The Bug is Dead
I : “Why Would You Do That?”
The desks are splattered about like splotches of paint and the sound of pencils (over paper: grr-rrr, in the sharpener:grump-grump, hitting the floor: t-ting!) is almost drowned by the rain pelting at the windows.
People my age are buzzing about and easily chatting as they sketch. I’m alone today, my only friend here having abandoned me for a guitar class.
Next to my desk is another, at an angle, and a girl and a guy with their sketchbooks leaning on it, shoulders inclining inwards. Laughter. I tune in.
They are discussing music. The Idler Wheel. Glass Animals. India’s Indie scene. Music few listen to. They’re proud of it. It’s an avant-garde badge. I love this music too!, I want to say. I don’t. They look too comfortable, and I feel too miserable. I tune out.
I’m listening to the rain, carefully, sketching, just starting to feel okay, when a pencil taps at the corner of my desk. The girl flicks her brows where the pencil points. A bug. Jet black, the size of a water drop. I flick it off my desk.
I don’t know why. Maybe I’d zoned out. Maybe I’m a master at focus-on-the-task-at-hand. A tunnel thinker of the supreme category. Maybe I’m just impulsively human.
She has hair that’s flaming red at the tips. Eyebrows in a furrow. Mouth wording.
“Why would you do that?”
II : Or Maybe…Not
I feel awful. A little hopeful too. Exoskeletons exist for a reason, right? Right? Still the question hangs in the air. The bug is the new elephant.
I don’t say anything. It’s foolish. I always feared I was dumb, and now I’m struck.
My eyes are my only functioning sense. I see she’s confused. (Why would I do that?) He’s looking at me. Grinning, even. What’s so funny? I’m a murderer.
“I wanted to take it home and keep it in a jar…” She’s on the floor with knees poking out of the rip, searching.
“Yeah, it could be here…” I’ve got a tongue and now I’m flaunting it, too late but not too little. (Fact: I talk for SEVEN whole minutes, and Fast) By the end of it they both know I’m mental.
We’re all crawling through the tangle of bags and feet when I see it. It’s a coal drop in the dusty corner, under a stray twirl of wood. In the next second I have it in my loose fist and I’m crawling to a slightly open window and the bug walks drunkenly into a bush.
I turn around and the two people on their fours have their heads buried in the bags and I get to their level with a dejected face. Sorry. She looks sorry too, and he smiles with his eyes and mouths “I know” and I make myself look sadder and say “The bug is dead.”
It’s easy to get away with it when they don’t ask carcasses for evidence.
