“What the hell does that even mean?” I growled. A woman’s voice was echoing in my head, though

  I couldn’t remember her words at the time, only the vague image of a messy room. I looked around,

  taking stock of where I was. This room was brightly lit, with laminated posters shining on the

  walls. The only one I remember is a picture of a plant growing out of a crack in the sidewalk, with

  the word “Persevere” written in bold text below it. Across the expanse of cheap wooden desk sat

  a woman who was older than I was, but still fairly young. She looked at me with concern and

  crossed her arms, as one does when they encounter a tough problem.

  “It just means that I, we have to check in to see if first year students are happy, with their

  majors…” she said, trailing off as if she might have more to say.

  “First year student? I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m a senior.”

  “Oh,” she shuffled some papers around. “Did I call the wrong person? Katelyn Smith? I

  did call for a Katelyn Smith, didn’t I?”

  I was confused. I quickly began to put the pieces together: first year, major, office full of

  cheesy posters. I was not at my high school, but at a college; not only was I at a college, but I was,

  somehow, in college, enrolled in it. Unless there had been a mistake. There must have been a

  mistake. I needed to get out of there to process what was going on.

  “Right, my major; yes, it’s fine. No troubles here, just getting used to, to being in college

  at the moment.” As these words left my mouth, I impulsively shot up out of my seat.

  As I headed towards the door, she shakily blurted out, “Sorry, there’s just a few more things

  we—”

  “Right, um, please just put me down as whatever you need. Whatever is easiest for you.”

  Before she could respond, I was out the door. There were bored looking students in the lobby for

  a moment, then a flight of stairs, then a pair of easily persuaded swinging doors.

  My head was swimming. My thoughts became a pool, mixing and precipitating into

  nothing satisfying or useful. I plunged my arms in, elbows deep, trying to grab hold of something.

  How could I be in college? I had nearly a year before graduation. I grabbed handfuls of

  information, but everything quickly slipped out of my grasp (as liquids do) and fell back into the

  pool. I haven’t finished high school! I wasn’t even set on going to college! I’ve never been set on

  anything! I began plunging into the pool and grasping more rapidly. This only made the waters

  more chaotic—frothy and unreadable, my thoughts sat in the wake. I just want to go home, I

  thought; I need to be alone in my room.

  “Where do I even go…?” I spoke and heard echoed back at me. I was in the middle of an

  empty, circular courtyard. I was the first germ in that expansive petri dish, implanted there against

  my will, far away from my colony.

  “I don’t—I just don’t want to be here.” This time, no echo. My words were quickly

  swallowed by hundreds of students (or so it felt) coming from the infinite corners of that circle. I

  began to panic. I needed to leave before I became part of that rapidly growing culture. I reached

  into the outer portion of my backpack, as if I’d done it dozens of times. My hand quickly landed

  on a keychain, which read College View Apartments. Attached was a key which said H22. I typed

  the apartment in my phone’s map just before I was overwhelmed by students, then started walking.

  I was relieved to have gotten away from the crowd; this part of campus was nearly empty.I had a short chance on my walk to evaluate my new surroundings, where I assumed I must now

  live. I thought: my home town blooms with fuzzily branched oak trees shaking their hands above

  all walkways; above the walkways of this campus juts more walkways of glistening metal, which

  adjoin off-white, monotonous concrete classrooms. This view was disheartening, and made me

  long for my colorful room all the more.

  I approached the building, which was one of many groupings of apartments in a seemingly

  mid-grade, made-for-college complex. It was an uninspired, washed out pastel yellow. The

  management may have been aiming for a south-of-the-border sort of look, though they came up

  incredibly short. I placed the key in the door and turned the knob with trepidation. Why did I feel

  like I was committing a crime? Oh, right… Because for all I knew maybe I was committing a

  crime.

  I opened the door to a living room which was furnished with couches on the right, placed

  in a semi-circle in front of an entertainment center, likely designed to promote interaction between

  roommates. I quickly scurried past these and met an unkempt, cramped kitchen, adorned with the

  usual piling dishes and unsatisfyingly small countertops seen in more honest depictions of college.

  The surface of the white counters was painted in places with lovely yellows and reds—condiment

  stains or not, these were the only colors to catch the eye in that otherwise cookie-cutter apartment.

  I still didn’t know where my room would be, or if I even had one, but since the cramped

  kitchen funneled unmistakably into an even more claustrophobic hallway, I trudged deeper into

  the depths. To the right, at the end of the first short hall, there was a closed door.

