4. The Axe Forgets; The Tree Remembers
Monday, August 12th-7:38 p.m.
1,913 words. Approximate reading time: 9 minutes, 33 seconds.
Rhian stepped into his bedroom and softly shut the door behind him, then walked over to his bed and promptly collapsed onto it. He had told his parents that he was tired from his first day and wanted to get to bed early, and, while that was certainly true, he didn’t feel like going over the whole story with them. It hardly seemed worth it, anyway. His dad would just give him some grief about not being “adaptable” and say something about needing to “learn to adjust to a new way of life here.”
Rhian had heard it all before. Whenever he’d complain about being stuck inside all day over the summer or how VR wasn’t like the real thing, he’d get a big lecture from dad about what a great opportunity this was for the family, how Rhian shouldn’t be ungrateful, all that sort of stuff. Dad didn’t get it, and mom wasn’t much better.
Over the last few months, she’d basically become a completely different person. Rhian still remembered his mom how she was before, when she’d come in through the back door with dirt under her fingernails and sweat dripping from her forehead, proudly proclaiming that the tomatoes were coming in well. Or when he’d find her in the kitchen, flour covering her apron, and she’d smile at him and have him come stir the batter for the cake she’d been making. He had lots of memories of mom as a caring person who loved her family and loved life.
Now, she was basically a zombie. She hadn’t left the house once since they got here, not even to do the weekly grocery shopping. She let dad handle all of the “outside of the house” things. She would wake up in the morning, drift soundlessly from her bedroom to the couch, and turn on the TV. There she would sit all day, locked to the news channel, until it was time for bed, when she would drift back to the bedroom for eight hours of unconsciousness. Rhian asked dad about it once, and he just said that mom needed some time to adjust, just like Rhian, and that they should both be extra helpful around the house while she was adjusting.
It didn’t seem to matter; mom was pretty much stuck. Rhian felt stuck, too, but he wasn’t sure that it was in the same way. In any case, he knew that he wouldn’t get very far talking to her about everything, which was pretty crappy since she used to always know what to say to make him feel better.
Rhian stared at the ceiling for a few minutes, trying to revel in the silence of his bedroom, but unable to get the day’s earlier events out of his mind. He rolled over onto his stomach and slid a hand underneath his mattress, fishing out an old pillowcase and emptying its contents onto the bed. Inside the pillowcase was a worn composition book with the words “RHIAN’S JOURNAL-DO NOT READ!” scrawled across the front in red marker, and a pencil that had been well-used and hand-sharpened.
He knew that he wasn’t supposed to have this. Something about the rules of this place; paper journals were not allowed. His parents set him up with something on the VR where he could do his journaling electronically, which was allowed, but Rhian didn’t like the electronic journaling VR space. It didn’t feel private and it just wasn’t the same as writing his thoughts out on paper. Rhian had been using old notebooks and composition books to journal in for as long as he could remember, and he wasn’t about to switch now. He hadn’t been able to stop his parents from purging all of his old journals, but he did manage to hide this one from them. Or at least, they hadn’t said anything if they did know.
He opened the composition book and flipped to the first blank page. He gripped the pencil in his hand and began to write:
“Dear Journal,
“Today sucked so hard. I really hate this place. Dad keeps saying over and over that life will be easier here, but I don’t know what was so hard about life in the Free States. I thought maybe that going to school would make me feel better. At least they do school in-person here, too, so I figured that gives me a reason to get outside for at least part of the day.
“But today was my first day. First day of eighth grade, it’s supposed to be a big deal! Getting to be big man on campus and all that stuff. The eighth graders at my old school loved to make sure we all knew who the big kids were. I was kind of looking forward to getting my chance, you know? But now I don’t even know if I wanna go back.
“I guess I’ll start with the fact that school uniforms are the absolute worst! Why can’t I just wear what I want to? I complained about it to Dad this morning and he just laughed and was like, ‘You’ll get used to it.’ I don’t want to get used to it! I miss just wearing tee shirts and jeans or whatever to school. I don’t wanna wear a stupid button-up shirt and fancy slacks and shoes that hurt my feet.
