Scene.I

oo.oo.oo

Walking into the coffee shop on Jackson Avenue hadn't been part of my plan for the day, but it happened anyway. I've been feeling like that's happening a lot lately. Things just happening to me like I don't have any real control over my life or what happens in it.

I stepped up to the counter and offered the tired-looking barista a polite smile and asked for an espresso. She nodded, gave me my change. I sat at a table and opened up my backpack. I took out my notebook and a nearly empty pen, then started scribbling. I wrote about how I felt. About what I thought. I wrote what I would say if anyone cared to listen.

I tended to write about fairly dark things. Anytime I tried to write song lyrics I always ended up talking about not being able to breathe. Journal entries quickly progressed into dissections that left me scarred and scared and bloody in ways I could never imagine until they were real. It made me feel better. Sure it did.

"Espresso!" the barista announces to the room of patrons. I stand slowly and awkwardly push my chair under the table, even though I'm going to return to it in about five seconds. Maybe ten. Why are you so overly analytical? Just go get your coffee.

I stand behind a man who is adding more cream and sugar to a large cup of coffee that looks closer to white than brown. He is so wide that he's blocking that counter as well as the counter upon which my espresso is resting. I attempt to execute a maneuver which involves me reaching between the wall of the building and the wall of fat on the side of his belly, but before I can begin he turns around and bumps into me, muttering "suurryboutthatman" under his breath then planting himself back at his table. I drop a cube of sugar in the brown liquid and wonder how a person can care that little. Then I remember how little I care and wonder how I can be so hypocritical. Then I stop wondering, because none of it really matters.

My mind felt like it changed tenses all the time. I wondered if a person should be concerned about the grammatical correctness of their train of thought, then I sat down and went back to writing.

Tom shook his head as he finished reading over the reports from last week. He shouldn't have toyed with Maslin so much, it made him much too volatile, ended up clouding his judgements. Heavily, based on how shaken his voice sounded on the phone.

I stopped and thought. Could Tom's powers extend even over the phone? It was an interesting avenue to explore, that was for sure. I set my pen down and pulled out the manila file containing Tom's character bio.

"Just the sound of the voice is enough…" I read aloud softly, reminding myself of Tom's limits and abilities. He was my favorite character I had ever come up with. Sometimes I wondered if I had based him on myself, but then he would do something incredible and I remembered it wasn't me. I didn't even do somethings, let alone incredible somethings.

"Excuse me?"

Her vocal chords vibrated, making the air vibrate, making the air in my ears vibrate. It vibrated against my eardrum which flexed my cochlea which then sent a signal along my eighth cranial nerve to the regions of my brain that induced panic and curiosity and the need to show that I was a socially able human. People didn't approach me. I was sure of that. So why was she? I looked up, attempting to contort my face into an expression of warmth and openness but failing.

"Yes?" I replied, ready for her to compliment my sweater or tell me my car was blocking hers or to let me know my beard needed a trim.

"I think I saw you in my Java class today, are you in Professor Sizko's 9am?"

I blinked, and when my eyelids were halfway done reopening I suddenly remembered her. I remembered seeing her on the first day of class. We exchanged eye contact, the awkward kind that can only lead to miscommunication and disappointment and regret. I was glad to be talking to her, even though I hadn't said anything yet.

"Yeah, I'm ini-I'," I covered my mouth and coughed lightly to clear my throat," sorry, yeah I'm in that class. What's up?" Seriously? What's up? Not a joke or a 'what's your name?'

She smiled and I felt something that tasted like happiness at first then faded to doubt. "Oh not much! I was just wondering if you could give me a hand with the homework. It's really giving me a hard time!"

She is blond and tan and her teeth are whiter than the white displayed by my computer when every RGB value is 255 and the brightness is maximized. Her voice is cornbread muffins and buttermilk biscuits and blurry memories of fat men in overalls throwing empty beer cans in the trash after football games. She seemed like she used Facebook frequently. I didn't know if I liked her. At all.

I tell her sure and she comes over to my table and sits down. She asks about loops and I can't help but think about my shoelaces, and also the cyclical nature of my life over the past two weeks. For int I equals zero, I less than 100, I plus plus, System dot out dot print line: "I don't want to be here". If you know Java, you'd know that that line makes a computer say 'I don't want to be here' one hundred times. I got a perfect score on the last exam.

We finish and she tries to stay and talk and be polite but I'm already back in my tense-changing mind and my thoughts about suffocating and I can taste the insincerity in the air around her. She just didn't want to do her homework. I had no room to judge, I had done the same thing plenty of times. I was just hoping for a change.

I finished my coffee and headed home, ready for the cycle to continue.