8/20/2021 Fri.
Sometimes it feels like I never got off the plane, where space is blurry and time is faulty and I’m in between but never there.
A bare wall greeted me today as I exited the elevator at the mall. “We’re on the seventh floor!” a text from my friend, acquaintance, cram school classmate, whatever, read. I stood, unsure of whether I should turn left or right.
There was only one building when I left for Canada, but now they’ve built a new one I can’t navigate. There was a glass wall between me and the roller-skating rink they were in. Two of my friends were leaning against the wall, looking at me but not at me. I waved, but they didn’t notice. They glided away, laughing.
As you know, I don’t have a working phone number, so I’ve been relying on public wifi ever since I got back. The new part of the mall didn’t have wifi, so I trudged back to the part I did know. There was a glass bridge between the two buildings, like the glass bridges at airports between the airplane and everything you leave behind. I crossed, only to discover on my way to Starbucks that my favorite pastry shop was gone.
“Where are you guys?” One eternity later… “We’re on the seventh floor! Come, we’ll wait for you!” Two eternities later… I took a right after getting off the elevator. The same two girls were leaning, once again, against the wall, and I realized they were complete strangers (oh… is that why they skated away laughing?). I kept going, hoping there’d be something more than a skating rink.
They were sitting around two tables, chatting. I stood behind Regina, unsure of what to do or say. I mean, we hadn’t talked in a year. heyyyy… No one looked up, so I poked her.
Omgwehaventseenyouinsolooooonghowareyouwhendidyoucomebackwhenareyouleavingandforwhereahhhhhhhandomgdidyoupierceyourears?
OmgitssonicetoseeyouguysimdoinggreatcamebacklatejuneleavinginseptemberforLAandoogderekdidyougrowtaller?
Then the guys went to challenge the basketball machines, and the girls returned to whatever they were talking about before I arrived. I sat and traced parabolas for each ball that was tossed, but not the ones that bounced off the hoop. note to self: look up how to model basketball trajectories
If I add all the basketball shots the guys did, it’d be roughly 450, which I’ll round to 470, one for each day I was away from home. I don’t think I could’ve gotten any through the hoop.
We left the mall and went to an ancient-Egypt-themed escape room. On the way there, we passed a deserted movie theater. I used to live on top of that thing, you know, but now I can hardly remember where the front door is. We kept walking under the scorching sun, across continents and backward in history.
One of my friends had her driver pick her up when everything ended. I went with her. “I heard you’ve been out of the country since grade 7! How was America?” “I stayed until grade 10 haha. And it was Canada.” “Oh, but we had a thing that summer and you didn’t come…” I’m still there, in the corner of that photo Enoch posted on Instagram, waiting for you to see me.
Sometimes I want to stay on a plane forever, which is bizarre since I get airsick, but it’d just be this tiny tiny metal bird and me, no Taiwan, no Canada, no LA; no time, no space, just clouds underneath and ice crystals outside and constant dizziness in my mind.
I’ll be on another plane soon. Sometimes it feels like I never got off the plane, where space is blurry and time is faulty and I’m in between and still not there.