“Slow hands, Maurice. We start slow and we end slow.” I whispered against a mirror fogged by my morning shower. Water droplets scampered down the face reflected back at me. I watched as the reflection carefully squeezed a paste-filled tube. “That’s right. Keep it slow.” but the boy faltered. There was too much juice in the engine. The crack of his speedy fingers had paste shooting across the room, a mess the ‘rents would surely scold me for.
“We’ll get it right tomorrow.” I lied into those dinner plate eyes, so hungry to believe change was coming. I willed myself to think brushing my teeth might someday be a simple feat. As if anything I did could happen at a normal pace…pace…Pacer. Oh no.
“Mom! I think I’m coming down with something!” I screamed out the bathroom door. It was a last ditch effort, but she wouldn’t take the bait. Anyone could hear the agitation in her slippers as she raced up the stairs to deliver my sentence. “Ogilvie Maurice, you are getting on that education vehicle for the learning building if I have to carry you out the door myself!” she spat through gritted teeth. This wasn’t our first throw down, but there was an uncomfortable impression it could be our last.
“Look, if it were up to me, you’d be rolling around with your father out in the hills, but Jules says the education comes first. That’s the way people do it, and that’s how we fit in. I stick by that man and you stick by your mother, alright?” With hands on her hips and a tapping foot, I knew I’d see my reckoning if I so much as replied. She brought her arm up to look at a watch she wasn’t wearing. That was my cue to finish my morning routine early. And so, with half a heart and half a tube left of paste to brush these forty-four gnashers, I faced the truth of my situation. Today would be the day I ruined everything.
“Slow steps, Maurice. We start slow and we end slow.” I repeated my mantra as tightened knuckles creaked open the front door. “Sweetums, don’t forget your education costume!” My mother called through the window. “It’s hanging up out back. I had to wash it again, it was starting to smell.” I almost wished she’d let me forget. I hated wearing that thing. But after imagining the snuffling snorts that dad would produce upon my evening return, I decided to comply.
The sun had yet to peak from behind the distant, green hills as I planted careful footsteps toward my destination. The miles-long journey from my house to the bus stop lasted thirty seconds. “A new record!” I said with an accomplished grin. “That’s my slowest time yet.” The bus then took an hour to arrive. Perhaps it was sooner, but everything feels dreadfully slow when you’re a normal human boy.
“Maybe things will all work out.” I thought to myself from the back seat. The same lie from this morning creeped back into view. Of course I’d been preparing and planning for this day to the extent of my ability, but believing is a mountain much harder to scale. The Pacer Test shouldn’t be a thing of fear, it’s as standardized and expected as any other part of human life, which is a life that I am accustomed to. So then why was believing in myself so hard? Sadly there wasn’t time to answer, as the bus had stopped abruptly outside the school.
Leaves and debris rushed the scene as I sped past the glass doors of my prison. And in passing that gateway, so too did I enter a realm of ineffable stillness. Certainly, classmates whooped and hollered through every hall from cafeteria to locker bay, but the stillness existed explicitly within my restraints. From this moment forward, my every movement required surgical precision. One miscalculated motion could give me away, or give far worse to the unlucky person caught in my wake.
Left foot. Right foot. Locker door click click click. Left Foot. Right foot. Unziiiip the backpack. Take notes. CRACK. Get another pencil. CRACK. Get another pencil. CRACK. Get a pen. Rinse and repeat the tedium for three periods. I kept under the radar until lunch, which served as my only bliss in this prolonged panic. Of course, it wasn’t about the food (though I quite enjoyed the days we had chili and bratwursts).
No, this was something special. It was the one thing that held me together where the seams of my mind were coming loose, and it sat merely a table away. That thing’s name was Zayn, and he was my treasure. Albeit one I kept buried so deep on my mental island, you’d need a map to discover it. Still, I was happy enough simply admiring him from afar.
He had the flawless features of a Tiger Beat cover spread, and a voice that deserved a spot on daytime radio. I often pictured us fingerlocked in pillow talk from dusk till dawn. Yet the love I felt for him had only one direction; tragedy. If only I knew at the time how terribly things would end before they ever began.
