Almost Full

The Last Day

  As I walked outside under the dim sky, a shiver seemed to sweep through my body. We were about a month and a half into the school year, so it was getting quite chilly. I could see the changes happening each day. The transition of autumn into a thirty-two-degrees-Fahrenheit-and-below time of year was finally there in front of me. Being as skinny as I was, body heat wasn't all that useful, and I felt more vulnerable to the cold.

  "I'm gonna need a bigger jacket," I mumbled to myself as I left my door step. The clouds were cluttered in the sky and there was no sign of the sun or the blue of the stratosphere. It was extremely grey, so much so that it even seemed to blot out the usually vibrant October leaves. Color was almost nonexistent. I tried to keep my eyes on the sidewalk. Something was nagging me, and I didn't know what it was. I just hoped it would go away, and soon. The high school, being only a short walk away, came into sight only a few minutes later.

  I made it to the campus somewhere around five seconds before the late bell rang and realized I was in trouble. Absent and late to class twice in a week's radius was simply not a good thing to be. I started into a sprint toward my science classroom. When I made it to the door, I found it locked, as expected. Mr. Lawng always had it that way after the late bell, in order to ensure that no students were able to sneak in when he wasn't looking. I knocked, and the guy sitting in the desk closest to the door opened it for me.

  "Jeaz, Alan... Late again?" he said with a joking smile on his face. It was a long time friend of mine, Alex Shanter. "Yep... second time in a row," I sighed, walking past him into the classroom. Last Friday had been a similar experience. Mr. Lawng gave me a hard stare.

  "Alan," he addressed me, obviously disturbed by my recent tendency to be late. "Yeah?" I responded without looking at him. "This is strike two for you, I'm giving you one last shot. If it happens again, I will be seeing you after school," he finished with a friendly but expectant look on his face. "Understood," I acknowledged with a sigh.

  Finding my seat in the very middle row, I pulled out my notes, textbook, and realized I had no pencil. I nearly slammed my head on my desk, wondering why things like this always seemed to happen to me. I sat, pitying myself, before quietly asking each person around me if they had some type of utensil I could borrow. Jacob, the kid who sat behind me held out a blue-ink pen, which I graciously accepted. "I need it back at the end of class," he whispered. I nodded and began jotting everything Mr. Lawng put up on his smart board. We were learning about seismic waves, why they happen, the kind of alterations they make in the planet's crust.

  I found it interesting, the way things move and change beneath our very feet, sometimes abrupt, other times lasting over a span of many years. It can change entire landscapes, an example being the San Andreas fault line, while other times being very small, and even unnoticeable, like bricks in a sidewalk gradually sliding further against each other. It creeps and creeps, and you don't realize what's being done, until it's already done.

  Lunch that day didn't feel like any sort of break. I didn't have money with me to buy food, and walking off campus seemed like too much work, so I sat, doing nothing with my friends, Ean, Alex, Eric, and Beth. Alex and Eric were talking about an episode of a show I had never heard of, while Beth quietly ate her food on the further end of the table.

  She gave me a glance, but turned away when she saw that I was looking at her. I did the same, embarrassed that she had caught me staring. Maybe she was having a similar day. Ean Levorett, my best friend out of the lot, whom I had met my first year of middle school, was sitting next to me, jabbering about something he had seen on the news the day before. I wasn't really listening. Brad was definitely a talker. He could go on and on about anything, and be completely oblivious when he lost me. In spite of all this, and though it was a little more rare, when I had something to say, he was all ears. I could always count on him to listen.

  Nothing interesting or worth noting happened the following block, and when I walked into History, my last period class of the day, I was about ready to tune out and leave a few things blank. The whole thing seemed to drag on. How was I supposed to get through another three days of this before the weekend? I had to pull through though. We weren't even two months in, and my grades were already slipping down into the dreaded C-minus realm. I couldn't slack off anymore, so I went against my natural man and did my work as it was given to me.

  As I finished one of the worksheets I had received though, my bladder brought it to my attention that I needed a break. I asked Mr. Gerder for access to the restroom, after which he told me to sign out. I made my way down the hall, walking past classrooms that seemed quiet, as though they were empty.

  I stopped in front of the men's restroom, and pressed my hand against the door, pushing it inward as I entered. On the floor, and sitting up against the wall next to the bathroom stalls, was Ashton Wrinter. He was fairly new to the school, moved in about a month earlier to live with his dad after his mom had gone missing. She had been a friend of my mom's way back. I had shown him around his first day here.

  I felt sorry for the guy. I had no idea what I'd have done if one of my parents just went missing one night, no closure or anything. And seeing him there in a sweaty heap like that, I suddenly forgot all about my immediate need to pee, and strode across the bathroom to where he sat. He seemed absent, like he hadn't even noticed I was there. I squatted down next to him. "Hey, bro, are you okay?" He didn't respond.

  "Dude?" I snapped a finger in front of his face, and he was suddenly alive.

  "Wh- what?" he focused on my hand, and then looked at me. His eyes seemed faded, like he hadn't slept for a week.

  "Are... you alright?" I asked again.

  He seemed to process my words, then shook his head.

  "Are you feeling sick?"

  "No," he started to shake a little.

  "Then I don't get it. What's wrong?"

  He looked at me again, a strange expression of desperation on his face. "I'm afraid," he said.

  "Afraid? Afraid of what?" I stared him down, utterly confused.

  He reverted his eyes back to the floor, not answering. I examined him. His arms were folded tight, and legs pulled up to his chest. He was a small kid, kind of spazzy for a sophomore. I was sure he had some sort of disorder, but of course I wasn't gonna ask him about it. I pressed the back of my hand to his forehead.

  "Holy frick. You're burning up," I said, wiping his sweat off of my hand against the side of my pants. "I think you need to see the nurse."

  "No," he suddenly stood up. "I just need to go home. The nurse can't help me," he walked to the door and opened it, leaving me crouched in the same position, "No one can."

  And then, he was gone.

  The bell rang shortly after I got back, dismissing us for the day. As I walked home, I tried to figure out what had been going on with Ash. He had said no one could help him. Maybe he was talking about his mental disorder. It could have been the fact that his mother was missing. I had no way to know.

  When I got back into my house, my mom was getting ready to leave somewhere. "What's going on?" I asked. My mother looked at me with a pained expression. "I'm heading to a funeral out of town, so I won't be back till tomorrow morning. Your dad is on duty for the next few days, so you'll have to watch your brothers for the rest of tonight."

  I wanted to know more about this funeral. "why though?" I asked. "Who died?"

  Clearly, she didn't want to talk about it, but she told me anyway. "It's Ashton's mom. Her body was found just over a week ago. They couldn't identify her until the other day."

  I cringed when she said that. The body must have been messed up pretty bad. "Do they know what happened to her?"

  "No, not exactly. They say she was mauled by some animal."

  Suddenly, it became clear why Ashton had seemed more than a little upset when I found him on the restroom floor that day. "That's... weird," I said, still in thought.

  "Anyway, I've got to go. Take care of your brothers," she said, before leaving. My younger siblings and I were all pretty spread out, as far as age goes. I didn't talk with them a whole lot. "Love you, Alan. And try not to destroy anything while I'm gone." And with that, she was out the door.