A Midsummer Night's Dream

7

THEODORE

For many days of the summer, I experience repeat days every year. Or as I like to call them, drift days. Those days when you listen without hearing, touch without feeling, look without feeling, breathe without inhaling. The days you're not on the ground. Where you're alive but not living. You're physically planted but your mind drifts. You're in the clouds, the sky, space, no where?

Everything hopped on repeat. Making Lenora and Lillian breakfast, then the swim in the pool if it was clean but otherwise in the sea. Lunch at the shaded table in the garden, or lunch indoors, always small talk with my dad or brother. The afternoon hours, splendid and lush with abundant sun and silence. There were the moments at dinner when my father always wondered what I did with my time, why I was always alone, my mother urging me to make new friends if the old ones didn't interest me but above all to stop hanging around the house all the time; books, books, books, always books and all these little diaries and writing. Both of them begging me to play more tennis, go dancing with my brother, get to know people, find out for myself why others are so necessary in life and not just foreign bodies to be settled up to. Do crazy things if you must they told me all the time, forever prying to un earth the mysterious, telltale signs of depression which in their clumsy, intrusive, devoted way, both would instantly wish to heal, as if I were a soldier who had strayed into their garden and needed his wound immediately stanched or else he would die. You can always talk to me. I was your age once, my father used to say. The things you feel and think only you have felt, believe me, I've lived and suffered through all of them, and more than once — some I've never gotten over and others I'm as ignorant about as you are today, yet I know almost every bend, every toll booth every chamber in the human heart.

On days like that, like today, I chose to escape from the spiral of pity and worry so I would go visit my secret spot. It was a spring near the fields among the willow trees. It was my own heaven.

I looked off in the distance as I rode my bicycle to the spring a few miles away from Eguisheim.

I could see some grey, thunder clouds far away.
It'll most likely rain in the evening but it's only midday right now so I'll be fine.

I arrived at my secret spot. It was a beautiful spring of water which flowed down from the mountains to this beautiful place bustling with butterflies, bees, and birds flying around and flowers of different kinds adorning the edges of the water. The willow trees branched down towards the water and their long, flexible branches worked perfectly as ropes to swing into the water from.

I dropped my bike in the grass and took my shirt and sandals off.

Suddenly I heard the sounds of laughing. I shot my attention towards the water where the sound was coming from.
I picked up a stick and held it as a weapon. As I moved forwards towards the sound, carefully, I saw two bicycles laying near a boulder.

"Theo!" I heard from behind me and I jumped to face the person.

I was relieved when I saw a familiar face. "Cecilia! You scared me!" I said, taking a breath.

She laughed loudly at my fright.
"You're such a baby Theo! I was just here for a swim with a friend. She's just over there in the water. I have to get going home now since Dad will be back from his trip to the city soon and I want to see if he got me the scarf I asked for." Cecilia told me.

"Cece, Why did you tell someone? I told you to not tell anyone! You can't seem to keep things secret, can you?" I complained.

"She's new here! I wanted to introduce her to new places, that's all plus she has a great camera for taking photos and videos. I've never seen such a thing!" Cecilia confessed.