I wake up to the soft, lilting music that scrapes through my ears. I get ready to go to school. But I just can't force myself to go today. I just can't do it all again. Not when I can't convince myself that it's for a purpose. So I get my bag and wander around aimlessly through the city. 

Every shop and restaurant and studio and whatnot is tailored to be eye-catching and attention-grabbing. And the trees and flowers that line the road are designed to be beautiful. But nothing catches my interest as I walk in silence, headphones off. I get a lot of curious glances, walking with my backpack, no headphones, and no company. I find myself drifting off in thoughts of discontent.

I end up face to face with the Wall. The Wall that keeps the city closed in. There's nothing beyond the Wall, all the teachers told us this over and over and over again. Nothing but empty wasteland. The textbooks told us this again and again as well. That there is nothing beyond the Wall. But I can't help but feel pulled to it. Maybe it's the pull of the void. But maybe it's something else. 

If there was truly nothing beyond the Wall surely they wouldn't build a wall. 

There are barely any people this far out. The streets are dusty and occasionally a piece of sidewalk is broken. It's still all too much. But amidst boarded up windows and perching seagulls I almost feel safe. The closest to safe I have felt in a while without the company of Elliot and Marcus. I wish they were here. 

The Wall would be beautiful if it was better maintained. All along its vast stretch scenes are painted in half-peeled paint. Artists without names whose work will dissolve into nothingness. It's just as well, I think. If the Wall was beautiful I don't think I could bear it. I don't think anyone in this vast and sparkling city could. I wish Marcus and Elliot were here. 

I end up messaging them on my phone. They can't get out of school. But they can meet me after. I pace back and forth and back and forth. It's twilight by the time they show up. But we're teenagers. We can stay out all night and no-one will bat an eye.

They ask me how I'm doing. They ask me what I'm doing. They ask me why I'm here. Marcus smiles at me with that soft smile of his. Elliot questions with his big, dark eyes. 

The answer I give surprises everyone, including me.

"I want to go beyond the Wall." 

We're all silent for moments or maybe hours. Taking that in.

"You can't go beyond the Wall," Elliot tells me. 

"And why not?" I ask, agitated. 

"Because there's nothing there." 

"I'm sorry but I have to agree with him," Marcus says. I feel more betrayed than I've ever felt in my life.

"Well I am going. You two can come with me or you can stay here but I'm getting out of this godforsaken city." I turn around. Steel myself in resolve. Make sure they can't see me cry. And I run off. 

"Wait! Taylor!" Marcus calls out after me. 

"What?!" I choke out through sobs.

"I'm sorry but it's dangerous. I don't want you to get hurt." 

"Do you want me to spend the rest of my life in this city? Where everything is perfect and beautiful and empty and cold?" I turn around. And I see that Elliot is crying as well. 

"I care about your happiness," Elliot asservates, "but I can't let you get hurt." 

"Do you care about my happiness? Do you really? Because I used to think that you did but now I'm not sure." 

"Taylor. Please. We don't want you to get hurt."

"Well it's my decision what I do. You guys can come along or you can stay but you can't stop me." 

I've made my decision. I walk into the night. 

I start thinking of ways to break the Wall. It's an impossible task. But I have to do it anyways. The night glows dark and eerie around me. The city is less powerful here. Less crowded and glittering. I don't notice it. I don't notice my surroundings at all. My mind is racing in one direction and one direction only. 

I almost don't notice my phone buzzing in my pocket. But I get it out and I check it nonetheless. It's our group chat. 

/We can't stand staying here either. We're coming with you./ - Marcus

/Sorry for being a duffler./ - Elliot. 

/Meet you at the end of Occipital Road. Tomorrow evening./ - Me. 

/Perfect./ - Marcus. 

For the first time in my entire life I have a sense of purpose. 

———

I go to school and I focus on nothing. Not the beautiful paintings and diagrams on the walls. Not the sculptures that line the windows. Not the students in bright, new clothes and styled hair. Not the teachers teaching who knows what. Not the conversation that drifts around me. Not my friends who ask why I'm being so rude. I only notice that I have to meet my loves at the end of the day. And I have a purpose. For the first time in my life. 

Everything feels faded around me. It still all feels overwhelming, feels like too much. But not as much as it used to be. My whole soul feels like it's coiled in wait, ready to spring into the sky that isn't truly blue. I feel like I am walking into the sky, as the seconds tick down one by one and I count each and every one of them.

People comment on my sloppy makeup, on my messy hair. I do not care. I barely hear them. Who are they to me anyways? Simply people who will never understand. Who never need to understand. I can live my life without caring about what they think. 

After school I slip my backpack on my back and have to prevent myself from running out the doors. I can't be seen to be rushing. Suspicion is already on me anyways. I can do this one thing to keep eyes off me, I can walk like a normal person ready to go about their normal day. 

