And I’ll be All Alone

Supposedly, it’s 2:00 AM. Alex glares sideways at every clock he sees, letting his head spin in that direction until it loops back into him. Having spent years doing everything he could possibly do in his apartment, he centers himself to the task of pushing his window open. The headlights of a car briefly blind him as the light scatters through the glass, setting off a glowing set of fractals. 

He’s on the porch roof now, and the lights swirl into a starry night sky. The stars connect into constellations and shift over time. Not the petty parallel movement of hours or seasons, but the unrecognizable change from eons of the sun circling the galaxy. He leans back against the house’s plastic siding and curls into something much smaller than himself and waits for the stars to notice his reticence and reach out for him themselves.

This is the part where he is supposed to feel at one with the universe. It’s there, vibrant and alive and all around him. The stars, the silences, the green scent of grass cut for the first time that summer. None of it makes him feel any less lonely. He checks his phone, like he normally does in a room full of people who seem to know something he doesn’t about connections. The screen is deep and distant and reads 2:13 AM.

“Hey!” It’s not the universe, but a woman on the street. “What are you doing on the roof?” He locks all his words inside of himself. The universe reaches out to him, and still he recedes.

“I can still see you,” she says. Waits a while. “Are you tripping?”

“No,” he clarifies hastily. He worries that maybe he looks just as bizarre and vibrant as the world around him, so he tries to gray it out and tell himself concrete facts about this situation. Your name is Alex. You are definitely tripping. It is May second except it is May third now. It rained two days ago. The town is alive but it is so, so quiet.

The roof shivers underneath him as the woman knocks at one of the columns of the porch. “Are you alone?”

He nods, embarrassed. You are alone.

“I know you from high school, don’t I?”

Probably not, he replies telepathically.

“Alex, right?”

How do you know?

“Even your parents aren’t home?”

He shakes his head. 

An aura of compassion surrounds her. “Well it’s not safe on the roof like that. Why don’t you—”

He’s in the air already, then feeling the ground jolt through him with something that is almost like pain. She catches him under his shoulders before he crumples, and for just a second, his head connects just below her neck, where a tattoo snakes around her collar bone. He feels her breathing underneath his cheek and it is as if their souls touch. By the time she rights him to standing, he’s in love.

“You alright there?” She asks.

“Yes,” he says, surprising himself with his own voice. He covers his mouth with his hand, worried more words might slip out if he doesn’t.

“You really shouldn’t be doing this alone.”

She is so right about this and about life that he feels like he might cry. When water touches the top of his hand, he realizes he’s already started. It threatens to overcome him, no matter how purposefully he wipes the tears from his eyes, until she puts her hand on his shoulder.

“Why don’t you come with me to the bridge?” she says. “The river looks really cool with all the street lights.”

Everything is so empty that the river’s rustling fills the air as the town glints off of it. He sinks into the rubber-covered railing, only occasionally falling so far he has to catch himself before he drops through. Like the seasons, it’s a cycle that lasts centuries, with her as his constant companion.

“I’ve thought of jumping in,” he says, wondering why he hasn’t said it before.

She grabs the collar of his shirt. “Let’s go somewhere else, huh?”

“Not now,” he says, clinging on. “Just before. Before all this.” He could hardly register that he was the same Alex who had those thoughts. “I just thought it was interesting.”

“Yeah,” she says, with a sigh that blows up against his skin. “A lot of us have thoughts like that.”

Us. How did he think he was so alone when everyone was really so similar?

“That’s like, the first tier of acid revelations.”

“I said that out loud?”

She laughs. They speak, out loud, for some time. His voice reverberates through him, finding more purchase than it ever has. The sky lightens, mere seconds later, though he still feels like his life after this conversation was just as long as his life during it.

“I don’t want to go,” he says. But the town is already stirring back to life, and he knows he doesn’t have long.

“I know,” she says, “That’s why you gave me your phone. Call me before you try something like this alone, yeah?”

At the threshold of his house, he tells her, I love you. She smiles in response, but he still isn’t sure if he said it telepathically.

As the time passes, infinite but quickening, he wakes up from the dream. He’s seized by embarrassment. Even if he hadn’t said it out loud, she must have tasted his lovesickness. He looks at her contact information sunken with dread.

With a shaky hand, he deletes it.