"And the waiting! The waiting! The waiting! The waiting! The waiting!" 

- Princess Fiona, Shrek: The Musical (2009) 

-Graduate-

Call me by my username: Blush99

99 for the year I was born, and Blush for the Leo Mondragón album I’d already listened to twice trying to fall asleep on the red-eye to Osaka…

I packed a book for the flight in case I couldn’t fall asleep. Almost everyone around me has their neck-pillows out and their sleep-masks on. I’m obviously flying coach, so I’m elbow-to-elbow with two salarymen on either side of me. They snort and roll their heads around on occasion.

I reach underneath my seat to grab the book: Penetralia II: Acropolis of Obscura - by Aizawa Azuma.

The glossy cover features a gothic font, an imposing castle floating above a ghoulish landscape and, in the foreground, twin longswords crossed over the back of the novel’s protagonist. His bronze helmet tilts upward toward the spires of a moonlit castle. The cruciform hilts of his longswords are bejeweled with crystals the color of blood and grass. 

Ken left a doodle of himself and me together inside the front cover. Ken’s drawings of us had always had this sharp, hectic quality to them. He always drew us with cat ears and whiskers.

I turn the page and read the first lines of the novel.

As Castle Penetralia casts its long shadow over the Lonely Sea, my catamaran glides across the smooth surface of the water, slicing a tear through the full blood-moon.

I stand at the boat’s stern, looking back toward a continent three days out of sight.

The ship’s captain joins me. 

“There’s still time to turn back, my friend,” he says to me.

I regard him. It cost me the last of my fortune to bid passage across the Lonely Sea.

“If you won’t come to your senses, take this.” The captain extends to me a leather-bound journal. “It’s dangerous to go alone.”

I flip through the pages. There are notes scrawled in the margins: charts, maps, coordinates.

“Fill it with secrets,” the captain says to me, “or else turn back now…”

I close the book with a snap, securing it in my satchel. 

“I thank you,” I say.

“Will you touch it?” He asks me.

I do not answer.

“I can’t say I’ve ever understood it,” the captain goes on, sounding exasperated.

“What?” I ask.

“Nostalgia!” The captain laughs heartily and leaves my side. “Nothing good is worth remembering.”

I thumb to the end of the first chapter on page 33, and then further.

Why am I always tempted to flip to the last page of whatever book I’m reading? What makes me want to read the last line before I’ve even finished the first chapter?

Most of the windows on the flight are closed, others are half-open like drowsy eyes with big, black pupils.

I flip to the final page of the book-

Before I can read the last line, however, the cabin’s overhead lights dim, turning everything and everyone around me to dark outlines. 

I sigh and close the book. 

It’s for the better.

I can’t say I’ve ever understood my impulse to ruin things for myself. Must be a character flaw.