  I grew nervous suddenly. I hadn’t considered how the different combinations of door

  statuses (open or closed, to the power of how many doors there are, or is it the other way around?)

  would leave me vulnerable in new, exciting ways. What if they’re all closed, do I try them or just

  leave? Where would I go if I left? Which would I try first? I decided to wave these minute fears

  away for the time being.

  But just as I set these anxieties to simmer, new ones boiled over. Upon turning myself to

  the left at the dead end of this first section of hall, I caught the glimmer of a mirror. This sent me

  down a new spiral which I hadn’t expected. (Relative to all else that Life has seen fit to throw at

  me, it’s quite funny to me now how much distress a sideways glance at a mirror can bring.)

  A thought rang out without my permission: I don’t even know what I look like, do I?

  Another thought met its challenge in a surprisingly snarky tone: How much different could you

  even look? Then, from seemingly the same place as the first questioning thought came another in

  meagre reassurance: Right, right, I’m still me… Yet inwardly that voice dropped out and spiraled

  down a hole of self-doubt, in a way which couldn’t even find an internal voice. Yet a new voice

  felt the need to narrate some of this spiral, I suppose for posterity’s sake, or to toy with me.

  “It must be at least two years since you remember seeing yourself,” it said.

  “I know that,” said another voice.

  “You picked a college. You weren’t even set on going to college. You don’t even know

  what major you chose. You haven’t the slightest clue what it could be. If all that changed, what

  hope can you have for your looks? Is that even worthy of concern? Are you even worthy of

  concern?” These thoughts picked and picked at fears which didn’t need to be articulated. I needed

  to end this and move on.

  “That’s enough,” I spoke aloud, clearly so lost that I was not concerned with any

  inhabitants of this apartment hearing me. I suddenly turned the corner towards the mirror and

  started walking, expecting the worst. Yet I did not see myself. The mirror ahead of me was

  positioned at a forty-five degree angle, which reflected the main walk of the hall, likely to ensure

  that no one runs into each other when turning corners. I shuffled down the hall, passing a second

  closed door, and happened upon a final door which was cracked open slightly.

  I entered, bracing myself to find a stranger in it, or worse: for all my things to be in it,

  which would confirm that this was all real, that this was my life now. The room was neat, creepily

  neat—far too perfect for me. I’ve always resisted organization and generally insisted on keeping

  important things in piles (which were quite dynamic, as the most necessary elements stayed near

  the top, and those with little use withered beneath in crushed obscurity). Yet, to my

  disappointment, there was the picture of me and my mother on the desk.

  Another aspect of my room, if it could even have been considered that, that weighed on me

  was its stark white walls. They were undecorated, and I found no posters in my sparse belongings.

  There was nothing beautiful to take in, and I found this quite draining. I could have gone out and

  bought some decorations, but instead, I hid in that room for days, mostly sleeping. I think my brain

  was exhausted from the overload of sensations I experienced in that state. Even days later, when I

  closed my eyes I could see the dancing afterglow of static. I also had bouts of tinnitus and

  occasional vertigo. Sleep helped when it became too much.

  I didn’t dream much, but when I did, it was always of storm clouds, buzzing and crawling

  with so many sparks that it resembled that purgatory from which I had just escaped. The clouds

  passed with unnatural speed, yet I was always frustrated in them never exposing a spot of sky, not

  even for a moment. What was strange about this dream was that I wasn’t really experiencing it

  from my own first-person viewpoint. Nor was I experiencing it from that odd sort of semiomniscient, third-person viewpoint that your dreaming brain can slip you in and out of. It was like

  I wasn’t really there, like I was that spot of sky anxiously begging to be revealed amidst the storm.

  I wondered if this—being inexplicably older and in college—was also a dream, one that I

  would finally gasp awakened from in my lively, paint-splattered room. Yet I always awoke in that

  dim and pale apartment bedroom. I still hold out hope that I am in fact still dreaming the most

  convoluted and arduous dream ever dreamt.

  I told myself I would leave once I had done some thinking, straightened out what I had

  experienced between the party and now. This was of little use, so I looked briefly online for

  answers instead. Of course, no credible sources seemed to describe what I experienced (my

  experience is admittedly more incredible than credible). Amnesia doesn’t work, because I

  remember something, the unexplainable part: that horrible nightmare. A fugue state doesn’t fit

  either, as I haven’t quite taken on a new identity. My unconscious actions were normal. They

  would be considered the normal things for me to do, and no psychologist or loved one would find

  anything amiss in them.

