plastic_rice
Life is a brightly lit amusement park where everyone is running, though no one is quite sure where. We chase a version of happiness that feels like a prize behind thick glass. Sometimes we argue about which line to stand in; other times, we just queue there in silence, listening to the dry, mechanical click of the clock overhead. By the time the gates lock, you're just a tired person sitting on a bench with a flat soda, relieved that there's nothing left to see.
Is that what we're calling happiness? A feeling that's only worth it because it's over?
So I came to high school and surrendered the frantic, glittering chase for achievement. I joined Detective Novels Club, where my seniors spent their afternoons dusting for fingerprints with cocoa powder or clipping together ransom notes from yesterday's news. It was the sort of place people joined as a second club, the kind of place you go when you're already doing too much and need a spot to hide from the sun.
The third year seniors graduated and left me behind. I was promoted to become the president then, but there was no one left in the club to lead. The student council began circling. If I couldn't conjure fresh memberships out of thin air, they would dissolve the club and reassign me to some frantic, crowded corner of the school.
My club advisor sat before me, his voice sounding like dry leaves scattering across pavement. He told me that the club must grow or serve some concrete purpose, or it was finished. I told him I would try, but it was a lie. I went through the motions, taping posters to hallway walls, offering to solve 'mysteries', whatever that meant. In any case, I had little lingering attachments that place, so I wouldn't go all out to save the club now. It just wouldn't fit the way I chose to live my life.
I expected a slow, quiet afternoon of sipping tea and reading books. But to think that someone actually came.