walls
Jamie Willoughby
When the day was over I laid down on my bed and waited to be lulled into dream.
“How was your day?” someone asked from behind my wall. It was a woman’s tired voice disinterested in its question.
“It was good,” a man behind my wall responded. His was a short, light voice that might have disagreed with his answer. A second passed until he said, “Good meaning decent, you know? Not good meaning…”
“Good?” the woman asked and they laughed.
“I guess I just meant decent. How was yours?”
“Decent.”
I woke up under a pall of light coming through my window. It was open and I felt the cold air on my arm and heard the murmur of waking streets. When I walked down the apartment stairs it was nine AM.
“Good morning,” a woman passing said. She was around fifty and wearing an outfit of all denim.
“Good morning.”
Four blocks down was the bike shop. I walked in the entrance five minutes later.
“Morning, Todd,” Nick, my co-worker, said.
“Good morning.”
Sitting by the register, I stared out the front windows to above the Dennys where birds shifted incessantly
from one electrical line to another.
“Cool tattoo,” Nick said. He was looking over my shoulder at the black-and-blue mark I had on my arm. I looked back at him.
“The cosmos.” He said.
I looked at the bruise again. It did look like the Andromeda.
“I see what you mean,” I told him. “But it’s a bruise.”
“A bruise?” He asked and waited for my delayed “Yeah” that he cut off.
“How’d you get a bruise like that?”
“Banging my wall because the neighbors are so loud.”
“Have you complained to the landlord?”
“My landlord says I don’t have neighbors.”
Nick groaned.
A short, paunchy man with black, curly hair walked in.
“Good morning,” he said.
“Morning,” I replied.
He pulled out a revolver and said, “Empty the register,” and I told him it was already empty.
“It’s the morning!” I said.
He had gray-blue eyes and his nose arched upwards which lent him his toad-like impression. Understanding a second after, the man walked backwards towards the door holding the gun stiff in his hand. I saw him walk towards the Dennys on the other side of the opposite street and then I saw him disappear behind its glass doors. I looked back at my bruise. I loved it. I didn’t want it to go away.
Jamie Willoughby is a high school junior at Geffen Academy in Los Angeles, where he edits Lead & Paint.