It’s Wednesday of dead week and I’ll never be able to grow a beard, so I’m shaving my chin. I’m getting over an illness that affected me for the previous two days. I thought I had a fever, but my thermometer is broken, so I’ll never know. Besides the fever, I was aching all over. I was sick a week and half earlier also, but with a headache instead of the stomach ache I had this time. A week and a half ago, I was in the shower when the power went out and the glow in the dark stars on the ceiling made their appearance. The lights came back on after a minute, but I turned them off to see the stars again. It was the next morning I woke up feeling sick. It was the same morning my friend sent me pictures of the damage done to his town by a tornado. One of the buildings he goes to class in had been torn apart, but he wasn’t in it at the time. I spent that day going back and forth from the bed to the shower. I didn’t remember to turn the lights off so the stars could shine. Just one day and I had forgotten they were there.
Two days ago, when I was sick, I went with my friends to the unveiling of a new mural in our city. I went inside the coffee shop next door to the mural to sit down in the colder, darker space because the heat outside was getting to me. I wasn’t there when the tarp came down from in front of the mural, but there was a miniature version of it on the pins they gave out before, so I already knew what it looked like. I also wasn’t there when my friends took a picture with the mayor. I was back in the car with the air conditioning on full blast, drinking a sprite, hoping to calm my stomach ache. When we got back to their house, I stretched out on a reclining chair for a while. Then I took a long shower. I sat down and almost fell asleep leaning back against the wall. When I got out, I took a nap and later woke up to an empty house. I decided to go home. On the car ride, I passed my friends coming back from their volleyball game. They lost.
It’s Wednesday of dead week and my thumb nail has almost grown all the way back from when I nearly cut it off six weeks ago. Here is what happened. I was slicing carrots into thin slivers and I went too fast. I’m not very good with the knife, so it went into my thumb instead of the carrots. The nail was left barely hanging. I tried to keep it attached with bandaids, but eventually it grew too long and I had to tear it off. Now it’s almost grown all the way back. When I hold the knife to cook, I can still feel the steel slicing through my skin and flesh, but I’m more careful now. I don’t go too fast.
In the six weeks it took the nail to grow back, I got sick twice. I failed to find work for the summer, but I do have an interview today for a job that would start in the fall. I’m going to get A’s in most of my classes. An A in “Mass Communication Law.” An A in “Data Journalism.” An A in “Mass Communication Ethics.” An A in “Women in the Bible.” I’ll probably get a B in “Economics of Social Issues.” I’m thinking about not doing the final assignment. I’ve earned enough points in the class to barely make a B without it. Seventy-nine point eighty-seven points out of 100. I’ll probably do it, but it’s Wednesday of dead week and my motivation is at a minimum, so I’m writing about not doing things. I didn’t go to the economics class enough to earn an A. I didn’t stay out with my friends long enough last weekend to run into the girl I used to like. I’m over it now. I didn’t go talk to my friend for an hour on Monday like I usually do. He’s a little older and he lets me ramble on. I didn’t take any medicine when I was sick.
Last week, the bus driver announced to us that the high school theater program had a performance coming up. They’d been rehearsing it for months. “If you’re looking for something to do this weekend,” he said. One of the other riders was also a bus driver. He said, “He has a kid in it, that’s why he’s telling you.” I don’t know why he was riding then and not driving. I didn’t go to the play.
It’s Thursday of dead week and campus is very green, and I can’t wait to leave, but I can. It’s gone by so fast. It all goes by so fast, it’s not really worth saying. Campus is very green. I walked by the pond and saw the trees leaning over the brick path like they were so exhausted. I was going home, but I stopped to watch the baby geese follow their mother around. There was an old man with a sack of bread, tossing pieces to them. He told me he needs to hurry up and graduate. “A bad joke,” he said. His words, not mine. He asked what I’m studying and what I want to do. I’ll probably go into television. He knew a guy who did television. He has a lot to say about everything I imagine. But he couldn’t get over the geese and the squirrels, and he made me give a piece of bread to a squirrel, who took it right out of my hand. Then I had to get going.
It’s Friday of dead week and I just cleaned my room. I have to move out of my apartment in a couple of months, but I can move in early to my next place, so I’ll take things over there little by little. I hope to lose half my belongings in the move, the half I never think about. I wonder if I’ll remember the stars on the ceiling of my bathroom, or if the next person who lives here will be surprised by them when the lights go out while they’re in the shower. I’m going home today to see my family and celebrate my birthday and my sister’s and my sister-in-law’s. On the drive home, I’ll be reminded why I’m sometimes fond of Oklahoma. There are sections of road where you can look out the window and see green pastures stretching on for miles. There are sections where you can see cows standing around in whatever shade they can find.
It’s Saturday of dead week and today is the hottest day of the year. The air conditioning in my car can’t be trusted so I’m forced to keep the windows down. All three of my roommates are gone. One is cities over, preparing to go on tour. One is back at home for the weekend. One just doesn’t live here anymore. They will have to converge back here for at least a day to move their things out. I just RSVP’d to two weddings, one in June and one in August, both in Arkansas.
Sitting outside writing this, I can see the stalk of wheat that I sometimes see from my room, obscured by the blinds and the angle. On any day of the week I can see this stalk of wheat practically bleeding sunlight. It’s always there, outside my window, leaning in for more. Picture the sun doing its semicircle path over the earth. Over you and me, big cities with a million you’s and me’s, mountains of trash in a landfill somewhere, buildings destroyed by tornadoes, and over good things too. Over the fire hydrant I saw that was gushing water into the street. Over a new mural on the side of a building somewhere. Over cows standing in a pasture. Over someone lying on their back in the grass, or on the roof with a shirt over their eyes. That one’s me, they’re all me, yeah, yeah. It’s dead week and my stalk of wheat is oblivious to it. He’s still looking at the sun, leaning in for more. But what will he do when it’s gone, and the stars on the ceiling of the sky make their appearance. He’ll like them a lot. He’ll forget about them in a day.
- May 6, 2023