Her eyes are endless pools, which she wishes she could drown in. Before her, on a laminated school desk, lies a smatter of creased papers, each crammed with an illegible amount of numbers, symbols, and words. She has no idea of the time or how long she has remained unmoving, simply rereading the notes over and over and over. The picture of a perfect, obedient pupil—or at least that’s what she tells herself. 

She remembers enjoying this once, the way the numbers satisfyingly slid into their slots to solve the equation at hand, studying the intricate steps of mitosis and the incredible phenomena of the human body. A delicious turmoil of color, power, and impenetrable light those early years were. Everyday something new—crackling atoms, forgotten cities, ancient texts—each subject, idea, topic a glittering trove of curiosities. Those days she felt full, purposeful. 

Yet now… 

She shakes her head. Now is not the time to think about such things. Now is never the time. 

She picks up a leaflet, runs her nail under the spiraled cursive. 

The rate at which a wheel is turning is given by a differentiable function R… 

She tries to focus, but quietly, softly, within the dark clouds and tendrils of hidden despair, the words are there along with sorrow. Like little birds they flutter against the warped bars of her mind, delicate wings beating against the carefully crafted cage she trapped them in. She shakes her head a second time, trying to rid herself of their sweet luring song, trying to block out the lilting tune, trying to just focus. 

She huffs out a sigh. She starts from the top. Again. 

Somewhere a clock chimes. The sun sails another inch. A lonely oak shivers. Another hour has gone by.

She finishes the problem, moves onto another, then another. It feels good—utterly numbing—to have the numbers flow through her and be able to find the exact answer, the right and sole solution. Here, she thinks, life isn’t as complicated. Here life makes sense and is as it should be.

Sit, listen, solve. 

Her heart thrums in her chest, repeating the same steady ba-bump, ba-bump, ba-bump—a continuous rhythmic cycle much like life; both two things will one day be silenced and end. 

She circles her final answer, checks it with the key. 

She is wrong.

Feverishly, the lead marking is erased.

A slight ripple in her silence, like a pebble dropped into a sleeping lake. Plip. Then another and another. Plip, plip, plip. The birds start chirping again—stirred by the sleeting rain. Their shrill voices ricochet off the smooth interior of the girl’s skull and begin to slowly climb in volume. 

She pauses. 

The penciled words in front of her start deteriorating before her eyes as a cascade of sounds starts hailing down, assaulting her ears and engulfing her thoughts. The chaos builds—hundreds, thousands, millions of tiny beaks chirping and chanting together, wings flapping and straining, a waterfall of trepidation—

Her head swarms in the catastrophic, cacophonic symphony.

She can’t think—can’t breathe—

Images of her future shatter through her consciousness, each successive picture more crystalized than the last.

She sees herself a few months from now sitting across from the bolstered platform at graduation. Her name is called. She stands, gown swishing, cords bobbing, black heels clicking along the polished floor, as hundreds of students and parents murmur to themselves. She shakes a sweaty outstretched hand and takes her diploma. Her four hard-worked years reduced to a smooth, flimsy paper, printed from a copying machine. 

She looks out into the audience searching for the three familiar faces she knows are watching, but sees only shadow. She blinks rapidly at the blinding lights and for a moment forgets why she is there or who she is. How did she get here? What is her name? Why is she holding this strange paper? 

The preceding darkness seems to quiver in answer, then starts advancing towards her, ready to gobble her up—snuff out her light. She takes a hesitant step back as a cold, featherlight hand falls on her elbow and gently nudges her. 

She snaps back to reality. 

The girl’s eyes follow the other students as they successively are called to participate in the ceremony. Over and over, the ritual is performed. 

The final student sits. A booming voice starts the countdown. Three, two, one. Hundreds of hats take to the sky like newborn birds trying to take flight. The crowd’s roar is deafening. 

Several months later, a summer passed, the girl sees herself standing at the door to her first college class. She wears light makeup, low-rise jeans and a soft black tank top—a basic outfit she thought would help her blend in easily, look as if she belonged. With her new backpack strung on one shoulder and several books in hand, she strolls into the dimly lit lecture room and takes a seat in the middle row. 

She sits, listens, solves—repeats. It is all she does when she wakes and before she sleeps. 

