Insolitis

I

A teenage boy, about 17 years old, was watching his parents drive off to work in the family station wagon. The sports car they usually drove broke down a few days ago. He watched as his father, unaccustomed to the vehicle’s manual stick shift, drove into the mailbox at the end of the driveway. The boy chuckled as he heard his mother scold his father through the open car window. He then sighed and figured that he had better go and straighten it out.

                When the boy got the end of his driveway, he picked up the twisted mailbox. As he straightened it out and snapped the plastic red flag back into place, several letters fell out of the mailbox. The boy picked them up and shuffled through them, looking for something that was at least mildly interesting. After looking through bills and advertisements, he came across one that caught his attention. He read the front.

                After seeing that the envelope was sent from his parents’ company, the boy figured it was just something pointless that was sent out to all the employees, such as some ‘team building’ meeting. However, after reading that it was addressed to his whole family, not just his parents, he ruled that out. He also figured that, since he was part of the family, it would be all right if he were to read the letter’s contents. And so, the boy peeled off the envelope’s flap and pulled the folded paper out. After reading a few lines, he scratched the back of his head, raised a confused eyebrow, and bit his lower lip.

                As it happened, sometime that day, everyone in the town read the same exact letter. And everyone was just as confused as the boy.

* * *

                Leann was sitting on the floor in between two book shelves in the back of her school library. She often came here during her lunch hour to write or read, because she found the cafeteria to be too crowded and too noisy. In the library though, she could have 45 minutes of peaceful writing time before the bell rang. Leann sat with her notebook open on her lap and several papers with descriptions of her characters scattered around her. The one she was currently writing on was for her main character, a teenage boy named Jay.

                Leann felt a hand on her shoulder, and looked up, thankful for an interruption from a particularly difficult passage to write. However, when she looked up, there wasn’t anyone there. Leann looked around, but saw nothing other than the books on either side of her. She scrunched her eyebrows together. The young writer stood up and walked out from between the shelves, thinking that someone was playing a joke. But the library appeared to be completely empty, except for the books and computers.

Leann shook her head to herself. I’ve been writing for so long that I’ve started imagining things. I’m creating my own imaginary interruptions. Leann collected all her papers and walked out of the library, figuring that she could go to the lunchroom for the ten minutes that were left of lunch. Time for a break, Leann thought. It couldn’t have been the books that tapped on my shoulder, that’s for sure.

- - -

When Leann got home from school, she sat on the floor in her room and took her notebook from her backpack. She found a pen and got ready to continue the story she was writing during lunch earlier that day. The young writer thought back to that moment, and shook her head again at how foolish she was, thinking that someone had tapped her on the shoulder in the deserted library. She bent over her notebook and started writing.

And, suddenly, Leann felt it again, a hand on her shoulder. Her head shot up; her eyes wide. She looked down at her shoulder and let out a breath she wasn’t aware she was holding.  There was no hand there, of course. I was just thinking about today at the library and my tired mind simply made up another excuse for me to take a break from writing. After convincing herself of this, Leann got up and went to the kitchen for a snack.