How To Be A Human Being

The car was hot, and the wind blowing through Jamie’s window hurt her eyes. The sun was low in the sky, and intense golden light glared through the dirty glass of Agnes’s shut window and into her eyes. She slumped against the car seat limply, every breath heavy. Reality weighed on her more and more with every second and every sound within it - the blinker clicking, Sierra crying, her mom and dad talking in the front seat. Agnes followed the dips and rises of the telephone wire with her eyes, making herself dizzy.

“Jamie, roll up your window, we're almost there,” her mom said as the car slowed. Agnes raised her head, blinking her dry eyes. As it was still early in the evening, they had unfortunately found a parking spot almost instantly. It was only slightly harder to follow your ten-year-old brother around the fairgrounds, staring down at the backs of his new soccer cleats, than it was to stare out the window. But she still would have rather stayed where she was. She didn’t even particularly want to go home - she didn’t know what she wanted.

The car turned off. Jamie had already unbuckled himself and stood up, bumping his head on the light above the seats and turning it on. He reached around the seat to try and press the button which would push it down, jumping and landing on Agnes’s foot. She gasped and shoved him away, his cleats leaving five deep scars on the tops of her toes. 

“Ow! Jamie!” She groaned. He released the seat and stared dumbly down at her foot. 

“Sorry,” he muttered. “Are you okay?”

“That was stupid!” She snapped, leaning down and rubbing her foot. Her mom opened the back car door to pull down the seat for Jamie, and noticed Agnes’s pained expression. 

“What happened?” She asked, pulling the seat down with a thump that shook the car. Agnes’s dad appeared behind her holding baby Sierra.

Jamie cut her off. “I just stepped on her.”

Her mom cut her off, too. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine!” Agnes snapped, sliding her Crocs on. Without another thought, Jamie crawled over the seat and out of the car past her mom, who glared after him. 

“I told you to not wear your new shoes! Those are for soccer!” She exclaimed. She turned back to Agnes, pulling the keys out of her pocket. “And I told you to roll up your window!” She added. “Baby, why did you have your shoes off in the car?” 

Agnes glared at her hands, cupped over the bruises on her knees. “Why not?” 

“Why are you acting like this?” Her mom demanded. “You’ve hardly said a word the whole day.”

“I’m just tired, mom,” Agnes sighed, her breaths still heavy, as if every cell of her body were just a little denser than it should have been and couldn’t quite absorb the oxygen in the humid air. Her head throbbed suddenly. “Can I stay in the car?”

Her mom shook her head, and Agnes thought she would say no. “Do you really want to? Are you okay?”

“Yes, mom!” Agnes said, flopping back against the seat.

“Fine,” her mom hissed. “Maybe it’s for the best.” 

“What does that even mean?” Agnes asked, but she was cut off on the second word by the minivan door sliding shut.

Agnes stood on the dusty ground at the entrance to the fairgrounds, a gap in some thin wooden fence, with her hands in her pockets and her weight on her left leg. She didn’t know how long her family had been gone, but the sky had turned dusky. As the sunlight had died, the lights of the fairground had grown more vibrant. She could smell caramel popcorn, gasoline, her own sweat and perfume which she had always thought must intensify under the sun, baking on her skin in the heat. The air had grown cool on her legs under her loose shorts.

She put one foot in front of the other, the ground surprisingly hard under her sore feet. The shallow gashes from Jamie’s cleats stung as they rubbed against the inside of her purple Crocs. Through the entrance was a wide path made of pale concrete, which disappeared around a corner. Agnes stepped up onto the pavement, stumbling - behind her, someone’s yellow headlights flashed on, making long shadows out of the rocks littering the ground of the dirt parking lot. 

The fair had grown busier than it was since her family had arrived - she checked her watch thoughtlessly - about forty-five minutes ago. Her step count was at twenty-two thousand and a little more. What a day. She glanced up and around, using what little focus she had left in her to calculate where her family’s first stop would have been instead of to evaluate what she actually could see. She didn’t expect to find them, but anticipated hearing her own name called any moment.

And what would she do when it was? Turn around with a blank stare? Be ready to apologize, sincerely but without energy? It was strange how hard it could be to say things she truly did mean.

