What is it with the fancy beginnings?

He threw the book he had on his desk across the room. Each page fluttered until it crumpled on the ground like a dying butterfly.

He understood the need to make an impression on a stranger. In a new school, one can put on a new mask, a new persona, to seem as appealing to the other students as possible. A smiling face, the right combination of clothes, and the seamless flow of conversation usually didn’t fail to catch attention.

After all, you never forget the first time you meet someone.

But novels, oh novels, they sounded so dramatic. They felt as forced as essay grabbers –one meant to lure you in to read whatever nonsense came after the first paragraph. These novels and their fantastical tales were interesting enough to pass the time, but the introductions and the flowery sentences meant to hook him felt like a façade.

Each one he read over the summer fluttered back in his mind:

His eyes glowed like a jewel-

Her hair, tendril-like, embraced her-

Their eyes followed, wide as the moon-

She kept running, panic flooding her chest-

He slapped his wrist, cutting off the stream of thoughts before they annoyed him further.

There was a time and place for everything, and now, apparently, was not the time to anxiously pour over YA novels. Instead, he chose to do what he always did at exactly 5:43 A.M.: organize.

First, his desk. Everything looked correct… but it didn’t feel correct. His lamp and pencil pouch sat on the left, while his case and line of pill bottles sat on the right. They all formed a perfect, invisible rectangle. His fingers touched the bottles, moving them slightly, like a teacher prodding her students back in line.

Flawless.

Next, his shelf. He counted each book on the top and bottom shelf. Twenty-six. An even number. Even numbers meant bad luck.

Luckily, he had the perfect remedy. He shoved the small book from the floor, almost thin enough to be a pamphlet, into the top shelf. Twenty-seven.

The last check on his list sat on his windowsill. A small cactus, a flower, and his ID lanyard and glasses sat peacefully under the light blue light streaming through the blinds.

Having something other than yourself alive in your house keeps insanity away. If something else feels distorted or if anxiety eats away at your brain, another living being keeps watch. It’s the same reason a loner may keep a dog or a cat, so that some being can cry out as a witness if they died.

The blue clump of forget-me-nots bloomed proudly, the cacti reached up timidly. As long as these two breathed, he was fine.

And then, like music to his ears, his timer hummed on the desk beside his bed. Seventeen minutes had passed. 6:00 A.M. It was time.

Time to leave for school, that is. Nothing special was stationed to happen today, of course. His calendar was empty. He didn’t live in a post-apocalyptic world, as some of the characters in his books did. He just needed to go to High School, breathe for a few hours under watch of some teachers, and go home as normal.

He placed the ID around his neck, his glasses on his face, and his bookbag on his back, and mechanically stepped in a ninety-degree angle around his bed and out the door.

He floated through the hallway, each step clicking on the tiled floor. His mother’s grandfather clock, carved with filigree patterns and roses, chimed lowly as he passed by.

Outside felt vaguely chilly, but not enough to bother him. The grass was cut, but not at an annoying length –just the perfect length to make the house presentable. In perfect time, at 6:05 A.M., he stood out on the curb, waiting like a lonely streetlight waits for passerby in the darkness.

With that thought, he turned his attention back to time. It was, with timers, that he truly believed the theory of relativity. Not just in application to science and mathematics, but in application to basic human constructs.

For instance, time. Where one hour began or ended depends on the observer. His organization to him only felt like a blink of an eye –a short exercise meant to keep him calm. Yet, to his phone timer, seventeen minutes passed silently and rapidly, like a predator quickly slithering back into the forest with its prey.

His life force –his time allotted on earth –drained with no words and without his consent. So, he needed to be cautious. Make sure he knew where the time went, before it slipped too much through his fingers.

He checked his watch, hoping the bus rolled up to the stop soon. He looked at his ID, the same from last year. Evan Levy. 2014-2015. The incorrect year slightly annoyed him, but he had no real choice for now.

Luckily his brain and its flurry of thoughts were snipped short as the familiar school bus coughed up the street, rolling to a slow stop before him. He was tempted to almost bow to the driver in greeting, but restrained himself as he faintly remembered his odd mannerisms weren’t ever met with kind regards.

He sat in row seven. He always sat in row seven.

But row seven was taken by two already on both sides. Sighing, his chest tightening to a knot, he sat in row six, alone beside the window. Already a day of bad luck.

Luck was subjective. Luck only mattered to those who believed in its existence. To him, objectively, luck felt like a concept that acted as a mental hindrance and a special sort of self-fulfilling prophecy. Believe in failure, chances are you will slip and fall into failure.

But even if luck really meant nothing, to students back in the first day of school, luck rose up out of the ashes as a threatening phoenix. It could burn away his new day –with complete embarrassment in front of his peers. Or keep him in the lukewarm boredom that was consistent with introductions and new classrooms.

Either way, as the bus chugged away, he felt his face heat up slightly in irritation. He took five deep breaths. Some people have a cross they pray to, or a saint, but for him, he wistfully looked back to his windowsill where his flower and cactus sat, and prayed as if praying to an intangible god.