  Eventually, I decided to face the world. This was a peace offering to what I assumed was

  my new life, or just a new segment of it met unexpectedly soon.

  I’ve always been quite stoical. Though I’ve never read more than what was required of us

  in high school—segments of this or that Ancient Greek man, born either of squalor or immense

  power—I felt that I intuitively understood the gist: focus on what you can control, which may only

  be your attitude to a given situation. So basically, think your way out of despondency.

  I reasoned: I shouldn’t spend my time just sleeping, which is tempting; and when I’m

  awake, I shouldn’t spend all my time wallowing, which is even more tempting. What could I really

  have missed? The ending of high school, the last summer of nostalgic brightness and sentimental

  goodbyes shown in coming of age stories, those didn’t apply to me: I’m a real person (though

  Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  some of my details have become far-fetched, I’ll admit). I figured I must make the most of this

  “new beginning” and “take life by the reins” or some other cliché. I had a chance to make myself

  anew—or not quite anew, since I wanted to be me, just more of me, maybe with a few friends and

  a few actual memories. Of course, memories were the thing most tentative, since I had just lost at

  least a year’s worth. But I wasn’t allowing myself to focus on that.

  So, I headed towards the main campus, intending to get to know this new town.

  I walked past the jungle of concrete pavilions and metal walkways and eventually found

  something much more pleasant. A large lawn, students lying on the grass under a few imported

  banyan trees. They all looked so loose and free (the students, not the banyans; those were kind of

  stuck there). The pair of young women laughing at something on a phone; the group of students

  splayed out in a loose circle, lazily rolling a ball to each other; the three students dressed in mostly

  red, intensely taking turns reading passages aloud. They all seemed so uninhibited, soaking up

  youth or whatever else drives them. The energy felt different than it did in my hometown, and with

  the air each breath brought with it a hopeful feeling.

  I figured that I might as well attend a class, since I must be paying for them. But not one

  of my classes, not yet… I hadn’t fully accepted that I had classes I needed to be dealing with

  (which I guess isn’t too different from many students’ freshman experience).

  I approached the door of a building in what seemed to be the main plaza of campus. Peeking

  in, my suspicions were confirmed in the form of bodies in seats, though no lecturer was up front

  quite yet. I slipped inside and sat down in the second to last row (for fear of attracting attention in

  the way that kids sitting in the back in television shows did). The projector was displaying some

  technical subject that my brain took no interest in committing to memory. After a moment I

  realized that two boys behind me were engaged in a heated argument.

  “Not a word? What do you mean it’s not a word? Did you not understand it?” the one in

  my left ear asked in an indignant tone.

  “I looked it up, it’s not in the dictionary” said the one to my right. He sounded confident.

  “To me, if you can understand it, it’s a word. I don’t really give a shit whether it’s in the

  dictionary.”

  “Well you should.”

  The student began a monotonous, low hum. “Oh great Lords Of The Dictionary—”

  “Shut up” the one on my right said, elongating “up” until it became just a crackle deep in

  his throat.

  “Great lords of the dictionary, hear our prayer,” the left boy’s voice was growing more like

  a cartoon preacher with each word. “Please bless this word, so the blessed among us may be

  blessed upon saying it in thine honor, aye-men.” I was enjoying this argument; it really added to

  my image of what college is like, in the moment.

  “You can’t just go making up words whenever you want.”

  “Why not?”

  “There has to be objectivity in these sorts of things. If you could just make up words

  whenever you wanted, then everything would fall to chaos,” said the right.

  “Chaos? Don’t you think that’s maybe, slightly, just a little bit of a ridiculous thing to say?”

  asked the left.

  “No, I don’t; you just have to follow it to its logical end. Sure, if you make up a word or

  two, that’s okay; but if everyone did it, then no one would get anything done. Everyone would be

  constantly translating each other,” said the right.

  “Well, of course if someone is intending to be perfectly understood, then they have to be

  careful with what words they choose. That’s the beauty of it: when you don’t need, or want, to be

  fully understood, you can bend words to your liking.”

  “Don’t want to be understood? Hello? What would be the use in that?”

  “Sometimes it’s just more interesting. Like art, you know? Haven’t you ever read a poem?

  To mystify, to transmit meaning at a deeper level than plain definitions can. If words were concrete

  and never changed, then we’d have already run out of every way to say everything. Dictionaries

  can only ever catch up to language, they never innovate… Or maybe—”

  “But you still need to be understood—”

  “Or maybe,” the left one was giggling trying to get it out.

