Staring at Circles

My early life was somewhat lacking in stability, you might say. I never stuck around anywhere long enough to be the popular kid. I bet most of those I met as I went from school to school because of my parents’ jobs would be hard-pressed to remember my name now. And that’s okay. I’ve made peace with it. I’ve just stopped entering situations with the hope that I felt in the beginning. When a new start meant something.

Of course, it wasn’t always this way. For example, a few months after six-year-old me started at Goldwick primary school (in the school uniform belonging to my previous school, which my parents had unpacked the night before and reassured me would tide me over) I was deemed acceptable enough by Matt Corrigan to get invited to his birthday party. I polished my shoes (well, dad did), combed me hair (well, mum did), and picked out the perfect generic gift for a six-year-old boy (well, they both did). I was dropped off precisely eight minutes before the start time. Which was my first mistake.

“Who are you?” asked the harassed woman who answered the door, holding a half blown up balloon in one hand, wiping sweat off her brow with the back of the other. The gesture made some of the red ringlets that formed her fringe spring up. Her red lipstick had smudged a little, no doubt from fellating rubber all afternoon, and if I’d been quicker back (and not as desperate for everyone to like me) then I would’ve asked if she was the hired clown.

“I’m Jake Livingston.” I held the gift I was holding up a little higher. My shining offering.

“Well, Jake, I run a tight ship here. You’re early, so you can come in and help me get this show on the road in exchange for me having to do an extra…” she checked her watch, “...eight minutes free babysitting.”

Sometime later in life, turning up exactly eight minutes early for a job interview, I would remember Matt’s mother saying that and reassess my clown judgement. She’d been no clown. She was a total asshat, however.

Luckily, soon after this welcome, and after a few miserable minutes of accidentally bursting balloons, other kids began to trickle in. All wet mouths, round eyes, whoops and elbows. One with a shock of white-blonde hair dove right for the crack between the two seats on the sofa. Maybe he’s a detectorist now, looking for coins everywhere he goes. Or maybe he’s doing a similar dive on a therapist’s couch. If he was the only other survivor of that grisly afternoon that steered the way the rest of my life would go.

After welcoming the last kid to arrive, her demeanour sweetened by whatever she was adding to her glasses of soda, Matt’s mother excused herself to the kitchen, forbidding anyone to go in there while she worked on something top secret. “CAKE!” a dozen children screamed in unison. She would not confirm nor deny. She was the first to go, as the intruder would late make his entrance through the back door.

“Let’s play a game!” said a girl in dungarees. The crowd went wild.

“It’s my birthday, so I decide…Hide and Seek!” More cheering. “All of you hide, I’ll seek. I will count to one hundred! Go!” The kids scattered like marbles. I went the one direction that seemed unexplored, found a utility room. The last thing I heard as I closed the door behind me was one dumbo asking incredulously “you can see me?” in response to another informing him his feet were on show.

The washing machine was a giant one like the kind you normally only get in launderettes. The perfect hiding place. I tore some of Matt’s dad’s T-shirts off the drying rack to pile in front of me. One advertised a beer brand. I read the name and tagline over and over. To this day, I’ve never touched the stuff. But reading the words until they lost all meaning helped calm me down enough to figure out how to get out later on. Yep, the door to the machine locked me in. I read the words, then looked out of the round window pretending I was a very clever astronaut on a very important mission. Eventually I found the mechanism that allowed my release.

Sure, I’d heard the gun going off, but figured it was whatever the mother had been watching on the TV in the kitchen. She’d turned it up loud to drown us kids out. Disappointed no-one had come to look for me and realising how eerily quiet it had become, I opened the utility room door and looked out on a bloodbath.

Turned out the next door neighbour’s teenage son had lied to all the specialists about his mental health recovery.

I got over it a lot quicker than my parents did. They moved even more frequently after that, perhaps plagued by guilt that they might be sending me to a school whose pupils might be targeted by another looney tunes. They didn’t ascribe to the whole thing about it being harder for predators to see you if you stayed still, I guess.

I’m 35 now. And an actual astronaut. I thought I was going to die being stuck in that washing machine but it was the thing that saved me. The gunman found all the other poorly hidden partygoers but turned the gun on himself before checking my room. Or maybe he’d been down to his last bullet.

Whatever; I’m looking through another porthole right now. I like being cocooned by the spacesuit; tight like a hug, snug like a coffin. I like looking at the earth from afar, feeling like the lone survivor while the world burns. The silence. Only hearing my breathing. And I like figuring out how things work rather than trying to figure out people.

“Livingston? Are you there?” Angela with the sultry voice from base asks me. An edge of panic there, like this wasn’t the first time she’d asked me that.

I turn my mic back on. “I’m neither here nor there,” I reply.

“Ha oh my god, Livingston, enough with the cryptic clues. Genuinely thought you were trying to hide from me for a moment.”

I turn to where the camera’s fixed, give her a wink and a wave. Then I go back to staring at Earth, realising that down there everybody’s moving, all of the time.