1 - Hello, World [https://i.postimg.cc/dQXjBwyh/01.png]
Does anyone keep records for who accidentally broke reality the quickest? Because I feel like managing it my first day of high school ought to be one.
“Ervin! Time to get up!”
The scales of sleep took their time sloughing off, but the aroma of pending breakfast kept me from falling right back into dreamland. Given the dim ‘7:16’ on the face of the ancient VCR Dad refused to chuck in the trash, I felt pretty justified in the bleary eyed glare I directed at Mom and the ‘Ervin’ sign hung on the door no more than twenty-some feet away from where she stood over the stove. There was absolutely no reason for Mom to have bothered with that level of volume, even if I’d actually been in my room. Everyone in our house, which could charitably be described as compact, could have heard her just fine if she’d only raised her voice a little.
I groaned a bit as I carefully pulled myself up and out of our couch’s jaws. The thing was practically as dated as the VCR or the hulking CRT perched on the squat TV stand above it, and blankets could only do so much to protect against the bite of its cracked leather. Swinging my feet down to the ground, I nearly kicked Dad’s highly mismatched and stained recliner by accident, the red monstrosity’s footrest extended a half foot past the edge of the couch. The unevenly faded fabric might not have hurt as much as banging my toe against the solid oak coffee table would have, but at least the coffee table kind of complimented the chocolate colored couch.
I made it precisely three steps before I stopped cold, having finally remembered what day it was. Well, it was Monday, specifically, which already made it not-a-great-day on principle. Monday meant grumpy, still slightly hungover Dad barely holding himself together as he got ready to return to work. Monday meant Mom plastering on a fake smile as she smoothed the metaphorical road between Dad and the garage as much as possible. Monday meant a meltdown might happen at any moment.
This particular Monday meant the first day of school.
Mom’s, “Oh don’t give me that look,” dragged me out of my head enough to register the unimpressed look she was throwing my way. She returned her attention to the stove, some stray locks of her sandy blond hair slipping free from her messy bun as she flipped what smelled like bacon. She was pulling out all the stops.
The call of bacon was a truly tempting one, but that morning a different temptation called to me.
“Uuuuooooh,” I moaned as I stumbled my way over to the chipped and worn, circular table tucked into the corner of the combination kitchen-dining room. Or so Mom always called it. It was smaller than the living room, and I never had understood how ‘two’ rooms could be smaller than one. “Uuuoooorrrp.”
I worried for a second I might be overdoing the acting, but I caught Mom’s brief, worried look in the corner of my eye as I slumped into the sole seat at the table that wouldn’t put her at my back. When she turned back to the bacon, my hand shot out to grab the pepper shaker as quickly and quietly as I could, flipping it over the palm of my cupped hand before clenching, flipping it back, and setting it in place again. A small amount of pepper but enough. Too much, and I might spill some and give up the game.
Under the guise of flopping forward onto the table, head in my hands and elbows on wood, I held the pepper right up to my nostrils. The effect was instantaneous, a sneeze tearing its way out of me then a second right behind it with a thick glob of mucus hot on its heels. Revolting. I would have wiped my hand immediately even if it hadn’t been necessary to quickly wipe up the first smear of snot to cover my tracks (black flecks might still be visible, after all).
I crumpled the leftover takeout napkin into a tiny ball in my palm and grabbed a second straight away, crossing my fingers and hoping another would sneeze would come before—
“Oh no… Let me see the color.”
Mom pulled the pan from the burner, haphazardly dumped the contents onto a plate covered in a paper towel, and started towards me. For a terror inducing second, I thought I was about to be had, my heart leaping into my throat, but then it turned out that was actually just the beginning of a full body sneeze. Caught off guard by my own reaction, I failed to grip my nose with another napkin in time.
Mom took one look at our tiny table half coated in smeared snot, declared, “I’ll get the thermometer,” and bustled down the short hall running the length of the house.
I flopped into the back of my seat and almost laughed. The perfect ploy, and I’d made it completely by mistake. The thermometer wasn’t anything to be too worried about. Mom had kept me home from school once when I had a scratchy throat, no temperature required. Still, it was the first day of school, and she might hesitate more because of it. Better safe than sorry.
I eyed the smattering of lumpy boogers strewn through the mess on the table, and before the rustling in the bathroom at the end of the hall stopped, I leaned forward and laid my left cheek down in the soggy snot and cracked my eyes to watch the kitchen entrance for Mom’s reaction when she came back in. Bile rose in my throat a bit at the sensation, and I didn’t try to fight it down. If I did barf, well, that’d make my case all the better.
