Sheryl was trying hard not to think about her watch. It was not something she could eschew. It was a vital tool, her unseverable tether to the surface, every bit as necessary as a diving bell. Nearly as anachronistic, too: a cheap old plastic quartz piece, connected to nothing. But what it gave in freedom it took back in attention, as persistent as the second hand diligently swinging around its orbit.
She redoubled her efforts to put it out of mind. The whole reason she was here, after all, was to take a break, to focus on the present. The present was all around her. It was between her fingertips in the form of a hundred blades of grass, the soil between them still soft and pliant from yesterday's rains.
The sun was shining now, a spring sun that couldn't quite take the chill out of the air, but it hardly mattered. It cast gorgeous light over the park, the kind that accentuates every color and makes the world feel unreal, as though she were in a saccharine old movie with the saturation juiced up.
She was not the only one to think of taking to the park. It was practically an obligation. Winter had just given up its grip on the world, and nice days were too precious to be squandered.
And yet, as she looked around her, it did seem that many had come not so much to take in the beauty of the green space, but simply to be seen among it. They sat clustered in the shade where the sun would not glare too badly off their screens, posed like monks in prayer: arms together, hands bowed, slabs of Gorilla Glass balanced in their hands like rosaries. From time to time, an arm outstretched in that iconic pose of self-documentation. It had long since transcended from cliché to mundane nothing, from proper to common noun. One might as well comment on people wearing clothes.
Sheryl was a stubbornly old soul in that regard. She still cringed a bit every time she saw someone engage in such practiced self-awareness. It was an irritation that never seemed to heal, a scab torn open with every selfie she witnessed. Dozens a day.
In a wide shot it all would have looked pretty idyllic. It was in the details, the inserts and cutaways, where her discontent became visible.
Further afield, groups of children were taking proper advantage of the park, jostling and tumbling in soccer matches or games of tag. They were younger than her, but not that much younger. The eldest players seemed to be about 15. In any case, she could remember how she had spent her days at that age, and it certainly hadn't been in play.
Sheryl could easily anticipate all the ways in which her envy at those kids, had she expressed it aloud, would have been rendered problematic by her teachers and peers. Those playing children were the victims of disparate access to technology and educational opportunity. To be jealous of them would be to engage in a fetishization of impoverishment, a reinstantiation of racist imagery dating back to the Noble Savage.
She didn't believe that herself. She was pretty sure the kids were just having fun. But that was what would be said.
She shook her head and sighed a little. These excursions were meant to calm her mind and afford her time to reflect, but of late she had been increasingly distracted by the expectations she had attempted to escape. There were two causes, really, and they weren't hard to identify.
The first was that Kelly was gone; her fellow diver into the depths of the present, trapped above the surface. She had been allowed her playtime, as her parents so dismissively called it, only so long as she could keep her grades up. But an A- in Calculus had called down the parental authority that they had for so long pretended didn't exist. Open-ended, exploratory learning had lost its luster once Kelly started exploring wrong, and to undesirable ends. They had sanctioned her secretly, and under some euphemisms meant to shield Kelly's parents from the judgment of their peers. An online post like a press release, dancing obliquely around the situation, explaining that Kelly needed “time to reflect, to recenter herself and rediscover her priorities.” As though to simply say she was grounded might make the sun explode.
That left Sheryl by herself. Without someone to talk to, alone time wasn't so fun.
The second problem was that that very same pressure was coming to bear on Sheryl. Her grades were fine. But Kelly's sanction had created a domino effect, and Sheryl's parents had started scrutinizing her activity with unprecedented vigor.
It was not enough to meet her obligations. There was now a perpetual interest in Sheryl's location, status, and most critically, her focus. Technological tools existed for the first two items. For the third, there was merely constant inquisition.
A cheap digital chime rang from her waist. This particular intrusion was self-imposed. She had set the alarm so she could allow her attention to wander like one of the pigeons that were scouring the lawn for crumbs. Today, she had failed.
She reached into her backpack, traded her cheap little Casio for her smartwatch, and powered on her phone.
The worst part of reconnecting was always the backlog, the flood of chaos that had built up over 40 minutes of peace; a debt that had to be paid, like an addict's owed dopamine.
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You: This is like the only time I have to myself. It's not like I'm doing fucking drugs out here. I'm sitting in the sun and reading a book. (Now)
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Sheryl squelched the impulse the throw her phone into a nearby tree, but just barely. She wanted to rage, to shout and slam doors and throw a proper teenage tantrum, but the opportunity had been robbed from her. Later maybe, but god only knew when she'd have the chance. Even sequestered in the close quarters of their apartment, Sheryl would barely see her mother, who would flit from call to webinar to happy hour with the girls without so much as looking up from her phone, eyes perpetually cast downward, ears perpetually shielded by noise canceling earbuds. Somehow, all the worst qualities of being stuck with her mother and being placed in solitary confinement would exist simultaneously.
She took in her surroundings one last time, trying to appreciate the neglected senses under-served by technology; the smell of the crisp grass, the tickle of the breeze on the back of her neck, the dappled warmth that fell across her skin through the leaves of a nearby tree. But most of all she felt the persistent, arrhythmic beating of the glass heart she held in her hand.