“And don’t even get me started on the face covering, that’s what basically killed my entire day. You won’t believe the crap they do here; it’s unreal. My old school never would have been like this. Okay, so let me tell you exactly what happened:
“I was just sitting in class, minding my own business, listening to the teacher, you know. And like, this freaking face covering! I’m not used to this stuff. You’d think that other people would get it and maybe cut me some slack, since the teacher thought it would be a great idea to let everyone know that my family was allowed to come over here from the Free States. Well it made everyone give me some nasty looks.
“And so I’m sitting there, and this face covering is really bugging me and I had to scratch my nose. I tried to scratch it through the covering but whatever this is made of, I dunno. It wasn’t working, okay? So I was like, ok well my nose itches so I gotta take care of this, and I pulled my face covering down just a little bit and let my nose out so I could scratch it.
“Well this girl Suzie saw me do that and she like screamed. I mean it! Like she had seen a monster or something! And she goes, ‘Ms. Johnston, Ms. Johnston, that Freebie just showed his nose!’ and then the whole class just turned and stared at me. It was so freaky! But that’s not even the worst of it.”
Rhian sighed and stared at the paper. He didn’t really want to think about it anymore. But he remembered what his fourth grade teacher had said when she gave him his first journal, a beat-up old spiral notebook with a picture of cat and the words “You Can Do It!” printed on the cover. “Rhian,” she said seriously, “we’re living in strange times right now, and I can see a lot of promise in your writing assignments. I want you to take this notebook and write about your life. Every day. And when you’re older, maybe you can use it to tell your story to the world.”
Rhian didn’t really know about that at the time. He lived a pretty regular life and didn’t think that anyone would care to know about it. But it made sense to him now. Maybe someone would be interested in his story. So he took a deep breath, let out another sigh, and continued:
“So the whole class was staring at me and the teacher says, ‘Okay, Rhian, you know the rules. Time out, now.’ And then everyone went, ‘Oooooooooh’ like I got caught doing something really bad. But I didn’t know what ‘time out’ was. Like, ‘time out’ is for little babies. I’m 13! But I don’t want people to think I’m some kind of bad kid or something, so I got up and was like, ‘I’m sorry, where do I go?’
“And the teacher said, ‘Come up front to me,’ so I went up there and she put her hands on my shoulders and walked me back to the back corner of the room, where there was this glass booth thing, like a phone booth you see in those old movies. And she opens the door and tells me to sit in the chair there.
“So I sat down and I was thinking that she would just close me up in there or something for a few minutes to make me ‘learn my lesson’ or something, but instead she took this thing off the wall that looked kinda like a VR headset and she plopped it down on my head, then hooked the chin strap together so it stayed on.
“So of course I couldn’t see or hear anything but I just figured that she hadn’t turned on the VR thing yet and all of a sudden I felt her tying straps around my wrists so I couldn’t move my arms! And then she flicked a switch and I heard a little beep in my ears but I still couldn’t see anything. And I heard her voice come on over the headphones and she said, ‘Okay, class, now on the count of three, everyone hold down the Record button on your desk panel and let’s remind Rhian of the rules.’
“Then she counted to three and all of a sudden I heard all of the kids in my class screaming in my ears. ‘ONLY A FOOL SHOWS HIS NOSE OR MOUTH AT SCHOOL!’ they all screamed together. Then there was a click and it was silent for a second. Then I heard them all screaming again. Then again, then again. It sounded exactly the same every time like it was on a loop, and it just went over and over and over until I couldn’t even think.
“I couldn’t see, I couldn’t move my arms, I couldn’t get the headset off, I just had to sit there and listen to the other kids scream at me over and over, ‘ONLY A FOOL SHOWS HIS NOSE OR MOUTH AT SCHOOL! ONLY A FOOL SHOWS HIS NOSE OR MOUTH AT SCHOOL! ONLY A FOOL SHOWS HIS NOSE OR MOUTH AT SCHOOL!’
“It was really scary, journal! I don’t even know how long she made me sit there. When she finally untied me and pulled off the headset she had to drag me out of the booth and the school nurse was there and he took me back to his office to lay down on the bed back there for a little bit. When I could think again, I remember sitting up on the bed and he looked at me and said, ‘First time out?’ and laughed.
“I really hate it here. I want to go back to the Free States. I want to go back to my friends. I don’t wanna go to school anymore. But Dad’ll make me. And Mom won’t say anything. This really sucks.”
Rhian sniffed a little and wiped his eyes with the back of his hand.
“But I guess, if you think about it, it’s really all my fault,” he wrote. “After all, only a fool shows his nose or mouth at school.”