Mom rounded the corner into the kitchen, thermometer in hand, and she did not disappoint. “Oh, sweetheart.”
My faux slurred, “I don’t feel good, Mama,” clinched the deal.
She turned and called down the hall, “Morgan!” and thankfully missed me wince. “Morgan!”
Again, there was no need for the volume. Mom trumpeting Dad’s name across the house was enough to summon Dad from my room, all uneven gait and grumbles. My nose saw him before I did, which was no surprise. He wore smoke like a cologne, a byproduct of both his hourly cigarette and Mom’s edict that said smoking be confined to my room—Dad’s room, for now.
“Why’re you waking—” Dad rounded the corner into the kitchen, his short, ruddy brown hair sticking up everywhere still. His rumbled complaint cut out when his dark eyes landed on me. “Oh damn, what happened? He looks like hell.”
“Just— Help me get him back to the couch, Morgan.”
Despite his rough voice and demeanor, Dad was careful as he pulled my arm over his shoulder and helped me up enough to slip my other arm around Mom. In the past, she might have asked him to handle moving me alone while she called the school, but he couldn’t manage that sort of thing since his work accident. Being shorter than them both, it was a bit awkward being sandwiched between the two of them, but they managed to get me back into the still lukewarm embrace of cracked leather and blankets, then Mom got some baby wipes that were half-dried with age and cleaned up my face.
The morning carried on from there without me. Mom and Dad went into what had once been their shared bedroom and had an argument I pretended I couldn’t hear. Eventually Mom emerged with a plastered smile and declared breakfast ready, prompting my brother, Booker, to finally grace us with his presence. He and Dad dug into the bacon and eggs while Mom set a few pieces of toast and a glass of water on the coffee table for me “just in case,” then before I knew it, everyone was gone, out the door to face the day.
I muttered a quiet prayer of thanks for my unbelievable luck, then nibbled on some toast before slipping back into unconsciousness, tired from a summer of sleeping in late and a week of sleeping on the couch.
I didn’t find out just how unbelievable my luck really was until that evening.
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I had homework. On the first day of school. For a class I hadn’t even attended.
Yes yes, I know that’s how it works. You can hardly blame me for being indignant about it though, right?
The VCR said it was 5:25 by the time Mom returned home from work, by which time I had ‘recovered’ enough to ensconce myself in a cocoon of blankets tucked into the crevice between the seat and arm of the couch where the cracked leather wasn’t quite as prevalent. I didn’t think she’d be especially suspicious to see me reading already, but I still pulled the novel I’d been devouring deeper into the blankets’ maw, tucking the old postcard I had been using as a bookmark in before closing it. Better safe than sorry.
It was hardly unusual to see Mom look drained after a day at work. Back when I’d been too young to stay at home by myself, she’d brought me with her on school holidays or when I’d been (genuinely) sick, tucking me away in an used conference room with some books and checking in whenever she could get away from the attorneys. She had to have days where things were calmer, but never when I was there.
Today she looked especially harrowed as she kicked off her heels next to the door and padded over our patchy rug to join me on the couch. She tugged a bit of blanket free from my nest to cover the cushion next to me and carefully sat down, making sure the cracks never sunk their teeth into her hose. As she did, I noticed she had a plain box tucked under her free arm.
“You look like you’re feeling better,” she remarked, my curiosity redoubling as she passed me the mystery box.
“Yeah,” I muttered, distracted. “What is this?”
A maybe—hopefully—present? I had been home ‘sick’ today, so I could imagine her getting me a small, ‘feel-better’ gift on her way home, but this was the length of my hand wide and half again as long. The wrong size altogether for a new drawing pad or book, not too mention too thin for the latter. And why would she put it in a box? That’d make sense if it were for a big occasion, but not for an impromptu gift.
The mystery didn’t last long, as Mom reached into the inner pocket of her suit jacket, explaining, “It’s a tablet,” as she did.
It took a moment for her explanation to register, and when it did, I thought Christmas—or maybe my birthday—had come early. Tablets were the purview of the rich kids whose phones had an on-screen digital keyboard when you needed to type. Kids like me didn’t have tablets; we had cheap flip phones that would survive being dropped better than a fancier model but marked us as social outcasts who were behind the times.
