It’s different, ever since my parents moved us to the city. I suppose that’s what almost drowning does to your parents. Makes them worried. Makes them concerned about every little thing. I doubt I’ll be allowed within a mile of a pool before I turn fifty, if they have their way. Maybe it’s because I’m not a parent myself, but it’s not like I actually drowned. According to the EMT, my heart barely even stopped. They said they didn’t even have to take me to the hospital, though they recommended I visit one. We didn’t, yet. It was too far away. Now that we’ve moved, I guess I’m going to have a trip to the hospital to look forward to. I don’t know why, but I’ve always hated hospitals. Too much noise. Too much death. Just too much happening too frequently. Kinda like the city, I guess.
Let me explain. It didn’t used to be like this. I’ve been to cities before, on trips and vacations and things like that. And they were busy, but manageable. But ever since we moved here in earnest, it’s just so much happening. All the people. All the emotions all around me. It’s honestly sometimes almost too much to bear. My dad thinks I’m just not used to it yet. My mom is worried that this is some kind of residual effect of my whole being dead for a couple seconds. I honestly think it’s a combination of both things, but not really in the ways I’m pretty sure either think it is. See, my dad thinks I just don’t like being around people I don’t know. And my mom believes when I nearly died, something spiritual happened. Both are kind of true, but neither’s really why.
Something did change that day at the lake. I awoke to a slightly concerned EMT. I’ve never been very good at understanding people I don’t know, hence why that’s where my dad thinks my concern lies. But, in that instance, the moment I woke up, before I even had opened my eyes, I knew this person was concerned. Not thought, knew. And I also felt it was a complicated concern. Once I saw they were an EMT, and that they didn’t want to go to the hospital, I figured it was something closer to the necessity of that travel if I didn’t awaken and stabilize. But that’s just a guess. Ever since that day, I know things when I’m close to people. Know how they’re feeling. At our old home, a house in a small town, it was something I learned in small doses. Then, we moved here. In an apartment on the fourth floor of a six story building. At every moment I’m at this new place, I can feel so much. My best guestimate is I’m feeling the people next door and across the hall, on our story as well as the ones above and below us. It makes sleeping hell. You know those people on sitcoms who joke about hearing their neighbors having sex all the time. Imagine that, except you don’t just hear it. You feel everything they feel. Not directly, more cerebrally. Feel the love, the lust, the anger, the pleasure. It isn’t the same as feeling it myself, I’d guess based on the other things I’ve felt. It’s more like trying to fall asleep while a TV is on. Except, instead of one TV, it’s like twelve, playing different shows.
If I’m honest, I’ve taken to just not sleeping. At least, until my body can’t physically stay awake any longer. For now, before school starts back up, it shouldn’t be a problem. And by the time school starts, we’ll have visited a doctor and gotten me some meds to help me fall asleep. They have insomnia medication, else why would that be on the list of things the doctors ask about.
I wake up from one of those rare nights of passing-out sleep at six in the morning. I guess my body wants to be awake. The man one floor above me and across the hall is either scared for their life or having a very bad nightmare. Assuming my body isn’t what made me wake up, it’s probably that. Going with my old simile, that TV has the volume maxed out, while the others are fairly normal. I get dressed as the man’s fear subsides. Now, I just feel a bunch of blankness with the occasional burst of emotion. Dreams work like that. If people dreamed all night long, it might be something I could get used to. But sleep is a fluctuating thing, and dreams only happen in spurts. So I feel pleasure from one direction for a couple minutes, then fear from a different direction, and maybe a bit into that, anger from another. Just flare ups all through the night. Quite frustrating.
I head towards the kitchen when I nearly fall over. It seems another neighbor is having a nightmare. What is wrong with people? Don’t they know I need a break? Trying to ignore the feeling, I write a quick note for my parents. ‘It’s 6:10. Going out for breakfast. Didn’t want to wake you. -L.’ Leaving that on the table, I head for the door and leave. Quietly.
Taking the stairs down is a blessing. They’re beside the highway wall, and only have stairs above and below them. I get significantly fewer feelings on the stairs. That doesn’t mean I’m not walking carefully down the stairs. Just in case someone wakes up. Or has another nightmare. Fortunately for me, neither happens and I slip out the side door to the street. Heading down the street, I walk to my personal favorite diner. Not only is it one of the few diners that’s actually open this early, it’s also not a part of an apartment complex, but a shopping area. Meaning the only people are those there. A manageable number of familiar emotions. I say familiar because, as someone who’s frequently awake around five-thirty when they open and lives in an apartment building apparently plagued by nightmares, I’ve been a regular for the early morning shift at this place for the two months we’ve lived here.
Walking in, the bell rings. About the same time, I feel the forced warmth turn genuine as Alison must have noticed it is me, as opposed to a random customer this early. “Morning, Lawrence. You’re running late today,” she jokes.
Greg, chilling at his normal table, laughs. He’s feeling happy, though strained from being tired. She’s right, of course. Normally I arrive about the same time as Greg and well before Heather, who is also already in her booth. She has a brusque anger about her, like usual. Not a morning person, I’d guess. “Sorry ‘bout that, Alison,” I reply as I head towards my table, off to the side near the kitchen and with the solid wall facing a warehouse next door, “I actually slept last night.”