On this otherwise awful day, an epiphany struck. I mused to myself, as I munched down the hottest of dogs, that this was probably my last chance for a first hello. Confidence abounds where your destiny ends, so to speak. And thus, with the grace and careful course-correction of an acrobat in quicksand, I made my approach.
“H-Hi Zayn.”
“Yeah?” he sang out from a place in heaven I could not reach.
“I uh…I h-heard your class is pairing with ours for the Pacer.”
“Cool. Later.” he offered as a present I did not deserve.
“See you and–uh– I’d really wanna be you.” I choked out through a wet mouth.
“K.” he tongue-lashed across my body with effortless seduction.
It was enough to keep me going. I itched the scalp of my education costume as I walked back to my seat. Maybe this didn’t have to be the last time we spoke. Maybe I wouldn’t have to change schools again, and Zayn could get to know the real me. I saw my reflection in the slick tabletop that held my lunch tray. A disgusting facade of makeup-caked leather peered back. “Yeah, maybe when hogs fly.”
In utter defeat, I went through the motions leading up to my demise. Two classes and six pencils later, my time with the gym had finally arrived. I wasn’t sure whether to throw up or throw myself out the window. Faking an illness wasn’t an option, as that lie can only work so many times.
And so, with little choice, I gingerly placed a jersey over my education costume in a bathroom stall. There was a loneliness in knowing the other boys changed together only a dozen feet away. It was easy to imagine what it might be like to change alongside them just one time, without the ugly pretense that we must be the same. I longed to change without changing myself.
That thought carried with me as I walked out onto the waxed floor of the gymnasium. There was a depression in my step. Perhaps this sluggish mood would aid me in avoiding tragedy. Though this glimmer of melancholic hope could not last as I was met with the unthinkable.
“Hey Maurice.” an angel heralded thusly as he bounced across the room. That body was so prepared for a measurement of fitness.
My heart skipped. Zayn knew my name. Zayn greeted me. Zayn lit me on fire and I would not be extinguished. It was so clear that this year had to be different. This Pacer was a mountain that I could overcome without casualty. I would do it for him. I would do it for me. Ogilvie Maurice would not fail again.
And so it began.
I breathed out slowly. The breath was too hot. Something needed to cool me down. I relaxed my muscles until I felt my body start to give out.
I got into position. My hands were shaking. Was it nerves? No, I was thinking about him. I had to stop before my heart rate elevated. I couldn’t let it elevate.
There was that awful sound. Was I supposed to go? No, I had to wait. I could do this.
Was I supposed to go then? The sound mocked me. A disgusting tone that begged me to break everything I had worked for.
“You have to start slow and end slow. Go slow as possible, Maurice.”
“It’ll be over soon. You just have to go slow.”
“Gotta…go…slow.”
“Gotta…go…”
I was free once again. The space around me danced and swayed in time with my movement. The beep of the pacer was now a distant, doppler memory. I hesitated for nothing and restrained myself for no one. I didn’t need to pretend anymore. After all, there was no way to hide when I existed everywhere all at once. And why should I have to hide something so beautiful?
I felt the stitching of human skin from my “education costume” give way, leaving behind only me. Maurice. Faster than sound. A sonic trip of audible ecstasy.
I saw colors the way I was always meant to see them. Blurs of blue, green, yellow, orange and…red. So much red. Why was there so much red? I stopped on a dime and let the world catch up. Only fragments of the gymnasium still remained in the trail I left behind.
Rafters had caved in all around. Water leaked from pipes, and electrical wires spittled and sputtered along a darkened floor. Though you could barely call it a floor now. It was only dirt and earth reduced so heavily by friction. And sitting atop the earth were a thousand lumps of red.
Flesh and tissue. Bones and sinew. Pieces that merely seconds prior could be identified as normal human boys and girls. They were ready to run, and now they never will again. They didn’t even have time to scream.
I picked up a piece that could have been Zayn. There was no way to know, so I decided it was. “I did it, Zayn.” I choked out through a dry throat. The only moisture I had left was pooled in my eyes.
“I went so fast. Did you see it?”