Tick Tock. The sky sparkled a brilliant bottomless blue. Light puffy clouds drifted on a breeze that smelled of cut grass and warm asphalt. Birds traded songs from their perches in trees thick with leaves.
D. K. Wall:A dog barked twice, then thought better of it and went quiet in the heat. Somewhere past the fence, a freeway hummed its endless promise — away. A jet droned overhead, bound for somewhere distant.
D. K. Wall:Tick tock. The sunlight filtered through the window and fell across the floor in a long, warm bar. Its beam beckoned the room's occupants to the freedom outside. Beyond waited endless, carefree days.
D. K. Wall:But the sunbeam could only tease, nothing more, because time moves differently indoors. It thickens. It pools. A whole minute could spend itself inside stretching to eternity and yet leaving behind no evidence that it had ever passed at all.
D. K. Wall:Only the light pierced the glass. The breeze never reached this far. The air hung heavy and steel, tasting faintly of pencil shavings and floor wax and the sweat of too many bodies in one warm room.
D. K. Wall:The panes swallowed the birdsong and gave back nothing. What was left? The squeak of a sneaker against the tile? The tap tap tap of a pencil scribbling a note.
D. K. Wall:And mostly, the drone of the voice of the man at the front. His words had long since stopped carrying weight, having gone soft and round and meaningless like rocks under a river.
D. K. Wall:Behind it all was the incessant ticking of the clock. The slow steady heartbeat of the day oozing forward. Tick tock.
D. K. Wall:Liam shifted his weight casting his gaze toward the floor. Eye contact brought attention unwanted at any time, but especially now when he was this close to escaping these confines. He didn't want to be seen, didn't want his plans interrupted.
D. K. Wall:He kept his hands clasped and wheeled himself small, invisible, a 12 year old boy made of glass that the light could pass through.
D. K. Wall:When I'm older, he told himself, the way he always did when the minutes wouldn't move, It won't be like this.
D. K. Wall:When I'm older, every single day will be mine. I'll do what I want. I'll go where I want. Nobody will ever make me sit still again.
D. K. Wall:He believed those words completely with his entire chest without a single crack in it for doubt to get through. Tick tock.
D. K. Wall:Three rows to his left and two seats forward sat Brandon. Just as still, just as coiled, a spring wound tight and waiting. They had spent the last weeks plotting their summer in whispers behind cupped hands.
D. K. Wall:The creek that ran cold even in August. The bikes on dirt trails. The half built fort. They would finally, finally finish.
D. K. Wall:Whole days with no edges to them. Days you could fall into and never hit the bottom.
D. K. Wall:It wouldn't last forever, of course. It never did. Eventually, they'd be right back here or somewhere just like it, biding their time, watching some clock, waiting for one more breath of fresh air.
D. K. Wall:But that was a problem belonging to some other boy, some distant future boy, the end of summer boy. And Liam could not for the life of him imagine ever actually being him.
D. K. Wall:The far future was a rumor. It was only the near that mattered to him. Just minutes away. Tick tock.
D. K. Wall:At the front of the room, the man stood and told them to have a wonderful summer, to make the most of the time they had.
D. K. Wall:He said it the way he said everything in the same flat and patient voice. Liam didn't hear a word of it,
D. K. Wall:but something about the man seemed different. He wasn't really looking at them the way he normally did. He was watching the clock too.
D. K. Wall:When he said the word summer, something moved behind his eyes, something tired and something glad and something else underneath both, harder to name.
D. K. Wall:He set his chalk down in the tray gently. The way you set down something, you'll only have to pick right back up again. Tick tock.
D. K. Wall:And then they were loose, a flood of them roaring down the hall toward the doors and the gold light beyond. Sneakers thundering, voices cracking and breaking against the lockers, backpacks swinging.
D. K. Wall:Liam hit the door at a dead run, Brendan at his side. The heat met them, wrapping them in a warm embrace of welcome.
D. K. Wall:Summer stretched out ahead of them vast and shapeless and entirely their own. The days would be long and slow and warm. Each one stretching out toward forever.
D. K. Wall:Morning started whenever you woke. Afternoon smelled like sunscreen and pond water and the hot metal of a bike left lying in the driveway. Evenings wouldn't get dark, just glowing and glowing and refusing to end.
D. K. Wall:And then, somewhere around the middle, with no one deciding it, with no one's permission, the days would quietly begin to shrink. The morning light would slink in lower, dimmer.
D. K. Wall:The evenings would come up a little short, street lights flickering on before anyone was ready. No one could ever say exactly where the time had gone.
D. K. Wall:There'd be the week away, of course. Family vacation. The same lake. The same cabin. The same long drive with the windows down.
D. K. Wall:His parents up front talking about work, about how good it was to get away from it all, how they should do this more often. Though, they never got very far and somehow, they always brought it with them anyway. The weight of it riding along in the back seat.
D. K. Wall:By midweek, they'd be shaking their heads over their coffee and pretending not to check their phones. Can you believe it's half over already? Where does the time go?
D. K. Wall:Early Sunday morning, they'd pack the car in the gray morning light so they could get on the road before traffic got bad. The ride would be quiet as they each thought of the return to the grind of the real world.
D. K. Wall:Not that Liam understood their lament. He had the entire summer and the entire summer was a hundred years long.
D. K. Wall:Besides, he had to make the most of the last weeks of summer. Somehow thinner than the first ones. Lighter, going translucent at the edges.
D. K. Wall:And then, sooner than seemed possible, sooner than seemed remotely fair, a classroom like this one. The same still and heavy air. The same long bar of stolen sunlight falling across the desk.
D. K. Wall:And a man or a woman standing at the front asking for their eyes, their attention, just a little of their time.
D. K. Wall:Mostly, though, the same clock. Tick tock.