Chapter 2: The Ghost in the Hallway
Time stopped flowing. It became a stagnant puddle. Michael didn't know if one or two days had passed. Waking up was no longer an event; it was simply the cessation of the temporary oblivion that sleep brought.
He got out of bed, not because he felt rested, but because his muscles were stiff from being in the same position. His body moved, but his mind remained in the darkness, in a limbo of white static.
He went downstairs. His bare feet made no noise on the carpet. He moved through the house like a ghost, an intruder in his own life. The house was silent, an oppressive silence that weighed on his shoulders.
He reached the kitchen. Thirst was the only real thing, a primal need that forced him to act. He opened the faucet and drank water directly with his hand; the cold liquid was a shock without pleasure.
From the refrigerator, he took out a slice of bread. It was dry. He ate it standing up, without tasting it. It tasted like cardboard, like nothing. It was just fuel to keep the engine running, an engine that no longer had anywhere to go.
He stood staring out the kitchen window. Outside, life continued with a cruel indifference. A child rode past on a bike, laughing. A neighbor collected the mail from the mailbox.
'The world didn't stop. Only mine did.'
He wandered through the living room, his fingers brushing the furniture covered by a thin layer of dust. There was no purpose in his movements. He was a body occupying a space, nothing more.
He sat on the couch, the same beige couch he had scorned on the first day. Now he felt nothing for it. He stared at a speck of dust floating in a sunbeam. He followed it with his eyes until it disappeared.
Hours passed. The sunlight moved across the room, drawing long shadows that stretched out like fingers. He didn't move. There were no thoughts of the future, no regrets for the past. Just a void. A silent, eternal present.
He was on autopilot. His body breathed. His heart beat. But the real Michael was not there.
A jarring sound broke the silence. It was sharp, insistent, almost painful in the stillness of the house. It was the old landline phone, an artifact from another era that sat on a small table in the hallway.
Michael, who was sitting on the living room floor, staring at the wall, ignored it. It was a sound from the outside world. And the outside world no longer mattered to him.
The phone stopped ringing. A blessed silence. But thirty seconds after, it started again, this time with an urgency that seemed to pierce the fog of his mind.
With exasperating slowness, as if moving through thick water, he stood up. His joints cracked in protest. He walked toward the hallway and picked up the receiver.
"Hello?" his voice was a raw, unrecognizable whisper.
"Am I speaking with Michael Gray?" asked a woman's voice on the other end, professional but with a hint of concern.
Michael did not respond instantly. The effort to form a word felt monumental.
"...Yes," he finally said.
"Hello Michael, my name is Ms. Davis, I'm the Northgate school counselor. I'm calling because we've noticed you haven't attended in a couple of days, and we wanted to make sure everything was okay."
'Okay.' The word sounded strange, as if it were from another language.
"I'm fine," Michael lied, his tone flat, emotionless.
"I'm glad to hear that," Ms. Davis said, though she didn't sound convinced. "But, Michael, I have to be direct. By law, if your absences continue, we are obliged to report it to social services. And we really don't want to have to do that."
'Social services. Great. One more thing.'
The threat didn't provoke fear. It didn't even provoke anger. Only a deep, heavy fatigue. It was just another absurd problem in a pile of absurd problems. Another person telling him what he had to do.
"No, it won't be necessary," he replied, just to end the conversation.
"Excellent. So, can we count on seeing you at school tomorrow?" the counselor asked, her tone now more hopeful.
Michael just said yes without paying attention. "Uh huh... yeah, okay... I'll be there."
"Very well, Michael. If you need anything, don't hesitate to stop by my office. We're here to help."
"Okay."
He hung up the phone before she could say anything more. The click of the receiver returning to its base was a sound of finality.
He stood in the hallway for a long minute. Silence returned to claim the house. But now, something had changed. The outside world, with its rules and consequences, had cracked open his bubble of apathy.
He didn't feel defiant. He didn't feel rebellious. He only felt an infinite weariness at the thought. School. The hallways. The people. The noise. It seemed like a task as monumental as climbing a mountain. But the alternative, dealing with "social services," sounded even worse.
