Everyday Amnesia

0.7

Ashton woke up to the unpleasant sound of his alarm blaring. Groaning, he rolls over and switches it off. He checks his calendar. Today is Thursday. He quickly reads all of the sticky-notes on his wall, and then checks his journal for the entry from yesterday. The dream, the vision, was still playing over and over in his head.

Michael is going to die.

Well, of course he's going to die. Everybody dies at some point. But Michael is going to die soon, as a teenager, maybe. He didn't look any different in the coffin, still as tall and as pale as ever. Except he was dead.

Ashton drags himself over to the bathroom and brushes his teeth, washes his face, and tries to fix his hair. He wasn't in the mood to take a shower, so he sprays dry shampoo in his hair and brushes it out. He shuffles over to his closet and pulls on a shirt that reads 'Smells Like Teen Spirit'. It's his favorite song by Nirvana. He shimmies into a pair of skinny jeans before heading downstairs.

"Are you okay?" Hannah asks, taking in her son's appearance. She checks up on him regularly during the night, and despite the fact that he was asleep the entire night, he still looked exhausted. Like he hadn't slept for days.

"Yeah," He didn't want to say anything. Michael was like a second son to her. She always gave Ashton extra lunch money so he could buy Michael some food too. Also, she was close to Karen, they were in a book club together. Ashton couldn't tell her about his vision. There was no way he could crush her heart like that.

"Okay, sweetie. I made you some cheese toasties," She kisses his forehead and hands him a plate. He smiles and thanks her, sitting down at the table to eat. He finishes quickly, chugging a glass of milk before sticking the plate and cup in the sink. Ashton grabs the money from the counter, kisses Hannah's cheek, and heads out the door.

He's not walking today, he doesn't have the energy for that. He waits for the bus to arrive at the stop and when he climbs on, the driver smiles at his sympathetically. He can't bring himself to return the gesture so he nods weakly and collapses into the first empty seat he could find. The bus ride is long and painful, his head was pounding, and everybody was too loud.

He takes his time navigating through the corridors to get to his first class, Algebra. He sits down at the table, and it feels wrong. Michael's seat is empty. Ashton sighs when he's handed a work sheet, and stares at the question. The words seem to blur and fly around, and he blinks repeatedly in order to read the question.

The length of a rectangular field is 7/5 its width. If the perimeter of the field is 240 m, what are the length and width of the field?

Ashton sighs again. It's hard to focus, when his best friend is in the hospital and he's going to die. He wonders if it's possible that maybe, he could save Michael. He just might be able to. He shakes his head and picks up his pencil, writing down the answer.

2L + 2W = 240, 2(7/5)W + 2W - 240

W = 50 m L = 70 m

He taps his pencil on desk whilst reading the next question. He's working slowly, Ashton can't get the image of Michael lying in the coffin. He blinks and re-reads the question.

It takes Ryan 3.5 hours to drive from city A to city B. On his way back to city A, he increased his speed by 20 mph and it took him 3 hours. Find the average speed for the whole journey.

Ashton is frustrated. Why don't these cities have names? He sighs, realizing he's concerned about something totally irrelevant. All he think about is Michael. Dead. His eyes are always sparkling and full of life. He can't die. Michael and dead shouldn't even be in the same sentence.