PIER 21 WRITING PROMPT RESPONSE

Filling Black Holes

A short story

Photo from Tea Horvat on Pexels.

We are lying on the sofa at her grandmother’s, legs up in the air, wondering what we will become after the last bell.

We both feel a little stupid: for every hour spent on homework, every surprise test, every translation from Latin done without finding a single sentence in the dictionary, we have wanted nothing more than the end of the year. The “after” always materialised with abstract concreteness in our thoughts, but now it suddenly seems like one of those black holes we have just been revising. You can’t see anything of what’s inside, and it pulls you in relentlessly.

“Let’s think about the exam, no? We’ll think about the rest later. We got enough to worry about.”

She’s right. I always worry too much about the future. I should just enjoy these last days, and that’s it. Then there is the exam, and once again she’s right: it’s enough to worry about. But the “after” is so close now: I can’t avoid thinking about it. Do you feel that way when you are old or terminally ill? I shiver, even though it’s more than eighty degrees in this room.

“Ice cream?” I find myself suddenly suggesting.

Daria springs to her feet with a back roll. I, who have only ever seen gymnastics at the Olympics, let my legs fall to the side and roll off the sofa.

There are always at least three different packs of ice cream in that house. Daria’s mum always tells her grandmother she’s going to end up with diabetes, and her grandmother replies that she doesn’t buy it all for herself: what would it look like if, when Daria and her little friends (yes, we’re eighteen, but little friends we remain) came over, they found the fridge empty?

“White or dark chocolate? Ah, there’s pistachio as well,” Daria whispers, scrutinising the freezer. Her grandmother fell asleep watching TV, but the volume is so loud that I don’t think whispering is necessary.

We head back to the sofa. In less than two minutes, we’re already halfway through our ice cream sticks and revising the Second World War. We give ourselves an hour. It seems a little short for eighty million deaths, but what can we do? There’s, like, the rest of the world left to revise.

The next one is maths. Daria falls behind as soon as we start. I help her, but even if I explain all the procedures step by step, she gets lost. She’s surrendered: she has been putting so much effort throughout the whole year, and with so few results, that she does not believe in it anymore. We all know that she got the minimum to be admitted to the final exam only because our maths professor increased her average grade. Perhaps he has also surrendered.

“I will make a mess of maths,” she says, and the way her voice cracks makes it clear she is pushing back tears and anxiety. “What if I fail?”

And now she’s crying. I put the books on the side and hug her. I stroke her hair and tell her she won’t fail. They didn’t even fail Danny last year, and he was a proper lost cause. She starts laughing. I ask if she’d like another ice cream, and she suggests waiting for her grandma, who will surely wake up soon and will want one as well.

We sit back down on the sofa with our legs up. It’s our position for long chats. We’ve told each other all our secrets over the last five years on this sofa with our legs up.

“Danny enrolled in history, did you know? He’s already finishing his first year exams. Mati told me, he’s friends with her brother.”

“He suddenly started studying?” She nods.

“Maybe none of it interested him: maths, physics, all the rest. I don’t know how he got on in history. Maybe he liked that, and now that he only does that, he’s settled and studies and is doing well.”

Maybe she’s right. In the end, will this exam define us as much as we think? Nobody would have bet a penny on Danny, and look at him: he barely passed it, and now it seems like he’s doing fine.

“Mum told me that Dad also did badly at school, that he was hopeless at languages. But then for work he learned English and French, and now he speaks them pretty much every day with clients.”

We start talking about the future again. We imagine worlds in which we’re good at everything we currently suck at. I, who have never had any flexibility, become a yoga pro. Daria teaches maths at a primary school. I ask her: why not at secondary school? She tells me not to push it, miracles only go so far.

We populate what seemed like a black hole with dreams and expectations. Life is long, infinite, and brimming with possibility. Every little thing can happen, even the ones that seem impossible now. Even the ones we think we hate.

“Until two years ago, I hated coffee, and I was sure I’d never be able to drink it. And now I can’t get up without it. More than that: I actually like it.”

I laugh. “So maybe I’ll find myself eating dark chocolate instead of white? And drinking beer with pizza, instead of Coke.”

It’s strange: I can feel my heart racing with anticipation, and even if we don’t say it out loud, I know it’s the same for Daria. I can’t wait for the summer after the exam. Then it’ll be university, or maybe a year travelling around Europe, Daria and I together as digital nomads?

Her grandmother finds us like that, with our legs up on the sofa. We’re both staring at the ceiling, lost in our own dreams. Her glasses slip down her nose as she leans over to look at us. Her hair is all ruffled, flat on the side she fell asleep on.

“Are you tired? Shall we have an ice cream together and take a break?”

Daria jumps down with the same move as before. This time I try too: I fall to the side, but I get straight back up. When her grandmother opens the freezer, I find myself asking: “Is there a dark chocolate one?”

She passes it to me. I unwrap it. I bite into it. I like it.

Bring on what’s next.

Thank you for reading! This is my response to this month’s Pier 21 writing prompt:

[embed]An Acquired Taste Pier 21: June-Julymedium.com