1,913 words. Approximate reading time: 9 minutes, 33 seconds.
Rhian stepped into his bedroom and softly shut the door behind him, then walked over to his bed and promptly collapsed onto it. He had told his parents that he was tired from his first day and wanted to get to bed early, and, while that was certainly true, he didn’t feel like going over the whole story with them. It hardly seemed worth it, anyway. His dad would just give him some grief about not being “adaptable” and say something about needing to “learn to adjust to a new way of life here.”
Rhian had heard it all before. Whenever he’d complain about being stuck inside all day over the summer or how VR wasn’t like the real thing, he’d get a big lecture from dad about what a great opportunity this was for the family, how Rhian shouldn’t be ungrateful, all that sort of stuff. Dad didn’t get it, and mom wasn’t much better.
Over the last few months, she’d basically become a completely different person. Rhian still remembered his mom how she was before, when she’d come in through the back door with dirt under her fingernails and sweat dripping from her forehead, proudly proclaiming that the tomatoes were coming in well. Or when he’d find her in the kitchen, flour covering her apron, and she’d smile at him and have him come stir the batter for the cake she’d been making. He had lots of memories of mom as a caring person who loved her family and loved life.
Now, she was basically a zombie. She hadn’t left the house once since they got here, not even to do the weekly grocery shopping. She let dad handle all of the “outside of the house” things. She would wake up in the morning, drift soundlessly from her bedroom to the couch, and turn on the TV. There she would sit all day, locked to the news channel, until it was time for bed, when she would drift back to the bedroom for eight hours of unconsciousness. Rhian asked dad about it once, and he just said that mom needed some time to adjust, just like Rhian, and that they should both be extra helpful around the house while she was adjusting.
It didn’t seem to matter; mom was pretty much stuck. Rhian felt stuck, too, but he wasn’t sure that it was in the same way. In any case, he knew that he wouldn’t get very far talking to her about everything, which was pretty crappy since she used to always know what to say to make him feel better.
Rhian stared at the ceiling for a few minutes, trying to revel in the silence of his bedroom, but unable to get the day’s earlier events out of his mind. He rolled over onto his stomach and slid a hand underneath his mattress, fishing out an old pillowcase and emptying its contents onto the bed. Inside the pillowcase was a worn composition book with the words “RHIAN’S JOURNAL-DO NOT READ!” scrawled across the front in red marker, and a pencil that had been well-used and hand-sharpened.
He knew that he wasn’t supposed to have this. Something about the rules of this place; paper journals were not allowed. His parents set him up with something on the VR where he could do his journaling electronically, which was allowed, but Rhian didn’t like the electronic journaling VR space. It didn’t feel private and it just wasn’t the same as writing his thoughts out on paper. Rhian had been using old notebooks and composition books to journal in for as long as he could remember, and he wasn’t about to switch now. He hadn’t been able to stop his parents from purging all of his old journals, but he did manage to hide this one from them. Or at least, they hadn’t said anything if they did know.
He opened the composition book and flipped to the first blank page. He gripped the pencil in his hand and began to write:
“Dear Journal,
“Today sucked so hard. I really hate this place. Dad keeps saying over and over that life will be easier here, but I don’t know what was so hard about life in the Free States. I thought maybe that going to school would make me feel better. At least they do school in-person here, too, so I figured that gives me a reason to get outside for at least part of the day.
“But today was my first day. First day of eighth grade, it’s supposed to be a big deal! Getting to be big man on campus and all that stuff. The eighth graders at my old school loved to make sure we all knew who the big kids were. I was kind of looking forward to getting my chance, you know? But now I don’t even know if I wanna go back.
“I guess I’ll start with the fact that school uniforms are the absolute worst! Why can’t I just wear what I want to? I complained about it to Dad this morning and he just laughed and was like, ‘You’ll get used to it.’ I don’t want to get used to it! I miss just wearing tee shirts and jeans or whatever to school. I don’t wanna wear a stupid button-up shirt and fancy slacks and shoes that hurt my feet.
“And don’t even get me started on the face covering, that’s what basically killed my entire day. You won’t believe the crap they do here; it’s unreal. My old school never would have been like this. Okay, so let me tell you exactly what happened:
“I was just sitting in class, minding my own business, listening to the teacher, you know. And like, this freaking face covering! I’m not used to this stuff. You’d think that other people would get it and maybe cut me some slack, since the teacher thought it would be a great idea to let everyone know that my family was allowed to come over here from the Free States. Well it made everyone give me some nasty looks.
