Time Travel (not finished)

I entered the room cautiously hoping to avoid all suspicion. It was empty. I made my way to the back row, counting each as I passed by. One, two, three, each one counting up to my final destination. I chose the middle seat in the back, my usual hiding spot.

Usually with my headphones in and my face intently staring at a book I could always avoid eye contact. I didn’t even read most of the time. I would just stare at the pages and carefully count up to sixty. One, two, three. After this minute, I would slowly shift my eyes or turn the page. A page a minute seemed like the appropriate speed for a freshman to read. If someone actually watched me, they might be put-off by how regular my reading was. Like clockwork, every sixty seconds. This was never really a concern because freshmen generally have more important things to think about. Make-up, introductory science classes, the football score, which frat party to attend. Students listening to one emo band after another and who never speak a word rarely turn up on salient topics when the polls come out. They just aren’t important. But of course, I knew this. It had been calculated like a calculus problem, only with more care. If you get a calculus problem wrong, you get points off; if you don’t act completely anti-social perfectly, then you end up talking a lot of trash with a bunch of idiots. Where you went to school (Plano), what band you’re listening to (DCFC), what you think of a professor (I don’t). The questions never change (nor the answers), just the faces. I found it comforting at first, the regularity, but I quickly found it irritating. I don’t know what questions I would like to be asked, probably none, but I know that these questions aren’t doing it for me.

Never have I been less intellectually stimulated than since I’ve entered college. There was only one exception. She entered everyday, a few minutes after me and sat quietly. I think she liked routine; she didn’t just use it to blend in with the background as I did. In fact, I don’t think I ever spoke a word to her. But in her tired glances, I read everything. Some would look at the disinterest in her eyes and misread it as apathy. I knew better. She wasn’t indifferent to life; she breathed in every mouthful with more excitement than a kid’s first beer at his first party, which undoubtedly earns him the acceptance he’s been craving. But it was precisely this love for life that caused her eyes to glaze over, to avoid all interaction. There is no reason to corrupt life with stupid conversations about nothing. Keep your eyes closed and you thoughts close, and you’ll get out alive. Or at least, that’s what I read in her look. Everyday I wanted to walk up to her and tell her that she had a silent conspirator, but somehow I think she knew. I never learned her name.

The door opened, and I sprung back to reality. The same faces entered, slowly filing in and taking the same seats that they took everyday, as if change in the seating arrangement would unravel their entire existence. I couldn’t hear what any of them were saying, but I could imagine the same conversation imprinted onto each of the groups. Different words with the same trite theme.

Eventually the professor entered, slamming his pile of papers and books onto the table in the front of the room. At this signal, I closed my eyes. It had been three years since I took this class, but as I sat there, with my headphones in and my copy of Catcher in hand, nothing seemed to have changed. I held my breath and thought about how it felt to enter

The more I thought about it, the more I realized that I was being awfully harsh.