Escape

The library was always my favorite escape. Having spent the 3 hours of the day intermittently staring at my ceiling or scrolling through TikTok, it was clear a change of surroundings couldn’t make the morning any worse. Once I was done with bathroom hygiene and got casually (re: lazily) dressed, I headed out of the house and got on my bike. I considered leaving a note for my parents, but I figured a text would suffice. I made a mental note to send one when I got to the library. If it wasn’t too much trouble.

By bike, the Valen Crawford Public Library was a twenty-minute ride. My dad always tells me he could get me there in five minutes, but my constant sense of environmental dread is just too annoying. Besides, I don’t want to be any more indebted to him than the bare minimum that comes with the father-son relationship. 

When I saw the building twenty meters ahead, a smile almost snuck onto my face before I instinctively suffocated it. Luckily, a few months ago, the township finally constructed a bike rack after an uncannily organized X campaign. As I braked at the rack, I noticed a little clique of prep-school kids, probably between 15 and 18, walk in. Anyone who didn’t know better would assume they were a bunch of diligent little scholars cramming for an exam. Not a motley crew of spoiled douchebags with more money than morality. My therapist would call these “automatic negative thoughts” but I fortunately learned to tune her out months ago. 

Once my lock was fastened, I took a deep breath and headed in. I was not surprised when I saw the preps sitting at my preferred table—over a dozen other places they could have sat and they chose to screw me over. I glanced at them for a second before I looked away, knowing that eye contact would have catalyzed something I was not sure I could have finished. Tactically, or cowardly, I head to the far right end of the building, five tables away from the preps. But, there are still too many people for my liking, so I take a left to the southwest corner. Thankfully, no one else was there, so I sat in one of the La-Z boys and unzipped my backpack. I retrieved my laptop, plugged it into the wall socket, and it was time to work.

My latest scheme in the ten-year campaign to convince my parents I’m a writer is a horror anthology book. Well, “collection” might be a more appropriate term, since there’s no way I’m getting any collaborators to contribute. Not that I need or even want any of them. That was my mom’s idea since the stories were supposed to be written in various styles from the 70s to the New 10s. “You should reach out to some other writers. You could make some friends,” she said. For all my social deficiencies, I still had a better sense of how to hide my ulterior motives in a seemingly polite conversation.

Twenty minutes later, I was still stuck on the first story: a tale about a platoon of Vietnam-era Green Berets haunted by a ghost or something. Many nights and strained eyes had brought me no closer to figuring out what I was trying to say with this story. Every idea was more cliche than the last, and the few “original” things I came up with were so ridiculous as to be summarily dismissed from consideration.

The preps weren’t straining their eyes. They weren’t on the verge of a panic attack. They weren’t worrying about how they had already hit their physical/mental prime, forever pushing their dreams out of reach. They weren’t in the year thirteen of an inexplicable existential nightmare that hack therapists can write off as “clinical depression.” No, they were still in high school, partying through each day knowing their perfect lives were ahead of them. Their oligarch parents could buy or bribe their way out of any problem whenever push comes to shove. 

I stared at the laptop screen. My open right palm became a clenched fist. The heat around my temples flared. Suddenly, I slammed the computer shut. Nobody seemed to notice. From where I was, I couldn’t see the rest of the patrons, but I did faintly hear them—or, more precisely, the giggling of the preps.

Shoving my laptop back into the bag, I got up and ambled along the library’s southern wall. I took a left down a row of books and pretended to look for a book on a shelf near the center tables. A few feet away, I could hear what the preps were talking about. One of them bragged about having the whole house to himself that weekend and how easy it would be to commandeer his father’s liquor cellar. My grip tightened on the book, my nails digging into the spine. That would definitely be a hefty fine if I got caught. My parents would notice if I were a hundred dollars poorer. I doubt their parents even notice them at all.

But here I was, standing at this bookcase, impotently scratching my nails on public property. These preps would keep failing up while I sank into oblivion. They would rule the world while I would be crushed under it. The corrupt prosper from the innocents who suffer. Then and there, I decided: ENOUGH.

I was no longer going to be powerless. My lot in life was not to simply suffer and die at the whims of the privileged. The power has always been mine. Their lies and sneers tricked me into thinking I was their lesser. Yet, standing so close to them, I could no longer ignore the obvious. What did money matter in an exchange of fists? When you stood before someone who felt the most unhinged contempt for your existence, what value was a new Rolls Royce or a stack of hundred-dolllar bills? Why doesn’t someone stand up to them?

I stomp away from the bookcase. With my fist clenched, I move towards their table. The eldest prep looks up to me. “What the hell do you want?”

“An escape.”