The Transmuted (Chapter 10)

Cold tears from the cloudy Tuesday sky beat on my windows as I drove down the road. I made an effort to rush out of the building and make my way to the car as quickly as possible to beat the impatient multitude soon to pack the streets. The rain was falling in huge droplets, crashing on the front window and exploding on impact creating a landscape of small liquid craters every few seconds. I flipped my wipers on and they creaked slowly to life then began to move normally, clearing my view on the way down to find more water to clear on its way up. I was on the highway I traveled down every day on my way back from school, indifferently speeding a few miles over the limit and weaving listlessly in-and-out of traffic. The road was familiar and I took my right hand off the wheel as my mind drifted.

I’d driven down this road hundreds of times on the way back from school or from somewhere else and I’d passed millions of people, each of us confined to our metal boxes and doomed to, at best, being a passing car in another’s memory and more often not even making an impression. The thought made me want to roll down the windows in the rain and yell at cars going by, but I knew they would never turn to look. Some cars tried to fight this obscurity by riding past with their music blaring out at full volume, the bass making the very mirrors shake vigorously with every hit. I’d tried that method but again the music that was so clear to me fell silent on the ears of those I passed. So I resolved to simply stare at the passers-by, momentarily turning my head left or right and silently hoping my gaze would reach them before being pulled back to the road. While this plan was mostly unsuccessful, every once in awhile someone would look over and our eyes would meet. On the road, all wore the same expression, a muted annoyance coupled with an obvious impatience, which materialized itself as a mostly blank face with the lips slightly downturned and a vacant stare. It was if, in that moment when our eyes met, that we were simply a part of the environment; that when we were behind the wheel we’d given up our humanity and melded into machinery with a singular purpose of getting to our destination. Then both pairs of eyes would turn back to the road and forget both the person they’d just seen and the fact that they’d turned in the first place. Honestly, I don’t know what is worse: having my existence be ignored or instantly forgotten.

My mind moved on through to the events of the day Everyone was issued a copy of the literary magazine before lunch and some had congratulated me on my story, with Mary being the most notable of these. She spotted me in the hall before last period and waved at me from across the hall. I waved back and she walked over holding the magazine tightly to her chest. Along with the typical feelings of severe wistfulness and heartbreak that usually accompany seeing Mary, a strange mixture of anger and resignation splattered haphazardly on the canvas. I felt it lying in wait ever since the lunch conversation on Monday and maybe even since the date with Violet. I figured it appeared because I finally put a face to my suffering, a beautiful, smiling face to be the scapegoat for my ills. For some reason though this revelation gave me no solace, maybe because the true scapegoat I sought was only a mirror away.

“Hey, Michael!”

“Hey Mary,” I said cloaking the concoction of emotion under a casual facade.

“I read your story and I really enjoyed it! It’s just so well-written and the whole theme of the untranslatability of the human experience is really unique which made it an even better read,” She said her eyes lighting up.

I marveled at this friend turned near-stranger who understood me so well and I laughed softly out of joy and pain,

“Thank you so much,” I paused for a second while foolishly staring into her eyes, “that means so much coming from you.”

She maintained her smile but it lost some aspect, moving almost imperceptibly from admiration to pity and I hated myself for doing that to her. I tried to move the conversation to something different,

“Can’t believe we’re graduating Friday.”

Mary snatched at the chance to move on,

“Yeah, it’s crazy! It’s so surreal like I’ve seen so many people go through it and I have to keep reminding myself that it’s my turn now.”

I nodded with a smile and she mirrored me. I tried to think of more things to say just to keep her in front of me but my mind was blank and apparently, Mary’s was as well. We stayed there for another moment, smiles slowly fading when she saw someone behind me and walked over to speak to them, leaving with a quick goodbye. I watched her walk a few steps then sighed and headed to class.

I flipped my windshield wipers down a level as the rain slowed. I wasn’t very far from home now as my exit off of the highway became visible. For a moment I was conscious of the music that was playing, Alex Turner’s smooth voice carrying quiet emotions like the wind picking up and carrying beaten rock particles,

“An ache in your soul/ Is everybody’s goal…”

The song brought me back to Mary and back to a memory, sitting up in bed with the covers at my legs while rain pelted the windows in my room.

“So what do you think I should do?”

I locked the phone for a moment and hugged my knees to my chest staring off into the darkness. There was a dull pain inside me and I was a child standing inside awaiting the inevitable. Inside, my life was normal and everything was as it should be. Inside, my fantasy was, though improbable, still possible and the dream could still work out on some theoretical day in the future. However when I opened the door (and I had to open the door), my whole world would change and the fantasy would die stillborn in my mind, the corpse lying quietly as evidence of my failure. I laid back on the bed hoping sleep would delay the inevitable but another vibration from my phone ended that possibility.

“Please Michael, I trust your judgment just tell me what you think?”

My being screamed out into the void, the silence in the room filled with a million cries of anguish. I tried to console myself: “this won’t matter in five years” and “this isn’t really that important” and “you’re just dramatizing an inconsequential event” but these gave me nothing, in fact, they made things worse because I knew the words were true. I knew that this moment actually meant nothing and that I shouldn’t let this image of this high school girl have such a hold on me, but she did in spite of all of it. Staring back at that screen, imagining Mary staring anxiously at her own screen, I was surer of my love for her than at any time before, but also in that moment, I knew with certainty that she didn’t love me. I was at a crossroads, and though I knew I could’ve gone down the selfish road and clutch at the wispy dream of my love for her finally being reflected back to me, I knew that there was only one answer to her question.

“You should follow your heart,” the keyboard becoming obscured in the misty eyes that looked down on them, “that’s all anyone should ever do.”

The next day she was dating Zack.