“School issued,” Mom continued as her hand came back out of her jacket with a piece of paper that had been folded then folded over again. “Kurt let me out early so I could run by the school and pick up your homework. Met your new computers teacher—interesting lady—and she said your class will be using these and you should get this assignment done tonight.”
An obligatory groan escaped me at the idea of homework on my first day, but no amount of schoolwork could dispel the excitement that had welled up in me. Okay, maybe not no amount, but it was—I eyed the assignment—a single sheet of paper. How bad could it be?
My performative dismay drew a laugh out of Mom, some of the darkness that had been weighing her down banished. “Feeling much better, I see. Well come on, quit your bellyaching and go take a shower before dinner, honey. You look like you’ve spent all day cooped up in blankets, and you smell like it too.”
As it turned out, that single piece of paper belied the depth of my assignment. But I wouldn’t figure that out until after dinner.
----------------------------------------
My brother got home while I was in the shower, and he made sure to let me know it by banging on the door.
“Why’d you lock the door, man?” he yelled through the wood, banging on the door again for good measure. “I gotta take a piss!”
“Not my fault!” I yelled right back before dunking my head under the stream to wash out the shampoo-conditioner. The mineral build up around the little nozzles had been bad for a couple years, making the already low water pressure even weaker. Mom had been asking Dad to fix it for ages, but if he’d done anything to it, I’d yet to notice.
“C’mon!”
Pulling my head back out of the water, I swept the strawberry hair out of my eyes and added, “I’ll be out in a minute.”
It technically took three minutes by my count, then another couple to dry myself off enough to pull on the spare clothes I’d laid out. He actually banged on the door again in the middle of me pulling on a shirt, prompting Mom to yell at him to quit it. But no, I wasn’t going to rush myself on Booker’s account, not when he refused to alternate nights on the couch with me.
“‘I need my sleep for class,’” I mocked under my breath as I finished drying my hair and moved to exit. “‘I’m paying for my education.’”
Maybe he heard me. Maybe he resented being made to wait so long. Or maybe he just really, really needed to pee because the moment I twisted the doorknob, Booker burst in and all but shoved me into the wall, a towering blur of pasty skin and short, ruddy brown hair as he rushed past to get to the toilet.
You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.
“Dude,” I complained as he immediately unzipped and whipped it out, completely unabashed. I hurried into the hall, throwing, “Wait ‘til I’m out first, would you?” over my shoulder as I went.
He laughed as I slammed the door, his voice carrying straight through the hollow door. “I ain’t got nuthin’ you don’t, little man!”
“Don’t abuse my door, mister!” Mom scolded from behind me before I could muster a response to Booker’s taunt.
“Sorry…” I mumbled, and apparently appeased, Mom disappeared around the corner again. The rebuke took the wind out of my sails, leaving my previously seething frustration at a simmer. “Disgusting,” I hissed as I ducked into my room.
I flicked on the lights, dispelling the shadows that clung to my bed, dresser, and desk. Dad’s clothes and accumulated junk were strewn over everything, and I eyed the very full ashtray on my desk with disdain and a pinched nose as I moved to the hamper and hung my towel over the lip to dry. The smoky musk that I associated with Dad had begun to cling to my room, lingering despite a half day having passed. God, how long would it take to get the smell out when I finally had my room back? Could I even get it out?
My heart stilled. Had it gotten into…?
I looked over my shoulder, which was stupid. I was alone, the door shut. The front door wasn’t that far away, but I’d hear it clearly. I’d have time. I got down onto my knees, looked under my bed, and swore. Dad had shoved some small boxes and storage containers underneath. When had he done that? Had he seen…?
I was digging before I could think better of it, pushing aside the unexpected clutter. It didn’t take me long to find my box, an old shoe box that stood out from the rest of the new denizens under my bed. I swore again. Dad had unwittingly shoved it deeper when he stowed his junk, the royal blue cardboard now firmly pressed against the back wall. That color had helped me find it immediately, but that was the last thing I wanted with Dad living out of my room.
I swore a third time. I grabbed the beams of the bed frame, pulled myself in deeper, and reached. My joints screamed at me for the abrupt abuse, but I managed to hook my finger through the cutaway hole in the lip and tug it closer. I scrambled to get out, haphazardly pushing Dad’s stuff back into a semblance of order as I passed, hoping and praying his habitual messiness meant he wouldn’t notice everything under there was in a different order.
