August 1, 2014

I running through the school trying to find the classroom for my first course of the year: Mandarin. Some of the rooms were only accessible from the back of others and weren’t always connected to the hallways. I was circling in one such cluster of rooms when I saw a teacher so I stopped by the table in the middle.

“Is this the classroom for-…”

I looked at the booklet in my hand and instead of being Chinese, it was French. “Mandarin?…” I looked at the textbook in her hands and indeed it was in Chinese, which answered my own question. The teacher remained silent.

Students were streaming in and even though I was the first one in the room, I had great difficulty finding a seat. Everyone already had someone else to sit with and eventually, I was left with a seat in the back. There was a light blue blanket on the chair so I covered myself with it as I sat down. However people started to turn back and stare at me so I put it away.

It was some sort of break time when I ducked down to see what was inside of my table. There were a stack of 8 or so notebooks and the one on top just happened to belong to me. I took it out and remembered that it was my notebook from 4 years ago, before I abandoned learning Mandarin for Japanese. I cursed myself for not switching later so that I wouldn’t have to go back to it for my last year of high school.

I felt a tap on my back and turned around to see that the principal wanted to have a talk. I walked out of the classroom with him and he showed great concern on his face. He wanted to talk about another student named Clark and how he was unhappy with his name. Then he asked if I was bothered by it. “Why would it have anything to do with me?” I asked. “I barely even talk to him.” The principal walked away and I was left wondering whether or not I gave away the fact that I didn’t talk to anyone at school.

–

My dad had sent me off on a bus ride to the airport. He warned me to not oversleep or else I would end up somewhere really far away. I looked out at the rice paddies on the way and I must have dozed off because I was suddenly in the mountains around a lake. Around this time I received a snapchat from someone of an oil painting depicting a view down a street. There was a red car parked to the side of a blue roofed house with a fenced front gate. I tried to send one back of the view of the lake outside the window but I failed to take one in time.

The bus eventually stopped and I wanted to figure out if I had really overslept or if I wasn’t at my destination yet. After all, the only thing worse than getting off too late is getting off and not knowing which direction to go. I tied a rope to my waist with the other end around the seat of a bus. This was to make sure that I could still find my way back if I somehow got lost.

I started to retrace where the bus came from and eventually ended up in some kind of small town. I walked through narrow streets and climbed into small windows while the rope was trailing behind me. I was now in a rather green part of town, with large trees branching overhead, providing cover from the sun. Around five large(human height) vultures were standing around three trees on the cobblestone street. I approached a tree when I heard a rather disgusting noise from above which I assumed to come from bird excrement. The wrinkles of the tree bark suddenly moved and opened its eye near the base.

This got the attention of the birds which started to chase after me. I turned around and tried to run but I felt my legs getting heavier and heavier. When I turned the corner, only one vulture was still behind me. However, I knew that continuing to run was not a viable option at this point. I spun around and stood in a defensive posture, preparing for the black feathered creature to strike at me. I managed to deflect a blow then put my hands up as a sign of surrender which it fortunately accepted.

I figured this was as far as I was going to go and went to trace the rope back to the bus. I was afraid that if I stayed too long, the bus would start moving again and the rope might snap or I might be dragged along against my will. Either way, it would have been bad news. I mumbled something about something being the reason why they placed “Tower City” here. I ended up in some kind of security post of a parking lot. I saw my mom driving the car we had back in China.