Passing Time

Words By Friends

Dear Republic,

There are good ships and wood ships and ships that sail the sea, but the best ships are friendships and always will be. In The Republic of Letters’ constant campaign for uplift — you know, for everybody who isn’t George Orwell — we asked contributors to bring in the work of a friend of theirs who deserves to be widely read. This flash fiction piece is by Hannah Smart, submitted by Joseph Hoeffner.

-ROL

PASSING TIME

You’ve never excelled at passing time. Right now, you’re picking up various grimy, faded tabloid magazines off the ugly little coffee table in the waiting room’s center and pretending to read them. Your mom is doing that nervous thing where she taps her foot and looks alternately up at the ceiling and down at her watch. You could measure the rhythm of her ceiling- and watch-glances and set a metronome to it. The air conditioning pants erratically as it spars with the summer’s suffocating heat.

The doctor is late. That’s what your mom told you, at least. She also told you that this is not a typical doctor. A special doctor—that’s what she called him—but you didn’t quite understand. There’s lots you don’t understand. You’re eleven years old and “not a problem child,” according to your teachers. Also “a pleasure to have in class” and “eager to maximize [your] educational prospects” and possess “a keen curiosity about the world around [you], an impressive creative drive, and a remarkable grasp of the subject matter.” You start seventh grade next month. You skipped fifth, and your teachers recommended you skip sixth too, but your mom feared it might “stunt [your] social development.”

A boy and his father are seated directly across from you. The boy looks about your age and is handsome—blindingly blue eyes, a scrawny build, and bangs swept across his forehead in a cool manner you could never pull off without looking like you’re trying too hard (it’s 2008, so sweeping one’s bangs across one’s forehead is considered very stylish and in-vogue for the youths). You’re unsure whether you’re attracted to him or jealous of him. Maybe both. His dad is resting his left boot on his right knee and reading a magazine with a big silver truck on the front. The truck skids through some sort of mud pile, masculinely kicking up sludge. You strain to meet the boy’s eyes and give him what you hope is a genuine and non-forced-seeming smile. He clicks a finger gun at you in response. He hasn’t noticed that you’re a girl.

And neither have you, really. The girls in your grade wear tight jeans and low-cut, sparkly shirts that show off their curves. They date boys and make imperceptible adjustments to their makeup in their locker mirrors, blinking exaggeratedly. Their hips sway when they walk. You walk with your school binder against your flat chest, your gaze turned to the floor. If someone handed you a makeup brush, you wouldn’t know which side to use.

The magazine you’re currently pretending to read is called GLAMOUR. Its cover advertises “101 racy little sex ideas” and features a blonde woman with her chin on her fist and her elbow on her thigh, but the pose looks somehow natural—like the photographer just happened to catch her sitting like this, sexily hunched over and optimally photogenic. You cross one leg over the other and attempt to copy her. The boy laughs either with or at you. He asks whether you’re Deep In Thought. He says his dad told him that if you get too Deep In Thought, you end up here, at the special doctor’s office. You’re pretty sure he’s making some sort of joke. You wait for what feels like an appropriate amount of time and pretend to laugh and then go back to pretending to read. You’ve always been good at pretending.

The special doctor enters the lobby—first with his head and then with his entire body. He wears a nice black suit and has a kindly, clean-shaven face. He asks for Kyle. The boy and his father follow him into the unknown. Your mother looks at her watch and whispers Why are medical establishments are always falling so far behind? Her whisper has real physical force to it. If she were running this thing, she’d keep to a tight schedule. In her opinion, the world is not as uptight and rigid as it should be. You nod and pretend to read the racy sex ideas, careful not to comprehend too much. You barely understand what sex even is, and you’re not sure you want to understand more.

After a short stretch of time that feels infinitely long, the boy exits the unknown, but you don’t make eye contact. You’ll never know whether he waved goodbye; this will be for the best. There’s lots you’ll never know.

But you’re pretty sure you know what will happen next. The special doctor will call you into the office and ask you some questions. He’ll assure you that there are no wrong answers despite leaning in real close and narrowing his eyes and nodding slowly the way teachers lean in and narrow their eyes and nod slowly when they’re trying to understand how one of the dumber kids arrived at the wrong answer he or she just gave. People do this to you often—insist that you’re right while looking at you like you’re wrong. Your mom is doing it right now.

You’ll pass the seventh grade with flying colors. You’ll shake the governor’s hand while he commends you on your successful maximization of educational prospects. You’ll marry a nice boy with normal bangs and become pregnant through some adult magic whose specifics are unclear to you now. You’ll deliver a “healthy” child and someday bring her right back here to where you currently sit, imagining all this.

Well, not here, exactly. By then, this special doctor will have retired, and this office will have been renovated into an apartment. But somewhere like this.

You’ll tap your foot and check your watch. You’ll bemoan the world’s irrigidity. And the girl seated on your left—the one you hoped and prayed would end up normal and happy and un-special—will turn another page of the magazine she’s pretending to read, passing time, Deep In Thought.

Hannah Smart’s work has appeared in West Branch, The Boston Globe, The Harvard Advocate, Puerto del Sol, SmokeLong Quarterly, and other publications. She is the founder and editor in chief of experimental journal The Militant Grammarian, holds a BA from Middlebury College, and is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Southern Mississippi.