Leslie Price

“I feel totally brain dead.”

Sarah rolled her eyes. “Then maybe you shouldn't stay up until two in the morning watching Nick at Night.” Leslie just groaned. This wasn't about the reruns, though she did love her some classic Saturday Night Live. This was about the muted zombie buzz behind her eyes. She was becoming one of the living dead; she just knew it.

The cafeteria was abuzz. Leslie liked that word. 'Abuzz.' It was like she was sitting in the middle of an oversized beehive, all the giant worker-bees humming around her. If she closed her eyes, it just might be so.

“What are doing?” Jen.

“I'm communing with the hive mind.”

This got a baffled laugh. “What?”

“Nevermind.” Leslie cracked her eyes open, wincing at the bright cafeteria lights. “Why does life have to suck so much?”

There was a pause, then Sarah sighed and placed a limp hand against her forehead. “Oh woe is Lezzie.”

This made Jen laugh. She cupped a bowl in her hand and held it at an arm's length. “Alas, poor Lezzie, I knew her well.”

Now everyone was laughing, and Leslie just groaned again and dropped her head onto the table. “Wake me when you're done with drama class.”

Remarkably, their teasing didn't end there. Steph joined in with an O'Hara impersonation, “I will never know Lezzie again!” And then her jackass boyfriend had a stab at it, too. Leslie did her best to just tune them out. Really, it wasn't all that hard. She could feel the darkness hovering just at the edge of consciousness. If she just relaxed a little, she could beckon it in. It would envelop her, and she wouldn't have to listen to anyone for another glorious five or ten minutes. Perhaps the teachers wouldn't notice her lying face down on the table, either, and they'd just let her sleep and sleep until all the school crumbled around her. She'd wake up a hundred years from now in the ruins of American civilization. Moss would be growing over the concrete husks of the strip malls; great forests would have torn through the roofs of subdivision homes. Yes, she could feel it. The darkness was settling in. Sleep was coming. Let it wash over her like the tide.

She was just about under when the table began rattling. Leslie jolted awake, only to find her friends pounding on the table and cracking up. “What's your malfunction, you jackasses!” The tables around them fell silent, and for a tense moment Leslie worried that the monitors overheard her, too. She twisted around to look at where they always stood, and like a pack of prairie dogs, each of her friends turned to look the same way, too. Vice-Principal Elroy was standing by the exit with a couple of teachers, but they were so engrossed in their conversation that they hadn't noticed. Leslie sighed, and then turned back to her friends. In a stage whisper: “One day, you'll be like I am now. You'll be tired and eager for sleep. Yes, you will. And when that day comes, I will know. I will know, and I will be there.”

This made the others laugh again, so Leslie yawned and put her head back down. If they interrupted her sleep again, there would be hell to pay. She knew where each of those fuckers lived. And, she had a car now, too. She'd drive to their houses one after the other, her car rumbling beneath her, rocking her back and forth like a sailor in her ship. The waves would lap at the side of the boat, murmuring to her as she fell asleep. She would lean on the rail, slowly dozing off, until finally she tumbled over and sank deep into the sea. The water was soft and warm as cotton. The outside world with its bright lights and noise was still there, but it was muffled and faint. This must be how a baby feels in the womb. And that was the last thought she had until the bell woke her for AP World History.