Opposite day
As I excitedly got up from bed for school, I looked around and realized something was extremely amiss. The light wasn’t shining through the curtains like usual. I peeked through the window and stared into the deep night. Something unsettling loomed over me, and I quickly shut the blinds.
It was supposed to be a bright early morning, but when I looked outside, I thought it was still nighttime. I slipped the blanket on again and tried to fall asleep. I had just shut my eyes when my mom called out, “Blake, come down for breakfast!”
“It’s the middle of the night; what do you mean, breakfast?” I shouted back. “Don’t act like you don’t understand. Do you know how hard it is to play along with your little jokes?” I rubbed my eyes, looked at my clock, and peered outside the window again—pitch dark. But, even though the clock clearly read 7 am, I reluctantly dragged myself downstairs. I couldn’t help but notice the unusual serenity in the way she toasted my bread. How calm she seemed, as if I was the only one who felt like the days outside were flipped.
After I finished a painfully long breakfast, I got dressed and headed to school. I struggled to realize that our entire grade level was marching backwards. I whipped my head around, and yet every single student was just strolling through the hallway like an obedient soldier.
As I marched into my literacy class, the teacher gave me a simple assignment: to read the whiteboard. Such a simple task required zero to no effort, yet I still stumbled across lines. My friend Charlotte whispered to me that I was making a fool of myself. Ms. Winton just looked away, and another student read out loud. His words were fine, but I looked straight ahead, and the lines were almost as if they were upside down.
I fell to the ground as I caught myself trying to march backwards. The hallway was unusually quiet except for the low hum of the water dispensers. Despite the awkwardness as I stumbled backwards, I continued to march backwards, but I made a beeline for the bathroom. I stared at myself in the bathroom and splashed cold water on my face. I looked down at the floor, wishing I could crawl into a hole and hide. I took a deep breath and braced for the door.
The fluorescent hallway lights hit me as I marched out of the bathroom. After school, I roamed around my house looking for answers. My parents weren’t going to be home for at least another hour or two. Photos of my family were obscured, and I was always left out. The beach trip last year had an eerily empty spot where I should have been standing. I flipped through for hours, hoping to find proof I existed somewhere in the house.