  “No matter how creative you think you are, you still need to be understood.”

  “Or, maybe, when I’m arguing with pedantic nerds and I don’t feel like continuing, I can

  just use all my words wrong, and that’ll stump you,” he said. I could practically hear the corners

  of his lips crank back to expose his teeth. I smiled a bit too, and maybe his friend noticed, because

  he tapped me on the shoulder. I turned around and met his eyes, which barreled into me intensely

  beneath his crossed brow.

  “Well, are you hearing this guy?” he asked. I looked down, to avert myself from his stare,

  then I looked over to his friend, who sat looking casual (possibly on purpose).

  The one who asked me the question noticed where my eyes went, looked at his friend, then

  threw his hands up and said: “Oh, well I should have known!”

  “Known what? What was the word?” I asked, unsuspecting and amused, happy to be

  talking to someone.

  “Well if you think the word matters, then you’re probably on my side,” said the one now

  on my right. I smiled and looked down.

  “I guess I am. I do like the thought that I can use English in a personal way, even though

  so many other people use it, if that makes sense,” I said.

  “Exactly,” said the one on my right, more cocky than ever.

  “Exactly,” parroted the one on my left, looking up and away from us. “Exactly what I

  thought. I knew before I even asked.”

  “Oh come on, don’t be rude,” said the one on my right.

  The one on the left turned to him and continued. “You know what I mean!” He turned to

  me again. “No offense or anything,” now back to his friend, “but I could tell by just looking at her

  that she’d agree with your artsy words don’t mean anything bullshit.” He might have gone on, but

  I didn’t hear any more of it.

  The squealing moan and rough clatter of my surroundings melting, or perhaps more accurately

  being ground into a fine, unrecognizable dust, stopped being ear-splitting and settled into the

  background, as it had before. The array of colors in the room bleached and became a strobe of

  phosphorescent white which slices through deep, void-filled black (something different in quality

  from a black that is a void, that seems to hold nothing). The contrast instantly strained my eyes

  and made me a bit nauseous, but these feelings soon passed, as they had before. And, as it had

  before, my body became lifelessly detached from its place in the world.

  Though the first time I had no capacity for it, being too shocked and weakened by the

  bombardment of sensations, this time I was able to do a little thinking. Well, maybe I wasn’t ready

  for full thoughts: these were more recollections. I vaguely wondered if this had happened to me

  before that party. Was there any evidence that I ever lost any time or experienced anything like

  that which now lit up my senses? After a mindless pause, I was confronted with a memory.

  I remembered what was likely the last time I truly played with the other school children.

  We were playing this game in a big circle. I don’t really understand the point of it, but I’m sure at

  the time it made perfect sense to us. There was a large crowd, in a circular sort of proto mosh pit.

  Everyone in the group would chant the first part together, which was an alternating phrase.

  “My mother says…” then “my father says…” the children on the periphery would repeat.

  The children diving into the circle completed the phrase with what I assume was whatever

  command they could think of on the spot.

  “My mother says to grow up strong,” one would shout, trying to steady their words while

  flying across the circle, only stopping when received by the children on the other side. The rhythm

  of the game (children’s games must have a rhythm) was quarter notes on each word, as if it were

  written in standard time. As most children said six or seven words, creating syllables as necessary

  to fit, there was a rest at the end to allow the next set of brave children to ready their phrases and

  their bodies for the bliss of motion.

  “My father says don’t talk too loud.”

  “My mother says please brush your hair.”

  I hadn’t thought I wanted to plunge into the middle. I was too timid, too afraid of running

  into somebody, maybe worried about not being able to think of anything to say. Yet the longer I

  was part of the circle, the more the allure grew. So much energy, everyone was building up, then

  letting loose after a long day of straining to remember the twelfth letter of the alphabet. And the

  children who launched into the middle, look at how much fun they had! They got to really feel

  their limbs flop about gracelessly, to lose their sense of space and time for just a moment. Why

  shouldn’t I feel that too? I’m just like them, I must have thought to myself.

  “My father says don’t run too fast.” I should go next.

  “My mother says I can’t talk back.” This time, for sure. My feet felt ten times their weight,

  my shoes sticky.

  “My father says make lots of cash.”

  “My mother says just be your-self.”

  Finally, I bounded forward. All I got out was the beginning. “My father says—”Suddenly,

  I crashed into another child making their run at the same time.

  “My mother says,” I heard on one side of me, then he ran into me, then on the opposite

  side, “follow the rules.”

