Lunch is by 11:30. I’m never hungry by then. In fact, hardly anybody is hungry by then, and if they are they’ll just eat in second period to stave off boredom. Instead, I abandon the cafeteria and its pizza smell, the smell that the day-old box leaves in your recycling bin, and I head outside to the school lawns.
Today is the first day this September that the air has felt brisk. The leaves flutter softly overhead, waving their little hands, beams of soft midmorning sunlight still lingering in their branches. The air feels sharp and cool, I breathe it in through my nose, feel it settle into my lungs. Outside, the loud noises of school that are accentuated by the long corridors of lockers and feet slapping tile and yelling voices are dimmed. People shouting seems muffled by the expanse of the sky, and it simple drifts into the air as a mellowed background noise. Mrs. Evans let us out a little bit early, so I am one of the first ones to walk across the lawn. I head directly for my favorite tree, before it can be claimed by the group of hoodied boys and their skateboards.
The tree is on the outskirts of the lawn. It is almost technically part of the woods that extends past or school, but encroaching just barely enough onto school property that we’ve claimed it as our own. It’s an old oak, branches tangling up towards the sky like a skeleton, hollow, moss-covered. But the bark is solid and strong, ridged with a hundred little lines that ripple across its trunk as thinly and intricately as a spider web. When I was in elementary school here, I used to think that it was the oldest tree in the world. In part because it stood out from the rest of the young, fresh pine trees and maples that bordered the schooler’s property, looking like a mangled piece of junk metal in comparison to the youthful frames of the other trees. Secondly, because my imagination couldn’t comprehend a tree that could possibly look more wise, more majestic than this one. I could have been very easily swayed that the tree possessed some sort of magic.
I throw my backpack onto the ground and sit down onto the grass. It’s slightly wet with dew but I don’t mind. I lean against the trunk of the tree, feel the crinkles and creases of its bark against my backbone. I close my eyes and let my breath pour out of me. School is so stifling, underneath the fluorescent lights and the oppressive stares of a thousand eyes, sometimes I feel like I go entire days without truly breathing. My body stiffens and becomes robotic this way, and I don’t even notice until I leave at the end of the day and my body moves like an automaton. I hold my breath inside of me like a ring of water on the mouth of a cup, quivering on edge of overflow, held together by surface tension. But here, I let it drain away, the clouds overhead absorbing all of my breath and drifting away.
I wonder if I lie here long enough, I will have an imprint of this tree on my back. A thousand little lines sprawling against my skin, red, depressed into my flesh like scars. Like a lightning-strike survivor. I open my eyes and poke my back through my T-shirt, but the skin is taut and smooth under my finger.
It’s 11:45, and the lawn has gathered a smattering of students across its vivid horizon. Sprawled out, lumps of backpacks, collections of bodies. Faint reverberation of their shouting and obnoxious music drifts across the field. I watch as the boys high-five each other, dance, punch each other.The girls talk in huddled circles, enclosed, forming a ring with their backs turned t the rest of the world. Occasionally another one will come and sling her backpack down, the circle will widen to include her, and the gossip will grow increasingly limited until there’s nobody to talk about behind their backs and they all go onto their cell phones and make petty conversation about how stressed they are or the parties they’re planning.
Watching them all is like observing a murder of crows. You know that there is some system at play here, some method to their hierarchy, but from far away it simply looks like chaos. Often times I am roped into these conversations, absorbed into the ring like a fish being swept into a current. I think they pity me, these girls, because they’re terrified of being alone. Seeing anybody by themselves reminds them that they, too, have the possibility of ending up on the outside. They’d rather gossip about things that don’t interest them or scroll pointlessly on their phones than sit by themselves, where the thoughts they submerge into the recesses of their minds will surface. As a result of this fear, I am often waved over by one of them, a large plastic smile sizzling on their face like it has been seared on. They beckon me over, tell me what’s up, how’s it going, we haven’t seen you in so long, we miss you. I smile and say what’s up, yeah, me too. That’s the extent of the conversation. I don’t mind them, these girls, it’s just that I would rather they leave me alone than waste their energy on polite lies.
Suddenly there is laughing to my left and I turn my head. At first, I can’t quite make out who it is that’s walking towards me, a ray of sunlight slicing through a break in the leaves and blurring my vision. At first I see a gaggle of legs in sneakers and jeans and skirts. Then I can make out a girl with a long blond ponytail, her eyes squeezed closed in a laugh, her laugh undulating from her chest with a raspiness that is more distinguishable to me than my own voice. It’s Brianna and her group of friends. My chest tightens when I see them, and I think about picking up my stuff and leaving, but they’re too close now. My knees are straining underneath me, locked with anticipated movement, but I restrain myself.
I Forgot How To Write 