With a sigh that seemed to empty his lungs, he turned around. The call hadn't woken him from his trance. It had simply given his body on autopilot a destination for the next day.
The next morning, Michael woke up not to an alarm, but to the weight of obligation. He didn't want to go. But the memory of the call was a persistent annoyance in the back of his mind.
With the inertia of an automaton, he got out of bed.
He got into the shower. The warm water fell on him, but he didn't feel the comfort. It was just water. He stood there, eyes closed, letting the steam fog the mirror, wishing he could stay in that watery limbo forever.
When he got out, he stood in front of the fogged mirror. He wiped a circle with his hand and the sixteen year old boy's face reappeared. It no longer surprised him. He only felt a profound disconnection, as if looking at a stranger he vaguely resembled.
In his room, he opened the closet. His hand, purely out of habit, went to a black, worn, comfortable hoodie. Shorts. Low top sneakers. Before leaving, his eyes fell on dark glasses that were on his desk. They were cheap Wayfarers. He put them on. The room instantly darkened, the edges of the world softened. 'Better.' They were his shield against a reality that was too bright.
As he walked toward the door, he grabbed the iPhone 5 and his headphones. He couldn't face the noise of the outside world without a filter.
The ride on the school bus was silent torture. He sat in the back, next to the window, with his hood up and his headphones at maximum volume. He needed music to drown out the buzzing of his own mind. He opened the music application and his thumb moved by memory, searching for his anchors, his prophets.
He typed "Kanye West." The search brought up some news articles about a promising producer from Chicago, but his discography, the albums that had defined music, were not there. 'That's weird. Maybe the application is glitching.'
He tried again. "Travis Scott." The screen showed "No results." "Drake." Only their early mixtapes appeared, none of the global anthems he knew.
He was puzzled, but too emotionally exhausted to feel panic. The anomaly was just one more error in a system that was already broken.
He dismissed it. 'It must be a network issue. Or maybe they're not that famous here yet. Whatever.'
He gave up. He let the phone play one of the few pop songs that came pre-installed. The generic, optimistic melody was an insult to his mood, but it was better than silence.
He looked out the bus window, the streets of his hometown passing in a blur, feeling more foreign than ever.
The bus stopped with a screech in front of Northgate High. Michael got off with the rest of the students, but he felt like he was on a different planet. The noise hit him first, a wall of sound made up of shouts, laughter, and the metallic clang of lockers.
It was overwhelming. He pulled up the hood of his hoodie, adjusted his sunglasses, and turned up the volume on his headphones.
The hallway was a whirlwind of adolescent energy. People running, pushing, shouting greetings. To Michael, it was like watching a movie on fast forward, a chaos of colors and movement that made no sense. He arrived at the school feeling strange and completely out of place.
He moved through the crowd like a ghost, his shoulders hunched. His only goal was to reach classroom 204. History. His body moved by a vague memory of the schedule he had seen, but his mind wasn't there. He walked like a zombie.
He found the class. The teacher looked at him when he entered, an expression of slight surprise on her face at his appearance. Michael didn't notice her gaze. He simply walked to the last desk, in the furthest corner, and slumped into the chair.
The class began. The teacher started talking about some battle of the Civil War. Her voice was a monotonous hum, a background noise that blended with the generic pop playing in his headphones. Michael didn't take out a book. He didn't take out a notebook. He did nothing.
Unwillingly, he simply crossed his arms on the desk, rested his head on them, and turned his face toward the wall. The cold, painted wall of the classroom.
The world was reduced to the darkness of his hood, the cold plastic of the desk against his cheek, and the soulless music in his ears. He didn't sleep. He didn't think. He simply... existed. He waited. He waited for the noise to stop. He waited for the day to end.
The bell rang, a sharp shriek that made him flinch. The sound of chairs scraping and the murmur of voices filled the room as everyone gathered their things and rushed out to the next class.
Michael didn't move.
He stayed there, in the same position, listening to the footsteps fade and the hallway fill with chaos again. He was present, but he wasn't there. He was a ghost at a desk, waiting for the next wave of noise to pass over him.