“High Over Vales and Hills”
“I WANDERED lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils. . .”
-William Wordsworth
As a drifting ascension of blood reached my head, I realized I was conscious. Forcing a couple skeptical blinks, I accepted that I was still alive. I stepped down the hallway side by side with all the pulsing bodies of students. They all knew where they were going. In the current of their certainty, I floated along.
“Damn, that test was hard,” one exclaimed to me. Shaking out any delusions left in my tired skull, I came back entirely to see Andrew pointing his shallow look at me. To buy me some time to figure out what the hell was going on, I let loose a breath of exhaustion in agreement. Test? It must have been that physics one. I guess I took it.
I forced out a response, “Oh, I know!” With a quick half-nod, Andrew swam down the corridor, weaving in-between the others. At the next clock, I stopped to gather some more information about where I was and what was happening.
The test must have been a short one. I was out of class ten minutes early. It was my last class, but the next bus didn't come for another two hours. In the center of the hall I stood as a statue of unconcerned indecision.
I remained as stone until the soft features of a familiar face lifted the curse. Isabelle walked along with all the others, but to me she was completely separate. She turned down the hall toward the door. I followed in a quiet act of passive ease.
The door sighed open into the cold winter breeze that hovered over the parking lot. I saw her heading toward her car. Calculating the exact displacement needed to be easily noticeable yet appear to be heading to a destination all my own, my steps whispered on behind Isabelle. She was opening the door to her car when her eyes wandered far enough. Both her eyebrows raised in recognition.
“Hey! Brian.”
“Isabelle.” The wind scattered the mellow browns of her hair over her eyes. She squinted through, looking at me the same way someone stares at an old school picture. Those amber jewels of hers gazed at me, tracing up my hunched over body and stopping at my half-closed eyes. After the deepest breath my lungs could manage, I returned with a review of my own. The softest cheeks rolled into a round, button nose that fell off into a closed half-smile.
The pressure in my lungs squeezed against my ribs, so I pushed in against my lungs and the air slowly spilled out. The spell that had surrounded and isolated Isabelle and me shattered. Back in reality, in the present, the demon of social awareness returned and the tension pulled at the two of us.
Isabelle fought it. “Where're you heading?”
“Oh, the next bus isn't for a while, so I was just going for a walk or something.”
She looked at me in a thoughtful smile, with one eye in a curious squint. “Well, do you wanna ride?”
After allowing a moment for the appearance of some silent consideration, I spoke with my repressed optimism. “Uhh, sure. That'd be really nice.”
She climbed in her side of the car, and I did on my side. And we drove off on a street that felt a hell of a lot like memory lane.
---------------------
“I do have to make one stop on the way,” Isabelle admitted.
“Oh, that's fine. I would've been stuck at school for another couple hours, so I really appreciate the ride. Few minutes doesn't mean anything.” As a last note to hopefully plant a conversation that would eventually blossom, I added, “Where do you need to go?”
“I just need to stop at the mall. There's a dance this weekend, and I need to get some stuff for me and Taylor.”
Dammit, that's right. Isabelle and Taylor. My Isabelle was now being smothered under the sausage arms of the bear-like star of the football team. It was us and now it was them. I wasn't angry or anything. Surprised is all.
The circle of my thoughts was broken by Isabelle. “So, how have you been?”
I thought about the question. I took it in and searched for the honest answer.
“I don't know.”
“What do you mean?”
“I don't know. I'm not sure how I feel. I'm not sure how things have been going. I don't have an answer.”
Still drowning in confusions, Isabelle simply gave up. I didn't want to let the fact that I'm fucked up suffocate the conversation. “Well, how have you been?”
“You know, I've been pretty good. My schedule this quarter is a breeze! I'm out by 11:00.”
She didn't mention Taylor. A relationship is always at the core of how things are going for someone. To neglect it is to ask for suspicion.
“I'm glad.” I forced every bit of social energy I had left into the sincerest smile possible. Now drained, I slid away, landing against the window. The blurred collage of department store buildings and the cloud-buried foothills spiraled around me. The dizziness slid around my brain and squeezed it into a tired disorientation.
