Bloom Day

“Don’t you get it? Don’t you? You can’t be bothered to learn two platforms if you’re deploying a mobile app.”

I squeezed my rubber ducky with frustration.

“But don’t you think it’ll avoid issues in the long run?”

My classmate shook his head.

“You need to stop this business roleplaying act. We both know no one uses mobile apps anymore other than the Top Ten, and all we’re doing is a performance for a state college no one will remember.”

The sky beyond the window had pretty streaks of violet and orange. Looking over the library ground floor pandemonium informed you how, indeed, everyone’s justification for existence was inching toward oblivion. Confirmed by the reduced frequency of, if you focused hard enough, crunched entrance and exit leaves. For a paradoxically calming balancing act I held my chair on two legs — pressing a knee against the desk.

“I don’t want to do what makes sense.”

My classmate looked somberly out the window, closed his eyes, and took a deep breath to collect himself.

“I can never tell when you’re roleplaying anymore, honestly. What does that even mean? This is just for a grade. How much of your blog is even real? Do you even know what you’re doing?”

The cursor kept blinking at me. Thirty pages in, twenty more to go. He’s lucky I’m a master of filler words. All I know are filler words. It’s the only instance where such expertise is useful, after all. With my act under attack, I had to come up with some more.

“I thought you’d be the one to figure that out. If you’re real curious you could learn.”

He didn’t reply and started clacking again. Shared docs made my cursor drop a line every thirty seconds, and with every drop I was fighting the urge to take my laptop and slam it against his head. I don’t like this game anymore.

All my grades don’t mean anything after I secured the internship return offer. Twenty years of vaguely hard work now lost its primary whip: the insecurity of a job, traded with the inherent insecurity of finance. But I didn’t know that yet.

I stared at his almost faded teenage acne, his furrowed eyes, and I can’t stop visualizing how the blood would drip from the tear ducts. I guess that’s how my face feels all the time, or how I wish it would; I’d want the mucosa of my socket to flow along the same, congealing into some debauch party mask.