The Knowing
Seven pm, Tuesday night. I know.
All around me, the room hums along as if nothing unusual has happened , as if the world is still in its correct place. Josh carries on his card game; EJ laughs at something Frederick said. Someone pockets a ball in the pool table in the other room, and there is a cheer of victory. But right here, sitting along the wall, I suddenly retreat inside my own head for a moment, the outside sounds growing dim.
I know.
I couldn’t tell you what I know. But there has been a change, a shift in energy, perhaps. Something has happened. Something about the world is different than it was the moment before, and I just know.
The feeling gradually wears away, and the certainty of it fades over the night, but for that one moment I knew.
We are greeted with tragic news at school the next day. One of the seniors was driving home last night when she got into a wreck somehow and died. She was a friend of Shamia’s, who I will embrace in sympathy when I next see her.
I don’t now remember the girl’s name. I will remember that Matt died the following year, his car flipped over in a creek only a mile or two from his house; and that Adrian died in our senior year, a boy I didn’t know well but had shared classes with since sixth grade. But it is the Nameless Girl I will…
