Bubbles

Write about a character coming out of a long hibernation (either literal or metaphorical).

Dull monotone voices bouncing over my head. A bright white screen projecting flat images of cartoon characters explaining how to solve systems of equations. The teachers had really given up this year. Falling back on old videos they had dug up from the depths of the internet.

My mask itched.

My breath was hot.

I had to pee.

I rested my head on my hands, letting my fingers weave through my scalp. I pulled at my hair, lightly tugging at the roots of the long black strands. The glow on my iPad faded. The school distributed them in a panic, gifting everyone with their own personal device. The plan was to attend school virtually, but we all knew that wouldn’t last. So we fell into a routine. Temperature check, hand sanitizer, masks are doubled, tripled up. Fabric and disposable. Were you checked for a fever? Extra hand sanitizer shouldn’t hurt. I tapped the fading screen, allowing the glow to fill up the rectangle again.

I hated spring. It was wet. It was always colder than you remembered. I used to stare at the cartoon calendar in the fifth-grade classroom, the one Mrs. Dear taught in, and I would fixate on the depiction of the young girl in the flower field. She had on a raincoat, and she was surrounded by budding flowers and baby birds. It was the picture over March. I would stare at it all day in those wet weeks, waiting for the flowers to bud and the birds to hatch. 

But that wasn’t spring. Spring was when the snow melted. It would stick around for a while, piling up and being cold. But eventually, it would melt away. That left the mud. Thick and gooey, sticking to the bottoms of your shoes. It tracked everywhere, and I’d be scolded for tromping about in the muck. I never corrected them. Never told them it was the driveway or the path. Never said to them it was Spring’s fault, not mine. I just apologize, wipe my feet, and keep my head down. 

And spring never got warm. Never really got warm. Sure, you’d step outside and marvel at the sun, desperate for the chance to slip into a t-shirt. But it wasn’t warm. People just… tolerate it. Deal with it. Pretend it’s this great perfection. 

One could argue spring was better than winter. Sure, Winter sucks. It’s cold. And someone could say Spring was better than Summer. Summer was too hot. I just sit by the air conditioner all day, and maybe I’ll go for a swim. At least school’s out for the Summer. But I hate Summer camp.

But you should never say Spring and Fall are the same. Sure, the weather is similar, but it’s in reverse. Spring is getting warmer, but Fall is getting colder. You get to rediscover your sweaters, watch the leaves change to yellows and reds, go on long walks without overheating. Fall is great. 

But it’s Spring. And Mr. Daniel Brown is lecturing about Math.

“Rebecca!”

I snapped up in my seat. Mr. Brown was standing in front of my sneeze guard. That’s what we’re supposed to call it. It’s just a divider, the one they use when you’re taking a test. He was staring down at me, grinning behind his mask. I could see it in his eyes.

“Can you answer the problem?” He was testing me. He could smell it when a student was spacing out. I glanced at the equation on the board.

“They’re unequal,” I said, returning to my slumped back position. This had happened before. He would get up to the board, write down an arbitrary number, and try to prove me wrong. He was so sure of himself. He really thought the answer was 3X-9^Y. He was sure of it. But then a problem would pop up. He’d go to fix it, only slightly panicking, and then another one would reveal itself. After fifteen minutes, he’d finally realize he was wrong. He had made a mistake. There was no mathematical answer. 

I stared back to the window. I let my eyes unfocus. I let my mind wander. I stepped out of my own head. I thought about Mr. Brown. He didn’t like students. I had no idea why he was a teacher. He wanted to be right, more than anything else. It was like he thought of us as rivals, and one day he would beat me. I had driven past his house once, on my way to somewhere. Maybe it was the store or a friend’s place. But I saw him, sitting on the steps to his tiny house, crying. He was a scary man, the one my classmates tended to avoid. And there he was, sobbing on the steps to his house. 

I can’t trust gossip, but I had been told his wife died recently. I felt bad for correcting his math problem.

When I saw it, I realized I didn’t know what it was. Not at first. I thought I was dreaming. A brief sense of panic washed over me when I thought I had fallen asleep. Sure, I would daydream in Mr. Brown’s class, but I would never fall asleep there. But I wasn’t dreaming. It was real.

Small shining orbs floated up past the window. Small and perfectly round, they grazed the trees and made their way to the heavens. They were reflective, bouncing balls of pink and green and yellow and blue. They were bubbles. I stared in awe as they floated up past the window. Beautiful bouncing bubbles floating up into the sky. Then I was moving. I didn’t even see it happen. Didn’t think it, didn’t will my legs to carry me out of my seat. It just happened. I pushed myself out of my desk and raced to the window. The room fell silent. Mr. Brown watched in terror as the rest of the students got up and went by the window. We all huddled close, forgetting about six feet, or social distancing, or anything other than the bubbles. Even Mr. Brown came over. Staring at the bubbles. I was crying. He was too. A few of us were. And we watched the bubbles.

No one could tell where they came from. Who was blowing them? How they got to our window. But it didn’t matter.

The day passed slowly, but I had something to occupy my mind. I turned left at the intersecting, veering away from my house and towards the 99¢ store. I had two nickels and a quarter. I bought a plastic bottle of soap bubble water. The cashier glared at me. He was young, maybe my age. He must’ve thought I was trying to get away with something. Who walked into a store and went straight for the bubbles? I did.

And I drove. I drove and drove. Not home, not to the store, not to a friend’s place. I drove to Mr. Brown’s place. I stopped the car. I walked up the long driveway, letting the mud stick to my school shoes. I placed the bubbles on his porch, by the door. He’d come home to an empty house, and he’d find them.