Radiation Orange

I feel like I’ve spent half my life waiting. Not that it’s been a particularly long life, but I can feel it being taken up, wasted like the soda my brother bought and poured out on the ground after the first drink. I walk past this square of concrete every day, on my way in to take classes and try to ignore the other kids, but as the minutes tick by I realize that I’ve never really been here. I wonder how many people ever notice just how many little cracks and craters an inch of sidewalk contains. The sodium orange streetlights highlight every peak in the miniature landscape spread out before my dirty Nikes. I pick at the frayed end of my shoelaces, wondering how long it will be this time, and how long I should wait before going inside to ask a janitor for change to use the payphone.  I know that the secretaries who grudgingly allow me the use of the office phone have already gone home. Just me and the streetlights now.

My bangs are being blown around by the breeze, and strands of my mousy brown hair get stuck in the creases of my eyelids as I blink behind my glasses. I pull the errant strands back behind my ear and turn my face into the wind. It feels warm and soft like being underwater and I briefly hold my breath as I imagine that I’ve been left at the bottom of a clear pond to live. I picture myself building a shelter out of aquatic pine-boughs and sharpening twigs with the standard-head drill bit in my pocket to spear my dinner.

I let the breath out and hug my knees. The pines blowing in the wind next to me suddenly make me nervous, with their dark branches swaying and reaching. The deep shadows near the trunk tempt my near-sighted eyes to penetrate them—to see the sharp-toothed creature hanging from the bark that waits to be glimpsed to spring and rend the flesh of too-curious middle school girls. I scoot myself back against the tan bricks of the school, rendered radiation-orange by the light around me.

The seconds pass interminably as I sit, until I stand and twist my torso, letting my arms flap at my sides so that I don’t fall asleep. The wind is beginning to pick up, and I close my eyes and enjoy the chilly prickle as goosebumps lift their heads under my skin like the moles in the Whack-A-Mole game I’ve never played. Behind my eyelids, I picture my arms raised and myself lifting into the air. I can feel my feet lose touch with the ground and open my eyes.

I am hanging 100 feet in the air over the parking lot.



Instead of screaming and plummeting back to the earth, I look around myself and twist in the air. I begin to glide along above all of the buildings, following the streets into nighttime Haversburg. The warm lights below me are tempting, but I keep my distance. Long stretches of manicured lawn separate expensive brick homes as I leave the area surrounding the middle school. I let my feet brush useless chimneys as I pass. The homes of the elite begin to taper into smaller houses with smaller, unmowed lawns and peeling paint. I can see my own house from here. My bedroom window on the second floor is open and my lavender curtains wave at me as they are sucked out into the night. My mother’s sky blue Buick, her pride and joy, crawls toward me down the alley. I veer off back toward the school where she will expect to find me.

My feet touch the ground and I feel my freedom sucked away from me like a watch down the toilet. I peer out from the hole left vacant inside me now as my Nikes knock gravel out of my way. I pace, waiting on her to arrive, still. Always.

She pulls up next to the curb and I climb into the front seat. I expect no explanation and she offers none. The silence between us is hollow and I close my eyes again, seeing radiation-orange concrete behind their lids.