“And so I’m sitting there, and this face covering is really bugging me and I had to scratch my nose. I tried to scratch it through the covering but whatever this is made of, I dunno. It wasn’t working, okay? So I was like, ok well my nose itches so I gotta take care of this, and I pulled my face covering down just a little bit and let my nose out so I could scratch it.
“Well this girl Suzie saw me do that and she like screamed. I mean it! Like she had seen a monster or something! And she goes, ‘Ms. Johnston, Ms. Johnston, that Freebie just showed his nose!’ and then the whole class just turned and stared at me. It was so freaky! But that’s not even the worst of it.”
Rhian sighed and stared at the paper. He didn’t really want to think about it anymore. But he remembered what his fourth grade teacher had said when she gave him his first journal, a beat-up old spiral notebook with a picture of cat and the words “You Can Do It!” printed on the cover. “Rhian,” she said seriously, “we’re living in strange times right now, and I can see a lot of promise in your writing assignments. I want you to take this notebook and write about your life. Every day. And when you’re older, maybe you can use it to tell your story to the world.”
Rhian didn’t really know about that at the time. He lived a pretty regular life and didn’t think that anyone would care to know about it. But it made sense to him now. Maybe someone would be interested in his story. So he took a deep breath, let out another sigh, and continued:
“So the whole class was staring at me and the teacher says, ‘Okay, Rhian, you know the rules. Time out, now.’ And then everyone went, ‘Oooooooooh’ like I got caught doing something really bad. But I didn’t know what ‘time out’ was. Like, ‘time out’ is for little babies. I’m 13! But I don’t want people to think I’m some kind of bad kid or something, so I got up and was like, ‘I’m sorry, where do I go?’
“And the teacher said, ‘Come up front to me,’ so I went up there and she put her hands on my shoulders and walked me back to the back corner of the room, where there was this glass booth thing, like a phone booth you see in those old movies. And she opens the door and tells me to sit in the chair there.
“So I sat down and I was thinking that she would just close me up in there or something for a few minutes to make me ‘learn my lesson’ or something, but instead she took this thing off the wall that looked kinda like a VR headset and she plopped it down on my head, then hooked the chin strap together so it stayed on.
“So of course I couldn’t see or hear anything but I just figured that she hadn’t turned on the VR thing yet and all of a sudden I felt her tying straps around my wrists so I couldn’t move my arms! And then she flicked a switch and I heard a little beep in my ears but I still couldn’t see anything. And I heard her voice come on over the headphones and she said, ‘Okay, class, now on the count of three, everyone hold down the Record button on your desk panel and let’s remind Rhian of the rules.’
“Then she counted to three and all of a sudden I heard all of the kids in my class screaming in my ears. ‘ONLY A FOOL SHOWS HIS NOSE OR MOUTH AT SCHOOL!’ they all screamed together. Then there was a click and it was silent for a second. Then I heard them all screaming again. Then again, then again. It sounded exactly the same every time like it was on a loop, and it just went over and over and over until I couldn’t even think.
“I couldn’t see, I couldn’t move my arms, I couldn’t get the headset off, I just had to sit there and listen to the other kids scream at me over and over, ‘ONLY A FOOL SHOWS HIS NOSE OR MOUTH AT SCHOOL! ONLY A FOOL SHOWS HIS NOSE OR MOUTH AT SCHOOL! ONLY A FOOL SHOWS HIS NOSE OR MOUTH AT SCHOOL!’
“It was really scary, journal! I don’t even know how long she made me sit there. When she finally untied me and pulled off the headset she had to drag me out of the booth and the school nurse was there and he took me back to his office to lay down on the bed back there for a little bit. When I could think again, I remember sitting up on the bed and he looked at me and said, ‘First time out?’ and laughed.
“I really hate it here. I want to go back to the Free States. I want to go back to my friends. I don’t wanna go to school anymore. But Dad’ll make me. And Mom won’t say anything. This really sucks.”
Rhian sniffed a little and wiped his eyes with the back of his hand.
“But I guess, if you think about it, it’s really all my fault,” he wrote. “After all, only a fool shows his nose or mouth at school.”