“That’s not right,” Heather said, “You don’t sleep. That’s, like, your whole thing.”
I nod. “Yeah, but after a couple days of not sleeping, my body sometimes disagrees on that particular point.” I feel the joke hit with both Alison and Heather. And Greg, of course, still feels amused so I can’t tell if my joke hit too, or he’s just thinking about Alison referring to six-fifteen as ‘late’.
Alison smiles. “The usual, I’m guessing?” she asks.
She doesn’t need to be answered. Been here nearly forty times in two months, always gotten my usual. But answering is polite. “As long as the coffee’s extra-black this morning.”
“I’d think after a good night sleeping, you’d need less coffee not more,” Greg wonders aloud.
I shrug. “Well, a nightmare woke me up,” I say, technically telling the truth.
My fried egg and bacon takes a bit to come out as I pull out my phone and start reading the next book in my list for the summer. Alison comes over with my coffee. “What’chu reading?” she wonders absentmindedly.
“Nothing too interesting today. Just a programming textbook,” I reply.
She’s genuinely confused. “Because you’re actually interested, or summer school?” she asks.
I smile. “Neither, really,” I reply honestly, “I just got my first ever programming class when school starts up in a couple weeks, and I don’t want to seem dumb. Figure I might as well put my insomnia to good use, you know?”
She raises an eyebrow. “Not really, but you do you.”
I laugh. “Always have, always will,” I say.
Alison shakes her head as she walks away. Heather looks over at me. “Really? School? That’s the best you can come up with?”
I look at her and shrug. “What? It’s the truth.”
Heather chuckles. “And?” she replies, “It’s before six-thirty in the goddamned morning, since when does the truth matter?”
“Fair point.”
Greg chimes in. “Next time, you should say you’re a hacker, using your phone to break into some secure system.”
“What secure system? We’re at a mall by warehouses,” I shoot back, “The closest thing we’ve got here to a secure system is a padlock on one of those steel cage door thingies.
Greg shakes his head. He’s still enjoying himself. “Details. Maybe there’s a secret government facility in the warehouse next door.”
“Would explain why you hate windows and sit against that wall,” Heather adds.
“Hey,” I say, mocking great offense, “It’s perfectly alright to simply hate windows.”
It’s at this point someone I don’t know walks in. They feel exhausted. Agitated. “Do I just seat myself?” he shout-asks to Alison as she’s coming out of the kitchen to deliver me my eggs.
“Yeah. Anywhere’s fine, I’ll be with you in a sec,” Alison replies. She comes over to my table. “Here you go. Enjoy your programming thing.”
I smile. “Always.”
“The worst,” Heather replies, though she’s not actually as upset as normal. From when and how her feelings have changed, I think she might have a thing for the new guy here. Physically, at least.
Alison hands him a menu. “Will you be wanting anything to drink?” she asks, politely.
“Do you have fresh coffee?” he replies with his own question, like a terrible person. Of course they have fresh coffee, they’re a diner. His agitation has, ever since he sat down, been mixed with just a tinge of disgust. Like he thinks he’s better than this place.
“Yesser,” Alison replies, clearly feeling the same irritation at this person as I do. She puts on a good face though. Better than me. Fortunately, my staring at my phone helps disguise my irritation. Hopefully.
“Then that. Cream and sugar as well.” See, just goes to confirm my belief that only terrible people want coffee that tastes sweet. Tea’s supposed to be sweet. Coffee’s supposed to taste like getting punched in the face with delicious, wakeful bitterness. Sweet coffee drinkers are all terrible people who don’t understand that very important distinction.
I sigh and focus on my textbook. I’m going to have a basic understanding. And as much as I enjoy shouting across the diner at the other pair of regulars, and I’m sure at six-forty-five, when Marcie arrives, we’ll start talking across the diner once again, it isn’t as fun with a random grumpy, elitist sweet-coffee drinker sitting in the middle of the place. He orders the pancakes. The textbook is incredibly dense. I’m probably going to need to read it again with the help of the notes I’m taking to actually understand it. I’m glad I decided to do this. Marcie comes into the polite silence, looking confused at us until her eyes fall upon the grumpy man. She’s not tired, though nervous for some reason. Also sweaty, though that’s something I observed with my eyes rather than my mind. She sits down. Eating the pancakes, which my parents claim are great here, does nothing to improve the man’s mood. Then he pays and leaves.
“Who was that?” Marcie asks, the moment the door closed behind the guy.
Greg shrugs. “Some grumpy guy,” he offers up.
I add, “Just some sweet coffee drinker.”
“Like just sugar?”
“Cream and sugar,” Heather says with a smirk.
Marcie nods, understanding. “That explains it. Those types are all terrible people.”
I chuckle. “Every last one,” I say.
“Anyways,” she says, “Hey Ally, can I have my coffee, extra cream, extra sugar.” Every one of us regulars, along with Alison, laugh. Even Heather’s anger’s subsumed by the general happiness. This is a better beginning to the day than those nightmares. I knew it would be. That’s why I come here so often.
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