Time Is The Hero

Ch-4 Seeping Sunlight

When you are really hungry,  even basic milk and cereal tastes like heavenly extravagant dinner.

I turn the page of the calendar noticing it is the first day and first Wednesday of September. I go to the kitchen to make pancakes for breakfast before school,  only to discover that there is no egg and milk in the refrigerator. The newly added neon sticky note among the Winnie the pooh and Lion King magnets that I missed the time of opening the fridge tells me 'Eat Cereal. Get groceries. Switch off the fans.-A'.

This means Austin has left for school already. This also means I should go to my room.

I switch off the fans in the room. Get downstairs. Eat dry cereal. Drink water afterward because my food pipe becomes dry too.  Siting in my car I speed to school.

***

The history teacher is explaining the status of Crimea which Julia taught us yesterday.  I sit alone on the two-seater bench. The teacher here in charge decided that if Jenna sits beside me just like she was, happily, at the beginning of the class then we will do nothing good to the class or ourselves.

My brain instructs me that I need not give it the information that was already provided to it yesterday evening at Jenna's. I decide to read 'Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?' under my desk, to hide my whereabouts from the world specifically Ms. Goulding, our history teacher. I am reading the lines by Edward Albee.

Honey: (Apologetically, holding up her brandy bottle) I peel labels.

George: We all peel labels, sweetie; and when you get through the skin, all the three layers, through the muscle, slosh aside the organs (An aside to Nick) them which is still sloshable--(Back to Honey) and get down to the bone...you know what you do then?

Honey: (Terribly interested) No!

George: When you get down to the bone, you haven't got all the way, yet. There's something inside the bone...the marrow...and that's what you gotta get at. (A strange smile at Martha)

I felt the book sliding upwards and then it is suddenly out of my sight. I look up to meet a pair of glaring black orbs of the curly-haired history teacher.

Today, unlike yesterday feels eventful. "Detention after school" she screams at me.

***

The school library has a unique smell of its own which is distinct to any other place, even any other library. The woody smell of the old book and furniture mixes with that of the oil painted walls to give an odor that calms the nerves.

I'm stuck to inhale this odor for 1 hour because of the history teacher. I sit on one of the old fashioned ladderback chairs next to the window closest to the door. It is my third or the fourth time of getting a detention.

Apart from me, there is this librarian who often goes to the different shelves, arranges some books, and again sits on the chair typing vigorously on the keyboard; and a boy. He has light and dark strips created on his left side of the body by the afternoon sunlight seeping through the blinds. His head is down low and continuously doing a slight movement from left to right and then to left again.  He seems to be one of the guys who sits with switching off everything while reading. 

The squeaky door opens to a crack through which the history teacher Ms. Goulding enters. She comes up to me and hands a 10-page long worksheet which I am supposed to complete in less than one hour.

On her way out she acknowledges the brown-haired lad. "Aiden" she seems surprised. The brown-haired who has now a name, 'Aiden' looks up and gives the not so young lady a bright smile. "How are you?" She asks him.
"I'm good, Ms. Goulding ". He assures.
The teacher nods and walks off. But that boy doesn't. He stares at me and offers the very seraphic smile he used a couple of minutes ago. Either it was contagious or my brain told the lips to curve upwards in order to follow the rules of etiquette, however, I smiled too.

We carried on with our respective works. 50 minutes down Ms. Goulding comes. She hands a piece of paper to the librarian and steps towards where I am sitting.

"Linda, you can go home now. Do the rest at home". I nod and pick up my backpack at once. As I stand up I glance at Aiden. He is studious. Just like my elder brother. Maybe feeling my eyes on him he looks up. And smiles. This time I smiled again. Because I wanted to.

I step out of the adobe of an idiosyncratic smell.

***

Instead of going home, I went straight to the supermarket. Seven minutes inside I realized I don't know what I need to get. At home, there is pretty much nothing. Before today every time mom used to make a list. It was easier. I picked whatever appealed my eye and was in my budget.

I texted Austin that I'll be late. Within a second he replied with a question 'where are you'. 'Grocery store', I click the send button.

Again instead of going home, I went to the garage. Joshua and the new boy Jayson were working on an available car and Austin was nowhere to be seen.

Joshua gave me the task of checking this week's record in the register. Austin comes a little after. The bumper of a red hatchback is brutally cracked. Though Austin and I spend 3 hours to mend it, a little work was still left which we decide to do tomorrow.  

Austin and I drive our separate cars home. We are pretty late today again. Throughout the drive back home I keep thinking of how we don't have any dinner and how I have to finish my homework till late night and how much I lack sleep.

We pull the cars in the driveway. I step out and go behind the car to open the trunk and by then Austin is nonchalantly walking towards the front door.

"Hello" I screamed behind him.
Austin turned uninterestingly "What"
"Who will help me with the groceries? ".

Trivia:  Aiden's character was not a part of the plot at first.