that was so busy living— walking, eating, showering, dressing, cleaning, cooking, sitting, sleeping— that he would not have to think. He thought of waking up every morning and getting up to run or wash or cook breakfast without letting a single thought pass through him, without having to figure out how to fill his hands every morning. 
He thought about his body leading him right out of the cafeteria, right out of school, right out of the world, but it was anchored to the table. When it was time, he would get up, walk to class and finish the day as he was supposed to with nothing in his grasp because he could never completely be rid of himself.
His heart felt thick and heavy, but there was no identifiable emotion that rang inside him or choked him or transcended the veil that had fallen over everything around him. 
He imagined burying himself in the backyard, the way Jack had buried Kirby, and he thought about that god forsaken statue taking his place at the dinner table. It occurred to him that, in the end, it wouldn't really change anything. The sun would keep rising no matter where he went and no matter how he lived. Regardless of what any of it meant, the sun would keep rising. It did not comfort him.
Something hard and dull hit his leg, more like an echo than a shout, and he tried to wake himself up. When he looked across the table, he found Jensen frowning at him.
"Where've you been, space cadet?" He asked, his dark eyes intent and his eyebrows knitted.
Charlotte was sitting at his side, narrowing her cerulean eyes at Hadley. Her black, glossy hair was falling over her shoulders, dark strands pushed behind her glittering ears, and her pink mouth was taut. She rested a sharp, right cheekbone against her closed, tight fingers and her left arm was on the table.
His eyes darted towards her smooth, pale hand. 
"Nowhere," Hadley replied absently, his eyes flickering towards Jensen. "Just thinking."