ALL THAT WAS LEFT BEHIND

Sunshine In A Box

When I lived with my mother, back when she was still alive but barely breathing, I had a principal who loved to make speeches. He served at our elementary school for only a few years, and was quite frankly, easily forgotten. I never forgot about him however. In one of his speeches, he paced the gym floor, looking at each of the tiny students in their wide or bored looking eyes. He said, in his booming voice, to always listen to our stomachs. Our stomachs knew when we were ill, or if something exciting was going on, or if we weren’t doing what we were supposed to. There were different feelings we’d get under different circumstances. Of course, he also eagerly mentioned that our stomachs also knew when we were hungry, but received none of his desired laughter.

            My stomach twisted and churned, as if it were trying to climb its way into my throat to suffocate me into a state of agonizing fear. It roared, silently, to be calmed, to be eased with the thought of a normal night.

            I stared at my paper, which had almost been filled with my rambling words. I couldn’t seem to piece any string of sentences together properly, for it all came spilling out of my mind in an untranslatable text of rambles. I wondered how Matt could do so well with full out, professional English papers, whereas I could hardly answer simple novel study questions.

            I sighed, feeling frustrated, and my queasy stomach wasn’t exactly helping my predicament.

            Doug looked up from his newspaper to eye me wearily. I gave him an exhausted smile, and he nodded in sympathy before covering his eyes again with the paper.

            I tried switching to math homework, which deemed to be an efficient strategy on that wandering mind of mine. I soon became immersed into nothing but numbers, where everything made sense.

            The remaining of my school day that day was difficult. After visiting the office for my request, I couldn’t stop thinking about Samuel, and the secrets I would watch him dig up, reviving into the world again to be back into play.

            Somehow, however, I made it out without being too clumsily, or strange looking. Somehow, I was able to be who I am, without anyone realizing.

            The air was cold in the kitchen, and it surrounded me, huddling close to seep into my skin. The silence was a frigid hand, caressing my ears into a paralyzed, state. I could not hear a single sound in the frosty soundless air, except for Doug’s quiet breathing, and the small beats of my heart, pumping cold blood through my veins. 

            The harsh, obnoxious rings of the phone jabbed through the air, and into my ears, causing me to jump slightly off of my chair, and give out a little yelp.

Doug lowered his newspaper to inspect me for a moment, and then left his chair to find the phone on the kitchen counter behind me.

            He grunted as he picked it up, read the caller ID and answered it.

            “Hullo?”

            I turned around in my seat to watch his eyes fixate on the kitchen cabinets as he listened to the voice over the phone, for it was something to distract myself with. I couldn’t capture any words spoken from the unknown person over the phone.

            “Well, uh, yeah. Give me a minute, okay?” he said into the phone with his laidback speech, and then looked to me, covering the phone with his shirt to conceal our words from the caller.

            “You ain’t going to school tomorrow?” he asked me with curious eyes.

            I drew in a sudden breath, for as I had forgotten about the part of my plan where the school calls home to double check my absence. My eyes grew wide, conveying my surprise and dread. My throat closed up, not allowing any speech to arise from it, not that my mind had produced any words anyways.