the long way home [ h.s. ]

Eleven | 11

eleven | 11

☓

When the bell rings at 8:30, everyone inside the stuffy room falls silent in their seats. The thick downpour of rain can be heard clearly outside the windows, now accompanied by wind; which smears detached leaves and other tree ligaments to the glass.

It's been changing tone all morning, growing lighter and lighter, then plummeting down again, harsh, mean and wild.

I try not to look out at it for too long, instead shifting my gaze from indoor object to indoor object.

I end up growing bored with reading the writing on someone's shirt just as Mr. Dotery clears his throat at the front of the room. He's always fighting some type of head cold; I keep track of the tissue box on his desk, and it changes packaging almost every two days.

Next to it sits a small tray, which is actually a seashell turned over on its side.

Inside the seashell are cherry cough drops.

Mr. Dotery always smells like cherry-- mixed with detergent, and a spray too subtle to be cologne.

"Hello, all. Nice to see you again."

Like always, nobody says anything back. I've always felt bad for playing one of these silent roles, but I'd rather stay mute and go unnoticed rather than be singled out as the solitary hello from the left side of the room.

Mr. Dotery lightly scratches his hip before spinning towards the whiteboard, turning so that everyone can see the jagged and decrepit arch of his back. He's an older man, with spider-like joints and a saggy middle, worn with experience and time.

His smile is a bit crooked and takes up the lower part of his face, leaving a large space between his nose and upper lip. He usually keeps a full mustache to cover it, all bristly and prickly looking; but today he doesn't have one.

I'm sure that he was incredibly handsome at some point, with his sharp blue eyes and defined features.

"Please flip to your notes from last class, everyone," he says, uncapping a bright blue pen. "...and we shall continue."

I leaf through the pages of my notebook until I catch up to where I've left off, briefly scanning over my messy scrawling of the effects of war on the United States.

I do not like my handwriting.

It's neat, but not very pretty to look at.

Breathing out a light sigh, I think about Green Eyes, who I can now call Harry.

I think of this morning, when we sat side by side; I think about the way the rain made his hair hang limp.

It sounds strange, but I've mentally chalked our insignificant conversation as my own secret victory. It feels like all this time, despite being near him, he hasn't seemed like a human to me. His cold gaze and constant, chilling silence made him into a separate being; a piece of unused energy, drifting in the world.

But now, after feeling warmth radiating off of his arms and hearing his voice and knowing that we are, indeed, two people-- Harry is suddenly more real than ever before.

I also notice how, in response to this realness, I can't seem to focus on anything else.

☓

My shoes squeak on the sidewalk as I move towards the bus, pulling my hair behind my neck and braiding it loosely so the rain won't make it frizzy.

I barely feel it as it falls down to earth, partly because I'm already drenched, but the actual temperature of the rain itself is perfectly caught between warm and cool.