A shrine had been erected in my mind to that year. I followed it's progression, starting four years ago. The day it first started: every burden that had ever been placed on my shoulders turned to dust and the warmest breath of wind blew it all away. The earth had never been so close to my feet; never had I been so close to the crowd without the individual glow fainting into smoldering ashes. Yet I was still completely separate from the world and free to sense it all in such purity. The ground welcomed my feet with each step, the air flowed into my lungs and out without any effort of mine, the birds sang overhead and I could pick out each voice of each bird, and the colors that danced off the earth were each a unique person in perfect contrast to each other. The months went on in this comfortable bliss, and I drifted further and further into what felt like a secure persona.
The collage had halted into fixed shapes. The car was off. The mall stood in front of us, and I was afraid.
“We're here.” Isabelle used this acknowledgment of the obvious to sweep away the dense air of silence. A few steps behind, I followed her across the blacktop and through the doors.
The first steps into a mall are always overwhelming. First comes the sight. Through the three story sky roof comes a filtered sunlight that never makes it far before being taken over by the ceilings lined with fluorescent lights. Out into this pale blue light shoots the sharpest neons from each sign that stab at your eyes. Next is sound. The thousand separate conversations blend into a single wall of static, while the individual stereos of each shop drift out into the hall, mixing different keys, tempos, and styles into a swirling cloud of chaos. Now that you are well inside the walls, smell finally hits. The gallons of boiled oil from the soaked food follow the hustling bodies around, meeting with the faint whiffs of petroleum off the plastic that wraps all of the goods, and then attacked by the vicious potpourri streaming from the lotion and soap store.
My feet had left the floor, and I was floating away from the sprawling field of people. My eyes glazed over. My ears tightened, trying their best to close. My nose held its air in place, not letting anything in or out. I fought against my senses. The separate and lonely self is all I have. To give into this social disarray is to lose the only thing I have. I would be another body. I would be no one.
Isabelle turned around and scrunched her eyebrows into a confused look. Her glance sent an invisible barrier that wrapped around me and back around her. With that look we were separate from the rest. We were alone in the middle of the crowd.
I pushed my feet back down to the floor and jogged a few steps to catch up with her. I smiled at her with a friendly sort of apology.
“So, where to?” It took no thought, no effort, to talk anymore. It wasn't social obligation, but a natural flow.
An oddly large sized grin was followed by, “Come on! This way.”
We walked on. We walked together. I was beside her, and we were exactly in step.
“You have a silly walk,” I told her.
“What're you talking about!”
I did an exaggerated imitation. “See, you kind of sway back and forth. You wobble around like you're on two prosthetics.” Before she could take any offense, I added, “But with the grace of a dove.”
She gave me an affectionate look of distaste.
“I love your walk.” She avoided my eyesight, and I kept it on her.
“Here, this store.”
“What! This place is awful.” It was true, I hated the place, but it didn't matter.
“It is pretty terrible, but there's a comic book theme for the dance and they have all kinds of vintage looking T-shirts.” With a sarcastic sigh, I trailed behind her into the shop.
The cashier on duty watched us come in. His dyed-black hair on one side covered an eye and was raised in spikes on the other. He wore a black shirt that graciously allowed his pot-belly to boast its curvature and his belly-button to breathe through an open mid-drift.
“Let's get this over with,” I told Isabelle quietly in her ear.
The cashier approached us. “Hey, you guys need help or anything?”
Struggling to keep our mouths shut tight, we both shook our heads. With a slowly bouncing nod like a bobble-head he walked back to the counter. Unable to contain myself, I slipped out a quick grunt of laughter. Isabelle elbowed me gently. She looked at me trying to give me a concerned look, but she couldn't help but let out her own little giggle.
“Alright, shhh. Over here.” She led me to a wall lined with stacks of shirts. “Well, let's start looking.”
I watched Isabelle burrow her way through a pile for a moment, then began on my own. Isabelle mumbled, “Superman, spider-man. . . ohh, batman, that would be good. Transformers! It's perfect.”
“Transformers, that was never a comic book.”
“Of course it was.”
“I thought it was just a TV show or something.”
“I think it was a comic book first. I don't know. Maybe you're right, but it's close enough.”
She held onto that shirt. “Now we just need to find one for. . .,” she looked away, “Taylor.” At least I think she looked away.
After another couple minutes of digging through the stacks, we found a matching X-large shirt. I stood back pretending to look around the store while Isabelle went up and paid. We left the store together. I could feel the sharp light, the furious noise, and the shrill smells. They chewed away at our barrier.
“Do you want to get something to eat.” The holes filled and everything was good.
“Yeah, sure.”
We strolled over to the food court and got some of that cheap, fast-food Chinese.