Somehow, within the blur, she makes friends, has her first kiss, and tries a sip of alcohol. She laughs and smiles, feeling mostly content. Day, night, day she devoutly studies her books like a dedicated acolyte praising an altar. She lives and breathes calculus, eats and drinks chemistry. Her mind is a cluttered mess of due dates, grades, and half-finished thoughts. 

She rarely has time for hobbies or friends or vacation and only sees her family on occasion. She is tired…so, so, so tired… but will never admit it to herself, so she trudges on, not stopping for a second to pause or listen to the twittering birds. 

On the days her dreams swirl, she blows them away. To her, they have become pestering gnats, a constant hushed buzz in her ear. Now is not the time, she hisses at them, shooing them away with waving hands. 

Yet they return each day. They distract her during class, during lunch, during studying hours—they distract her till she is overcome with simmering anger. 

One day she decides to finally put an end to it. She snatches her dreams midflight and shoves them into tiny jars, then crafts an ebony shelf in the furthest corner of her mind to store them on. Unattainable, not possible, she seethes at the flashes of color in midnight capsules before turning around and not looking back. 

Four years later, she is again seated before a stage—though this time it is nicer; there is music and balloons. She stands, walks up on the platform, shakes a sweaty hand, takes the extended diploma, walks back down the stairs to her seat, and sits. Another four years of her life summarized with a few inked words on paper. 

After the ceremony, three familiar faces bob up and down like little buoys as they make their way through the sea of people towards her. Her dad, mom, and brother. She honestly cannot remember the last time she saw them. 

More months later, yet another summer passed, she is standing outside the first class of her graduate school program. Her life becomes a fever dream—she rarely gets a break, and is always suffocated by a never-ending spiral of papers. Drowning. She is drowning.

Her friends, family, and hobbies are again sacrificed at the cost of her endless hunger for knowledge. A thin layer of dust has settled on the tops of her bottled dreams. They rattle in their glass cages and, with shrieking voices, beseech her to free them. 

Not now, she says. Now is not the time. 

Four years more. Another stage, another walk, another scroll. She doesn’t remember her dad looking so hunched, her mom’s face so crinkled, her brother standing so tall. 

Some months later, the girl gets a decently paying job. Although it’s rather banal, she doesn’t hate it—though she doesn’t love it either. An ambivalent fog seems to cloud around her feelings these days; often she finds herself staring in a haze. 

She uses those moments of quiet reflection to carefully peek into the jars of her long-forgotten dreams. She gives several of them a shake, watching pink, gold, and cyan sparks skitter within. An old, hoarse voice begs her to forget about her job and open the small jars—but she clamps its lips shut. 

Now is not the time…now is never the time.

Today she has paperwork. She shuffles over to the large printer and places stacked paper into its drawer. Plain, standard 8 x 11-inch paper, the girl thinks, used for agendas, resumes, and diplomas. 

A shake of the head. 

She takes a seat on a stool and waits, listening to the mechanical beeps and clicks of the copier. In her mind she reels back in time, all the way to her first years of high school. Such happiness, such excitement, such hope she felt those days at the prospects of her to-be-written future. 

Then came the monotony, stagnation, the feeling of life passing by, paired with her first, second, and third graduation.

And now…now this job.

A wet splatter appears on her navy skirt, and it’s not till she raises a hand to her cheek that she realizes she is crying. 

In her mind, the ebony shelf still stands with those delicate jars—but their contents—

Where there once was glimmering color and radiant light, only small piles of grey ash and withered sticks remain.   

Her dreams—her poor, neglected dreams. 

She falls to the floor, finally breaking apart. Years’ worth of sadness and regret wash over her in a giant tidal wave as the years-too-late realization strikes her: 

Now is the time. Now was always the time.

A bell rings, screams. 

With a jump, the girl comes crashing back to the present. Her airborne pencil lands with a clack on the white-tiled classroom floor, and she realizes the startling noise is her high school’s usual bell. Time to switch classes. 

She looks up from her desk to see that the other students have already filed out the door. She is alone with the teacher, who raises questioning eyebrows, asking why she has not left yet. 

Embarrassed, the girl quickly snatches up her pencil and exits the classroom.

Something warm like hope bubbles in her chest as she walks to her next class. An epiphany has overcome her. She smiles at the endless possibilities pouring into her mind— 

Now is the time.

-Hannah Higgins