And I do walk like a normal person. I walk past shop after shop after shop with their large windows and sidewalk displays. I walk past kiosk after kiosk selling things. I walk past restaurants with glittering signs and bars that would probably allow me in and cafes with sweet aromas. I walk past virtual reality stations and movie theatres and dance studios and art classes and indoor playgrounds and exit rooms and museums and art galleries and haunted houses and dance halls and so many more bits of the city. 

I don't see any of them. I don't want to see any of them. I only see the way the avenues go down and down and down as I walk towards the west end of Occipital Road. 

I hope no-one is looking at me. My makeup and hair is less easy to notice under the bright harsh light of the daylight outside. I melt into the crowd as I chew on my anxiety. Just another teenaged girl with a backpack taking a walk after school. Not anyone who wants to cause trouble. Not anyone who will cause any sort of trouble at all. 

I think about calling Elliot or Marcus. But what will I say to them? I want to say it all. But I can't. Not here. It's too dangerous. But if I start talking to them I don't think I'll be able to stop myself from blurting our everything in a rush of excitement. I can barely keep my emotions as contained as they are. They bang against the dam I've built inside me, wanting to rush out in an unrestrained torrent of hope and dreams and not knowing and glory. I think about texting my boyfriends. But I don't think I'd be able to stop the mischief and danger that would light my smile if I did. 

Best to wait until we get to the Wall. The monolith that everyone is too scared to go near. The behemoth that keeps the streets directly around it empty save for occasional stragglers. Occasional stragglers like us. 

As I get closer and closer to the Wall my heart pounds harder and harder in my chest. Until I'm dead afraid that everyone can hear the way that it thuds and bangs inside my rib cage. Until I'm afraid that it will break out of my rib cage and spill onto the streets in a stream of not-really-red. 

I don't even have a plan yet. I don't even know if what I'm doing is remotely possible. There's no way that it can be possible. Not with how thick and high the Wall is. Not with the way it extends up and up and up into the sky. Not with the way everyone fears it. Nobody has ever even considered it a possibility that the Wall can be passable. Not from anything I've ever heard. 

But I know it's possible. I don't know how I know. I don't know for what reason I know this. I don't think there is a reason. I just know deep in the marrow of my bones that it is possible. I know beyond reason. Beyond logic. Beyond any sanity or sense. I know with a certainty with which I have never known anything before. With a surety that I have never felt about anything. Beneath my bones, beneath my heart, beneath my soul, there is the knowledge that the Wall can be passed. This knowledge is so intermixed with hope and yearning that the yearning is part of the surety and the surety is part of the hope. It all lives together inside me and blends into every part of me until I think it forms the very foundation of my being. I don't know where I end and where hope begins.

I have never felt such hope before. It's more beautiful than anything that can be seen or heard or touched or tasted. It's more intense than anything that I knew existed. I've never known true intensity before this. But the intensity is so much that it's eating me up inside and leaving me silently screaming in maddened glee. 

I don't think I have a single shred of sanity left in me anymore. I don't think I can ever go back to being what I was before all of this happened. I don't think I can ever go back to that life. Full of things and fun and dancing and fullness and emptiness. I would rather die first. I would rather die. 

Death is much like the Wall. It's terrifying. Daunting. Nobody thinks of it. Nobody speaks of it. Nobody goes near it. But it looms ever present at the edges of our existence. And no one knows what lies beyond. But at the end of the day it offers an escape from the city and all its excesses. I never was afraid of death. In the same way that I never was afraid of the Wall. I've told nobody but Marcus and Elliot this, but I've always looked at death with a secret sort of curiosity and a mute sort of yearning. 

But I am bolder now. I will never be silent anymore. I will never be pushed down into conformity.

Conformity. I never knew how present it was in the city before now. Sure there is great diversity. So many colours and patterns and styles. But at the end of the day it's all the same. Beyond the surface level it's all the same. It's all thoughtless, heartless, never ending revelry of which I was never properly a part.

And so I will run. 

The crowds are thinning and that is doing much to quell my anxiety. I'm more afraid of the people of the city than I am of the Wall. But each step that I take closer to the Wall I grow more scared anyways. Not of the Wall itself, no, but of being discovered. Yet each step I take closer to the Wall I grow more infatuated and more addicted. It's all too much. 

My heart cheers relieved as I step behind an abandoned building at the end of Occipital Road, at the base of the Wall. Unnoticed and unbothered I slip there. And finally there is silence. Finally there is stillness. 

I fall down upon the hard, rough, concrete ground. I relish how hard and rough it is against my thighs. I lie on my back and look up at the sky. And against my better judgement I let it lull me to sleep.