It had been one of those days. Not a bad day. Not a good day. A day. Like all the other ones.
The ones that stretched for miles and miles and miles.
Anne sighed. Really, she had no right complaining. Her life was fine. She had a decent amount of money, her house was clean and airy, her family all got along. But wasn't that the problem? That she honestly had nothing to complain about.
Her pondering was interrupted by a teacher, asking some question. Normally she'd care. Right now though, she was in the middle of a train of thought.
"16," she answered, with all confidence, and ignoring his bewildered look, went back to thinking.
There was a word for her life. It would come to her in a minute.
"Are you okay?" Frances whispered to her questioningly. "You look a little out of it."
Flat-lining.
Her life was flat-lining. Not really exciting, not really horrible. Just... there. Another meaningless string in an altogether meaningless tapestry. No longer, she thought, I'll go insane if it lasts a single minute more.
Abruptly, she stood up. "I think I'm going to be sick," she moaned loudly, holding her stomach.
As the teacher freed her to run to the bathroom, his face contorting with dread at the possibility of vomit on his carpet, she pretended to double over. "Think of an excuse to get out of here and meet me in the library. It's urgent." She hissed to Frances. Offering no further excuse, she straightened up and stumbled out the door.
The drab gray hallway seemed to be mocking her as she walked quickly along. I own you, it whispered. Your future rests in my hands. She froze as she realized she was hearing a low growling. Nervous laughter followed, as she realized it was her own throat making the sound.
Fortunately, Grace and Lyn where in the same class, and as usual, nothing much was going on. Their teacher saw no reason to doubt that Anne was telling the truth when she asked if they could come out of class to work on their group's history project. Everyone else was too brain dead to remember that they had no history project.
Obviously confused, Grace and Lyn tried to ask Anne what was going on, but she clammed up and would say nothing. The librarian did not question the authenticity of their actions. Adults never did.
"What is going on?" Francis growled when they were finally out of earshot, way over in the reference center.
Her inquiry was joined by a chorus of Whats, Whys, and even a few Hells.
Raising a hand, she silenced the interrogators. "We need to leave." Was all she deemed necessary to say.
Her friends didn't agree.
"Are you crazy?" Frances was the best at accusations.
"Why? Where would we go?" Lyn was the best at appearing calm. She handled Anne delicately, slowly, as if talking to a deranged girl.
"I'm not really sure what's happening," confessed Grace, who was the best at getting utterly lost.
Anne decided to answer them in chronological order. "Yes, and it's liberating. Nothing exciting will ever happen to us unless we make it happen. Anywhere, that's the best part. We're talking about leaving. Escaping. Flying the coop. Roaming the Great Wide Open." She didn't really stop talking, just became less coherent. Awareness seemed to lurk, but her actions were far from lucid. Her eyes glowed vividly, her gaze scanning the shelves.
"But... leaving would be insane," Grace debated, finally able to argue now that she was up to date on what was happening.
"We have no money or drivers' licenses, it's the middle of a school year, our parents would get law enforcement to look for us..." Lyn trailed off at the sheer impossibility.
Anne, although listening, still wasn't looking at them. They traced her gaze to a fly bumping incessantly, uselessly at the window.
When she finally did reply, her voice was soft and her words halting. "If leaving is certifiable, staying is even more so. It's not like we'll be gone forever, just enough to experience something. Sure, book-learning is important, but the real world is much harder. We need practice. But more than that, we also need change. A reason to struggle through this. A guarantee that there is a light at the end of the tunnel." A crazy, desperate, unorganized speech. Most people would have shut her down instantly. But they didn't. In the amazing miracle that is friendship, her words struck similar chords in them. The fire in Anne's eyes slowly ignited in theirs.
And suddenly, anything was possible.