I was half out when the front door opened. I mentioned my unbelievable luck, didn’t I? I wasn’t talking about this, but this too, why not.
It was a miracle my shirt didn’t catch on something and tear, I pulled myself out from under that bed so fast. The heavy thunk of Dad’s boots got closer, his unhurried pace sounding so much more menacing and quick than it really was. I sprung to my feet and kicked a storage bin jutting out back into place and stepped towards my closet to try and hide the box there but Dad’s footsteps were outside the door and there wouldn’t be enough time to—!
The door to my room opened and Dad stepped in, saying something over his shoulder to Mom or Booker, words my brain, which was currently crashing, couldn’t process. And maybe it was that hard reboot or maybe it was a touch of divine inspiration, but right at that moment, I realized a key fact that I hadn’t until I saw Dad standing in the door frame:
I was holding a shoe box. I could work with that.
“Hey, Dad.” To this day, I don’t know if I actually managed to sound as nonchalant as I hoped I did. I’d ask Dad, but, well… You know. “How was work?”
“Oh, hey kiddo,” he said, distracted. He dropped his boots inside the door with a heavy thunk. “What’s with the shoes?”
"Need 'em for PE," I lied through my teeth.
“Okay.”
Then he was gone. Down the hall to the bathroom, no doubt for a shower to wash away the dust and grime from a day at the construction site. I could’ve cried—and nearly did—the relief that washed over me was so overwhelming. I grabbed my book bag out of the closet, having never gotten around to retrieving it thanks to my impromptu sick day, and shoved the shoe box inside before zipping it tight and depositing it by the front door. I’d have to figure out a better hiding place tomorrow on my walk to the bus stop.
In desperate need of something to calm my nerves, I curled up on the couch with my book to squeeze in a few more chapters while Dad took his shower. Mom had gotten dinner started at some point, and while I couldn’t figure out what veggie she was heating up in the pot on the stove from smell alone, but the other smell wafting in from the kitchen was one I recognized as the lasagna that had been in the freezer.
The only thing I’d eaten that day was the few pieces of toast Mom laid out for me that morning. I was famished, so when Mom declared dinner was ready, I was all too eager to cram in around our tiny table—long since cleaned of my snot—with the rest of the family, pray over the lasagna and veggies, and dig in.
“So,” Dad said, pausing to tuck his face into his elbow and cough as I cut into my lasagna. “So, you seem like you’re feeling better, Erv?”
“Morgan…” Mom warned, face pinched in a frown.
I paused, the bit of lasagna I’d carved off halfway to my mouth. I couldn’t quite meet Dad’s dark eyes.
“I’m just making sure he feels better.”
My eyes bounced between them, unsure where I ought to be looking—where it was safe to look. “Uh, yeah. I fell back asleep until… noon? I think it was noon. Didn’t feel as bad when I woke up.” All true. I did fall back asleep until noonish, and when I woke up, my nose felt much better than it had after I crammed pepper up my nostril.
“So it wasn’t anything serious then.”
“Morgan.”
“Lynn, I’m just—” He cut himself off with a sigh. “I’m trying to make sure our boys grow up strong, alright?”
He meant me. Booker was practically his spitting image, tall and imposing. They even had the same ruddy brown hair, though Booker kept his styled neatly, something Dad didn’t bother with. “Hard hat would just ruin it,” he’d always said. I was still most of a head shorter than Mom,
“This is neither the time nor place—”
“It’s never the time or place with you—!”
I set my forkful of lasagna down onto my plate with a thunk of metal on plastic, hunger gone. “I’ll be outside,” I said as I left, not that anyone heard. Mom and Dad wouldn’t surface for the next quarter hour at best, and Booker… Well, he just didn’t care.
On my way out the door, I grabbed the tablet and the paper folded twice over that had come with it.
You know, it’s funny, I hadn’t really thought about why I grabbed the tablet on the way out until now. I was just focused on getting out. Outside, out of that situation, out of my life. Didn’t really notice I’d brought it along until I’d made my way to the trellis around back and climbed my way up like the vines had until I was up on the roof. But now that I’ve told you about that encounter with Dad, I think maybe that was it? I really did have PE, not that I needed anything in that box for it, so maybe claiming I did got me thinking about what I needed to do for school the next day.
