In Time

See You Tomorrow

I followed Mr. Park out the side door he had been adamant about taking. As soon as the arid air hit my face, my face felt icky. Just thinking about the polluted air hitting my face made me wish I could go back inside; my acne was going to have a field day today.

The door slammed behind us, and I stopped in place with it. I wasn't planning on rushing into anything. I just needed Mrs. Scheller to understand that I had to make my own decisions. She had almost started crying earlier, and it had unnerved me. Her usual positive and strong demeanor had crumbled so quickly.

"I'll see you tomorrow, Mr. Park. I don't plan on making any life-changing decisions just yet. Think of it as me trying to skip school." I would never skip school usually, but he didn't need to know that.

"Ms. Agarwal, plea—"

"I didn't say I wouldn't consider it. I need a day. I want to visit my family before I agree to whatever it is you're proposing. It seems like it could potentially harm me, and despite my self-deprecating jokes, I'm too scared to die. I trust you know where I live; you work for the government after all." With the thought of death, my adrenaline had spiked, giving me enough confidence to confront someone for once. If only I did that a little more often...

Mr. Park looked at me for a long moment before shaking his head, and my heart dropped for a brief moment. He let out a sigh and with it came the words "Okay. I'll see you tomorrow at 12 p.m. sharp. You have lunch then, but you can exit through this side door. You must give me a clear 'yes' or 'no.'"

He turned back around and headed to the car that had been parked by the curb. "You coming, or no?" He called. "I thought you wanted to get home. Bus might take you a while."

I took stiff steps forward, considering the fact that he might just try to kidnap me. If the government kidnaps you, is it really kidnapping, though? Just before I opened the passenger side door, I backed away. I would just take the bus to be safe.

"No thank you, Mr. Park. I'll see you tomorrow."

~

As I walked to the bus stop, I wondered why he would try to pick me up from school in the middle of the day. Why not pick me up from home? It confused me, but I let the thought slide away. Hopping onto the bus, I picked a spot near the middle so I could avoid the rush of the front.

When the landscape was blurring past, D.C. could almost be considered beautiful. You couldn't see the dust that always peppered the ground, as if someone had tried to erase a stray mark a huge brown colored pencil had left behind. You wouldn't realize that the green skid marks passing by the window weren't trees full of foliage, but rather scraggly ones trying to survive a climate that they would never thrive in.

I turned my thoughts away from the window, and I pretended I could hear the bus braking and accelerating. The bus driver wasn't actually driving; he was more like the train drivers who made sure the subway trains wouldn't collide due to a system error. AI controlled the electric buses that ran in the city now.

An automated voice called out the next stop, and I realized in a panic that I missed my stop. I pulled the wire that runs along the bus, and the bus slows to a stop. "Thank you!" I called out to the driver. Even if he wasn't driving, it was great that he still took his job to keep the bus from malfunctioning seriously.

I hurried down the stairs, almost tripping at the height difference between the first and second stairs. I slowly walk back the two blocks to my neighborhood. I could feel my hair start to frizz in the humidity and my shirt start to dampen with sweat. I rounded the corner to a street lined with cramped apartment buildings and make my way to the closest one.