silver sonder ⤖ ian x jaden

sonder

you know that feeling... the feeling that the whole world is throwing signs at you. that the universe is planting things for you to notice. i know you've felt it, probably many times before. you're not going crazy. it's a certain phenomenon, something known as the frequency illusion. referred to by some as the baader-meinhof phenomenon. and this frequency illusion, it's the idea that once you learn about something for the first time - a name, a new word, a concept - it begins to pop up. just after it enters your life for the first time, it begins to appear everywhere. in places you wouldn't expect it to. in the books you read, in the conversations you have; maybe even when you're doing your goddamn grocery shopping.

it shows up a little too often. way too often to be attributed to just a coincidence. it must be something more... right? i'm sure psychologists simply attribute this phenomenon to selective attention. but i'm no psychologist. i don't know. i'm not sure i believe in chance, either.

my most notable case of this "frequency illusion" wasn't just the recurrence of a concept, or a word, or a name. it was a whole, entire, living, breathing person. jaden walker.

at 7:55, i stood on the centre of the school's front field with merlyn and dom, my two closest friends, and waited for the dreaded bell to chime so that we could enter the building. i noticed how the leaves on the trees around us had started to grow back on the branches following a particularly harsh winter, and how the sun seeped through the cracks of the greenery. it was very pretty, always was at this time of year.

"you good, ian?" asked dom. his question was met with a short silence. "ian!"

it was only then that I realised he'd aimed the question at me. "huh?!"

"you zoned out a little just now. though i can't blame you, the trees always look especially captivating on a morning like this," dom joked.

"it's quite unlike you to be so unfocused," added merlyn.

"i'm fine. i'm just tired," i assured them both. "i was up all night stressing about physics." dom nodded his head, understanding. "you're getting that huge paper back today, right?"

i told him yes.

merlyn placed a hand upon my shoulder. "i'm sure you'll have aced it! one hundred emojis all around." he finished his sentence by doing a little dance in a very merlyn-like fashion. i laughed and shifted my weight from one foot to the other.

the first time jaden walker entered my life, i never expected him to stay for longer than a fleeting moment. but i was wrong. seemingly out of nowhere, dom was wearing a sour, disapproving expression on his face after merlyn rounded up his little routine. i'd thought maybe the dance had pissed him off a bit, because, you know, dom ain't got time for any of that or whatever. but given the circumstances that was quite unlikely. "what's up, dom?" merlyn asked when he too realised that something was wrong.

he shifted his gaze from wherever he was looking to merlyn and i. "don't you hate when they do that?"

merlyn briefely looked over his shoulder and then back to dom. "who?"

"do what?" i asked.

dom rolled his eyes at our cluelessness. "them. standing over there, smoking outside the main building like they own the place." he gestured to a group of boys who looked around our age, who were indeed smoking outside the main building, talking and laughing loudly as they were at it. "like, are they even here to get an education at all?" merlyn stood on his tippy-toes and peered over to where the group was huddled. he had a surprised look on his face as he turned to look at dom.

"jaden is back?"

unlike merlyn, i still had no clue who we were talking about. "who's jaden?"

"jaden walker," dom said sternly. i shrugged my shoulders in defeat. dom sighed heavily. "you have no clue who that is, do you?"