Time is a Flat Circle (and My MetroCard is Broken)

The Junior shut the door of their locker with a deafening clang. The third floor looked strange this close to 5:00 p.m. The crowd of students had cleared out a while ago, leaving the hallway feeling unnervingly hollowed out. For a moment, cast in the stark, ghost-like glare of the blinding fluorescent lights, the Junior stood alone with only the janitor’s music and faint screeches from the volleyball players in the gym for company before something caught their eye.

A wallet lay by the water fountain. Curiously, the Junior crossed over and picked it up. Inside the beat-up leather was only one item: an old ID card that had clearly gone through the washing machine too many times. The barcodes were entirely scratched away, and the name and graduation year on the ID had faded so much that they just became indistinguishable blurs. Most striking, however, was the photo. Years of friction against textbook covers, denim pockets, and binder contents had rubbed the student’s picture into a blank gray silhouette. There was not a single identifying detail legible on the ID. Nothing. The FBI would hate this guy.

The Junior held up the faceless card to their hazy reflection in the steel surface of the water fountain. For three years, their existence had been defined by volunteer hours, a carefully maintained GPA, and a schedule precisely calculated to catch the eye of an admissions officer. They had built an identity out of the only goal they could cling to: getting into an Ivy League, no matter the gray hair or early-onset high blood pressure that came along the ride.

But looking back at the faded ID, the Junior felt something shift. This blurred, invisible face could have belonged to any student. It wasn’t some nobody. It represented everybody. The universe didn’t care about whether they got a five on AP Lang or what their AMC scores were. Underneath their arbitrary qualifications, they were just a beautiful, unquantifiable, impossibly minuscule point drifting through the cosmos. Life was just about existing. For the first time in the Junior’s life since they graduated from elementary school on a Google Meet, they felt a newfound, immovable peace descend upon them. 

They were shaken from their reverie by a buzzing notification. The Junior jolted and pulled their phone out from their pocket, only to be met with a threatening “make sure u get to SAT class on time.” text from their parents on WeChat. The warmth from their deliberation vanished instantly as they rushed to check the LIRR schedule. If they missed their train, the prep center would call their parents, and they would come home to another disapproving lecture. Their own internalized disapproval was quite enough, thank you very much. 

And really, who has time to contemplate the illusion of self? Tossing away the ID card without another thought, the Junior pulled on their backpack, feeling the weight of expectations thud against their spine, and sprinted down the escalator.

But wait, their soul seemed to plead, resisting their escape and reaching spiritual arms out back towards the building. You were so close to finding out who you are.

This was easy to ignore, especially with a sleep-deprived brain only able to focus on one thing at a time. A few minutes later, they were at the station cursing out their broken MetroCard. With a quick glance at the subway timetable, they hauled themself over the turnstile and elbowed their way onto a crowded uptown 2 train, sandwiched between a disgruntled-looking stranger and a classmate from Physics frantically practicing the right-hand rule. As the subway car shrieked down into the dark tunnel, the Junior clung onto a grammar workbook nearly torn up by agitated annotations. The meaning of life would have to wait until after the October SAT… or maybe the December SAT…