Maybe that matters, maybe it doesn’t, but I think it’s funny how it all comes back to that box. But hey, I’ll get to that in a bit. First—the tablet and the assignment.
“Oh, hello,” I told the tablet after I’d sat down on the shingles and finally, properly noticed its presence. A perfectly normal, entirely sane response to realizing I had surprised myself. I stared at the blank expanse of carefully folded cardboard for a moment then turned it over. Just as blank on the bottom, but for a few teeny little strips of tape securing the lid to the bottom. “Aw, you’re all askew. Where’s the showmanship, huh? Where’s the pizazz?”
I paused to peer around the box, checking the backyard behind ours. All clear.
When the box didn’t talk back (Not that I had expected it to!), I decided to turn my attention to a marginally better conversational partner: The paper folded then folded again. It couldn’t talk back either, not really, but Mom had mentioned an assignment that, presumably, had been printed on said paper. A one-way communication from my computers teacher, a little command to me and the rest of my class.
It was kinda presumptive, when you think about it. Ms. Yorran (As I was about to find out was her name) had no doubt met at least some of the rest of the class by the time she handed the assignment out, but she hadn’t yet when she printed out the couple dozen copies wherever the teacher workroom was at JEM HS. She didn’t know the first thing about any of us, so who was she to be doling out assignments on the first day of school?
I unfolded the paper then unfolded it again, smoothing out the wrinkled paper as much as I could. I didn’t really think of the way it was folded as being memorable at the time, but it makes sense why I’d remember it in hindsight. What mattered to me right then was what she’d printed on it.
“Dear Ervin…”
It was addressed to me in particular, the sort of try-hard thing that flagged her as either a teacher fresh out of college (that one) or otherwise a teacher who’d made teaching her whole life. Half letter, half set of instructions, the paper began with a brief introduction I presumed she’d given that day in class (she had), which was followed by the assignment and a set of basic instructions for how to use some of the apps that she’d preinstalled on the tablet.
“Please feel free to experiment with any app you’d like, but don’t forget to do your assignment,” I concluded, reaching the bottom of the letter. Ms. Yorran had actually punctuated that sentence with an exclamation mark, but my live reading didn’t quite muster the same level of enthusiasm.
“Huh.” The late summer sun had begun to set, and I didn’t have much faith in my ability to read the instructions by the sliver of moonlight I’d get from the waxing crescent moon hanging overhead, so I turned my attention back to the box. “Thought I’d signed up for an easy ‘A…’”
I cut the little tape with the edge of my fingernail and popped the lid off, setting it aside. The tablet itself was on top, tucked in a neat little semi-transparent bag that reminded me of the strip of frosted glass along the top of our shower. I pulled that out, cradling it to my chest for fear of accidentally dropping it off the roof, then checked the rest of the box. I ignored the owner’s manual and little slip regarding the warranty and examined the little black box and coiled cable. It took me a second to place why they looked familiar; Mom had something similar for the phone her work had given her.
I replaced the lid over the extraneous stuff. On to the star attraction. “Okay, to turn you on, I…”
It took me maybe ten minutes to get the tablet on and to drudge up the half forgotten password to our wifi, an amenity we had solely because it was somehow cheaper to get our phone and cable if we also got internet with them. Go figure.
There, beneath the last of the instructions—How to Connect to Your Home Wi-Fi—sat the assignment she’d asked me to do before class tomorrow.
Pick a topic about computers you think could be interesting and prepare a few things to say about it in front of the class.
I considered that for a second, humming to myself to try and drown out what I could hear of the arguing still running full throttle in the house beneath me. A sinking thought occurred. “Is she just making me do this…?”
I didn’t doubt she’d asked the whole class to do the same, but had she done that with them today? If she had, would she put me on the spot in front of everyone tomorrow? I was going to really, really regret having skipped if he did, I thought.
“Okay, just— what do I do? Not an obvious topic, that probably wouldn’t look good…”
“You could search the web for ideas.”
I nearly jumped out of my skin, clutching the tablet to my chest and glaring at the girl in the yard behind ours, who I had failed to notice approaching with my attention fixed on the tablet. “Jesus, Dani!”
“Hiya, Erv!” Dani said with a little wave completely at odds with my shock and exasperation, her free hand swishing her knee-length skirt back and forth, the floofy white fabric a stark contrast against her dark, tanned skin
I dragged my eyes back up to hers. “How long have you been down there?”
“Minute or so. Why weren’t you at school?”