“You should feel pretty special,” I told her.
“And why is that?”
“I generally avoid eating in front of people at all costs.”
“You're ridiculous. Why does it matter?”
“I have to watch them eat, they watch me eat, it's gross. Eating is not something that should be social. It's just another part of our digestive system. The end of that system is already a very individual process, and I just think the entire process should be no one's business but my own.”
“I guess. . .”
“Honestly, I'm just glad I don't have to watch myself eat.”
“So, I'm special because you're eating with me?”
“Absolutely. For some reason, I'm comfortable enough around you to not feel threatened when sharing some of my most private business.”
“Well, I'm honored.”
“Good.” We both smiled.
Once we finished the food, we left the mall. Walking down the hallway all of the mobs seemed to part. We crossed the Red Sea as Pharaoh chased us, threatening to place us back in the life that the rest of the world told us we were suppose to have. I can't speak for Isabelle, but I had long ago chosen the desert. The mall doors opened to another grey winter day that stood apart from the trended gloom that lay over the weeks before and just the same would smother the weeks coming.
We skipped around the puddles until the car was reached. She got in on her side and me on mine. And we drove off on a street that felt nothing like memory lane. It didn't feel like here and now either.
We didn't talk on the drive home. There was no need. That pulling grasp of social obligations fell away to a deep comfort that seemed to transcend the passing of time. We weren't another car on the highway; we were outside observers looking back at the world. I stared out the window. Focusing on a car going the opposite direction, depending on how I chose, it seemed to only inch pass us or it was a fleeting moment of a blur.
I had a car parked at the park and ride, so Isabelle took a right off the highway and pulled into a nearly empty gravel parking lot. Gathering up my bag, I looked over at her.
“Thanks again for the ride.”
“No problem. I was going this way anyway.”
“Well.” We paused a moment. “I'll see you later, I guess.”
“Yeah. Alright, bye.”
I shut the door and she put the car in drive. She left.
It took a few seconds for it to happen. Eventually, I drifted back up into the clouds, carried away from the earth like a piece of litter in the wind. I turned to the car and searched my pockets for the keys. I got in and drove off.
Now time was as meaningful as it ever was. I fought it. As with the ruthless siege of an empire on a single town, my walls crumbled.
Somehow I made it through. The drive ended and I was home.
I was back where I belonged. I went into an empty house. The return to my own unholy sphere left me feeling pretty miserable. So, I threw my stuff down and pulled out a homemade leather journal. Sitting down by the window, I started pouring out some more of my bull shit poetry. It's the kind that is soaked in such a rich self-pity that it can truly start to make me believe that I am where I am because of other people.
That year with Isabelle seemed a faultless stream of either the most fortunate chance or some elegant symmetry of stars. Then one day at the end, I stopped for a moment, and for the first time in a long while, I thought. After that moment, I told Isabelle it was over. I'm sure she cried afterward. I even shed a few tears. I knew it was the end of something besides another one of those childish relationships of helpless romantics. We certainly were kids back then. Hell, we were still kids.
I put the book down and walked over to the kitchen. Looking around, I really didn't feel like eating or drinking anything, but I still wanted to; I guess just for something to do. I made some coffee and poured a mug half full.
I sat back by the window and picked my book back up. Staring at it for a moment, I shut my eyes and threw it down. My head against the window, I tried to use all of my concentration on breathing.
After Isabelle I stuck around for a while. I kept placing myself in the center of the crowd. Since I refused to walk away, my feet let loose of the ground. I evaporated away into the sky. Everything going on below reached me as only faint echoes and dull outlines of a world. Afraid of losing it all, I withdrew inside my head and held to the loneliness, the individual.
In all honesty, Isabelle herself never meant all that much to me. Sure I had cared for her, but there was another later that I had truly loved. Isabelle was simply the only time anyone had left the world, crossed the barrier, and walked beside me. She was a bridge that I burned when I saw myself retreating across it, away from my home.
I took a modest sip of coffee and held it my mouth. Letting the bitterness slowly roll back on my tongue, I forced a straining effort arising from my abdomen, crawling up into my throat, and swallowed it.
It was at that moment at the end that I looked at myself without recognition. I had lost the thing most valuable that I now continually struggle to hold. I wasn't myself anymore, so I ended it.
I regret it. Undoubtedly, given the chance to go back, I would have held onto to Isabelle for as long as I could. I regret leaving. It was certainly the right thing to do, but I regret it.