  I was staggered in the center, too confused to know which direction to go to escape, too

  confused to know any direction would have worked. I felt surrounded; I was surrounded. I was

  tumbling in the rough wake of children, unable to find my footing. Even with my eyes closed, all

  I could hear was their chants all around me. As kids flew by, their gusting wind mixed with their

  phrases.

  “My father says re-spect your elders.” Tears smudged my vision; the children became

  runny blots of colored ink, taller and more significant than their true forms.

  “My mother says good girls don’t yell.”

  It all became too much. I lost consciousness after half a minute. I awoke to a concerned

  nurse asking me some questions about how I felt. I had always assumed I passed out, yet going

  over it again, while I was in that state, I began to have my doubts. This upsetting memory led me

  to another one, of a comforting person.*

  From reliving the experience of being tossed about amongst that crowd of children, I then

  shifted into watching a scene that from a distance didn’t look much different. A singular flowing

  body diving into and out of a shouting crowd, though for her there would be no distress or

  passing out. She was my one real friend in those years; her name was Sam.

  Throughout elementary school, we would meet up at recess. I can still picture it in a vivid

  sort of way that no other parts of my childhood evoke. The sun sat so high that there were

  practically no shadows; there was no obscuring yourself, even under outstretched trees. On those

  afternoons, she would make me promise her silly things. “Promise me you won’t look away from

  that butterfly standing on the growing grass until it flies away.” “Promise me you’ll hide behind

  that curtain of palm fronds until I tell you the coast is clear.” I would always oblige her, no matter

  the request. I knew her promises would never hurt me, in the way other promises like “promise

  you won’t get mad” or “promise me you won’t wear that in public” might.

  She would glow in the sun, sometimes reflecting it, sometimes eclipsing it at whim. She

  would make time flash by with her energy, those longed for thirty minutes. She was unlike the

  other children, with her large eyes and dancing form. I knew she didn’t see things as they did. I

  never felt myself tossed around carelessly when we played. I felt that there were no hard lines

  drawn between us, nor anything taken for granted. We played together and I felt free in that way

  one can only feel as a child.

  But she would often spend the first ten minutes of recess amongst the other children, doing

  whatever they did. I’d spend that time just watching her carefree shape, bouncing between the

  petty mobs which were almost always homogenous in gender, age, bus stop, whatever other little

  divisions they could come up with. I’d catch just a little of their resistance.

  “Why even try?” “You’ll just lose.” “You’re too this-or-that,” they might shout in the midst

  of whatever battle they created for themselves that day. She never floundered, though I shrunk for

  her whenever I caught any of these jabs.

  Afterwards, she would stride over to whichever tree I tried hard to obscure myself behind.

  “Hey!” she would say daily through a smile. “Why didn’t you join?” Just that question

  nearly brings me to tears in retrospect. I don’t know if she knew I would never join. Maybe she

  did and simply wouldn’t show it, or maybe she truly didn’t; maybe she saw me anew each day. I

  don’t need to know the answer.

  “Hello…” I would stammer, in awe of how dry she was, despite the heat and the running

  and the pressure exerted by those cruel children. She would drop down gracefully next to me and

  pull a book out of her waistband. (I don’t know exactly how she didn’t lose it in the middle of

  play, but that was just the sort of person she was.)

  I specifically remembered one afternoon when I had finally needed to ask it, the question

  that burned in me every recess. How could she stand joining those groups, how could she stand

  facing their little remarks? Didn’t it make her feel bad that they thought she was weak, a weak girl,

  or the opposite as they would sometimes switch to—a tomboy? Didn’t she fear all that they said

  she was?

  She just smiled, never taking her eyes off the page she was about to flip, which was made

  somewhat transparent by the high sun, and said, “I can be whatever they want me to be. I just want

  to have a little fun.” She said it like it was nothing and went on reading.

  Within that state, as I recalled her words so vividly, the senseless scene of noise and

  nothingness trembled resoundingly. I felt the warmth of a smooth fire as I held her words in my

  mind for a while. Then the first cool breeze of fall refreshingly swept over me, pushing the warmth

  to my other side. These comforting temperatures danced around my once benumbed body.* And

  so I sat in that entrancing little diversion, which was not seemingly relevant to the problem at hand

  then, just as it isn’t really now.

  This peaceful moment, if there ever could be anything considered peace in this chaotic

  mess, was shattered by a voice. The voice was not Sam’s, and it was not in my mind.