Maybe she should stop. Maybe they were going back to the car already - well, probably not. Agnes realized she had left her phone in the car. On the forty-five minute drive to the fairgrounds, it had kept falling out of her hoodie pocket as she tried to get comfortable, and she’d set it in the cup holder, where it had clattered back and forth with every turn. She was here now, trying. She had no immediate way to reach her family, and didn’t know what she was supposed to accomplish, which obviously meant she didn’t know what to do. 

Couldn’t she just choose to feel better? Agnes met eyes with a tall teenage boy in a group. They both smiled a little and looked away in perfect harmony. No, it couldn’t be that simple. She suddenly wanted to sit down and cry. She wanted someone to notice and talk to her. She would be embarrassed, but at least she would be… making progress? She wouldn’t really be any closer to her family, but at least she would know where she stood, and have a choice to make. She felt so aimless, knowing that her actions had consequences, but not knowing what the consequences would be.

“Are you okay?” Someone asked - a girl, a little younger than Agnes, wearing a tie-dyed sweater. Agnes nodded and smiled stiffly.

“Yeah, I’m fine. Thanks, though.”

The girl smiled and walked away. Agnes turned back to the road. She couldn’t remember which way the main entrance was - well, there was that circular ride, so it was just right around the corner. It was a tilt-a-whirl. Jamie might like that, maybe she should look nearby.

Towards the back of the fairground, there was an open concrete space around a huge ride, one of the spinning ones with long swings attached to it. The ride was still as Agnes spotted it. The swings hung just feet above the ground, allowing people to get on and buckle themselves in with simple metal rods. Agnes thoughtlessly walked towards it, noticing that almost every single swing was still open. 

Until it was rising, she didn’t have a thought in her head except that she should probably not be messing around when she’d been so rude and her family didn’t know where she was. But the vague guilt was shaken away by a jolt both physical and emotional. The swing began to rise - the girl in front of Agnes screamed energetically, and she couldn’t help but genuinely and effortlessly smile. Filled with relief, she glanced down at her shoes, which looked giant hovering over the distant ground covered in people the height of her pointer finger. She didn’t rise as high as she thought she would before she felt herself moving forward. 

Agnes threw her hands out, gripping the sleeves of her hoodie in her palms. She let the wind blow through her hair, pushing her head against the back of the swing. Her feet felt heavy as they were dragged through the air, an untied shoelace wrapping around her ankle. For the first time in hours, it felt like she and her brain were in the same place.

The ground moved under her feet, and it sped up as she walked across the open pavement under the ride and onto the winding path, stumbling again. She wondered why she had to try harder than everyone else did when she didn't even know what she was trying to do. It was bare minimum to just... act normal. Function. Be a human being. For one moment when she believed that it wasn't her fault, she wondered why. She let herself wonder if she could ever change it when she believed it could be changed.

She found her family. She apologized, sincerely and with more energy than she would have expected, and her family made it easy. After about an hour, during which she mostly stood with her mom by Sierra’s stroller but also went on a ferris wheel, they walked back down the path with Agnes leading the way. The sky was solid black by the time they reached the parking lot, and they had to wait a couple minutes for the road to clear, allowing them to cross with an exodus of a couple other families.

The car was surrounded on all sides, and Agnes rolled over the seat into the back without pushing it down. Jamie followed, his shirt hooking on the back of the seat. 

“How did your day go?” Agnes asked, ready to listen. 

“Really good,” he said. “I went on the big swing ride!”

Agnes felt a pang of guilt. “Good job!” She said, too embarrassed to hug him. “Sorry I missed it.” 

Jamie shrugged - she felt their shoulders rub together. The car had been too dark for too long.

An electronic whirring came from the front seat. “What was that?” Jamie asked. Agnes’s heart sank as she heard her father groan.

“The car is dead,” he said. "Someone must have left a light on."

Agnes suffers from a sensory processing disorder. Sensory processing disorders can exists by themselves or they can be symptoms of other conditions like anxiety or autism, but they aren't talked about as often as these conditions are. If you've ever related to how Agnes felt during this story, I encourage you to research sensory processing disorders and find out more!