—Read to the drumloop for “Overreacting” by bradsucks for tempo.—

Transcript:

I go to one of the windows. They are small wooden windows, like ones you’d see in somebody’s house, not in a school. The window frame is filled with a beige plastic box fan. It’s jammed in there good. It churns the thick, warm air into the room and over my head, sending strands of greasy teenage hair up and around in lazy arcs. It’s soft air, with no edge, no crispness. It is not the raw air of winter and spring; this stuff blowing over me has been stewed by the sun, slow-cooked and caramelized, full of flavor and imbued with the essence of summer. In it are lawn hoses with wet, metallic threads at their ends; grass clippings, sheared by oily blades; unshod feet, with the mud of wet dirt squirting up between their toes; buzzcuts; lemonade made from powder, sitting in plastic pitchers; dust being kicked up in weedy, tumbled-down barrens, as boys scavenge and hunt by the railroad tracks; dead animals, swelling and putrefying in the merciless sun; popsicles dripping down arms; musty tool sheds being aired out; rubber inner tubes with a few drops of water, soon to evaporate, still clinging to the inside, sitting lakeside as egg salad sandwiches are eaten nearby.

The burnt colors of a fading summer sky filter through the whisking blades of the fan, coating my face with ever-alternating, ever-repeating strata of yellow, orange, pink. I close my eyes, and allow the light to filter through my lids. Yellow, orange, pink. Yellow, orange, pink.

An endless instant of time spent inside charred sky hues, and the thrumming, humming whirr of the fan.

I open my eyes again and notice the long hulk of the adjoining rooms outside the window. I am reminded that I shouldn’t be here. I should be at home. Or at the beach. Or the lake. Or even a mountain. But not here. I should finish my work and be done with it.