I shouldn’t have been surprised, but somehow I always was. It was hardly the first time she’d interrupted me when I wanted to be alone, and I hadn’t yet figured out why she did it. We’d grown up behind each other, but we never really talked much back then, just idle chatter to and from the bus stop.
“I was sick,” I eventually replied, once I’d gotten my racing heart under control.
“You don’t look sick.”
“I was sick. I got better.”
Dani nodded, apparently satisfied by that answer, her glasses catching the last of the fading light as she did. “If you want an interesting topic to talk about, ask a search engine. Ms. Yorran had us do that today for a bit.”
My heart sank a bit in suspicion. “Did she have everyone give their topics in class?”
“Had everyone stand in turns, mhm.”
Okay, yeah. I definitely needed to find a very interesting topic. “Thanks, Dani.”
“You’re welcome!” she chirped. “If you’re doing homework, then would you like to be left alone?”
“Yes, please.”
She gave me a final nod, light glinting off glass, then twirled around and flounced across the backyard. Dani’s house was similar in size to ours, but where our house was older and assembled from brick, hers had been flipped and sold to her family when I was 7. Its exterior used to be brick as well, I think, but I was so used to the tan vinyl covering it now that I wasn’t sure. Among other additions, the previous owner had knocked out a section of the wall separating the dining room from the backyard and installed a sliding glass door that led to a tidy little concrete landing.
Dani slipped through the spaces between the scraggly bushes dotting the property line between our yards, then she disappeared through the glass door. A breeze followed her departure that left me shivering for a moment. Beneath me, I heard another shout, the tar and shingles muffling Dad’s deep rumble enough I couldn’t make out most of what he had said.
I understood, “Ervin,” though.
My teeth hurt from clenching as I pulled my legs up into my chest and wrapped my arms around them, tablet in hand. I unlocked it and tapped the browser app. “Okay, here’s the search engine. Let’s try… um… ‘Interesting topics about computers.’”
That produced a lot of results. So many I felt faint just thinking about sifting through them all and had to tap the home button to stop my head from swimming.
“Too— too much. Um. O-Okay. I just… just need to be more specific?” I exhaled, still a bit shaky but better as I pondered that conundrum. How could I be specific if I didn’t know what I was looking for? It took me a few minutes to realize I was coming at the problem from the wrong angle; the answer, as it happened, was looking me right in the face.
“Oh! The apps!” Ms. Yorran had preinstalled several, the home screen littered with them, and I noticed one in particular straight away, the icon a little ‘The’ set into the mouth of a funky ‘C’ surrounded by squiggly symbols I didn’t recognize.
Logo for 'The Coder' App [https://i.postimg.cc/PxJ1WRfb/Recursive-The-Coder-removebg-preview.png]
“‘The Coder,’” I murmured, reading the name listed below it. “That’s hacking stuff, right? Is she gonna teach us that?”
I opened the browser again and, careful to avoid looking at the number of previous search results, searched instead for ‘interesting coding topics.’ I swore and pinched my eyes shut when, again, the engine spat out an exorbitant amount of sites.
“Fine! Just— just something random!” I hissed as I stabbed the glass with my fingertip. I waited a beat, cracked my eyes to check, then opened them properly when I saw a new page had appeared. “… recursion?”
I don’t remember exactly what the page said—I hadn’t made that change yet—but you know what recursion is. A question that asks itself; M. C. Escher’s Relativity on steroids; a loop. Three letters, one doubled—repeated—that spell a whole world of trouble if you don’t know what you’re doing. And little Ervin? The ‘me’ from that day? Not a clue.
“Now this looks promising,” I muttered as I glanced at the example provided, a function for reversing whatever word you gave it.
As I looked it over, Dad’s voice boomed through the roof. I knew there were words, but all I heard—all I felt—was sound and pain. My teeth hurt. They hurt so much, like that sound have stolen into them and gotten stuck, bouncing and reverberating and shaking as it ground their insides and left them hollow pits, empty black voids that sucked me in and never let go, a free fall I couldn’t stop. Bickering. Arguing. Fighting. Always something, usually me. That day, about me and because of me.
They wouldn’t be fighting if I had gone to school.
And I get it. Even now, I get it. I understand why little Ervin copied that function and opened The Coder. I understand why he latched onto that idea of reversing a word. I understand.
If a bit of code could reverse a word, then why couldn’t it reverse a day?