Chapter Text
In his bedroom, Sean Diaz opens his eyes and finds himself awake, lying flat on his small but comfortable twin-sized bed. Despite a good night’s rest, Sean can’t help but still feel drowsy as he attempts to safely get off his bed and onto the ground in one piece. As he does this, his mind flies elsewhere- he remembers studying for the math test the night before- or was it the science test? No way I studied science, that shit’s next week, he thinks to himself. Plenty of time, still. Math is like… today? Tomorrow? In either case, Sean grudgingly gets ready for the morning.
Sean doesn’t remember waking up to the sound of his alarm. A bit worried, he widens his eyes and scans his wooden nightstand for his phone. He spots its bulky exterior buried amongst a pile of half-read magazines on the nightstand’s wooden surface.
Reaching out for the phone, Sean’s chest shudders- he really doesn’t want to deal with the stress of oversleeping today. In the past, he had been lucky if his dad hadn’t left for work and could still drive him to school, though he would then be forced to endure a long, gruelling lecture on discipline and responsibility for the whole ride. Most of the time however, his dad would already be at the workshop, meaning that Sean would have to somehow brush his teeth, get dressed, make breakfast, eat breakfast and cycle to school within half an hour.
The task at hand isn’t impossible, but it certainly is a long chain of events with chaotic individual parts where anything could happen. There was one time where Sean overslept and he accidentally burnt the fingertip of his index finger when rushing some fried eggs. Sean doesn’t typically mind skipping school either, but he has always been more afraid of letting his Dad find out and subsequently disappointing the man.
With a light tap, Sean’s phone screen lit up. 7:28 … looks like I actually woke up slightly earlier, he says in his head. He turns off his alarm and notices his stomach growling. It’s a good thing he doesn’t need to rush some scuffed breakfast today.
But now that Sean is more awake than before, he realizes that something is off. For starters, where are all of his posters? His The Failure poster is missing too, from its usual spot above his bed.
The view outside Sean’s window seems to have a different shade to it as well; it looks as though someone had painted white all over the outside surroundings. Sean takes a curious look outside. Instead of the usual asphalt road right outside his window, he sees- some hastily hung colored flags? And most of all- snow, not to mention piles of it outside?
“Sean? Sean, you there?” A striking and vaguely familiar voice yells out.
Sean is more than shocked. Karen? What’s she doing here? He tries responding, but his lips are sealed shut. Slightly panicking, he looks around his room once more- except that it isn’t his room. Sure, the room feels familiar- there’s the twin-sized bed in the corner of the room-
“Sean? Sean, I’m coming up-”
-the nightstand to its right and the window roughly dividing his room- except he knows that he also has a large desk right under the window in his room, which is now conspicuously missing where he is. The wall to the left of his bed isn’t supposed to be just wooden, either…
A figure suddenly enters the room Sean is in, shocking Sean beyond belief. He finds himself turning over to greet the figure in involuntary fashion. Why can’t I… move? Do anything? Sean thinks, frustrated.
But Sean realizes who the figure is. It’s just Karen. She seems… happy to see Sean. She gives out a small smile before asking: “Honey, I won’t be mad- was that you who broke the vase?”
Sean opens his mouth, but the words that come out aren’t his. “Um… no. Uh, I mean, what vase? What vase, Mom?” He sounds so young.
It takes Karen kneeling down on one knee for Sean to realize that only now is he looking at her at equal level, eye-to-eye. Is he really short now? But as Karen lightly pats her right hand on Sean’s left shoulder, he finds himself staring into Karen’s impossibly big eyes, her pupils suddenly becoming an alluring void.
Karen chuckles warmly. “It’s not good to lie, my son.” There is a slight pause as she takes her right hand off Sean’s shoulder and gently rubs Sean’s cheeks. “But your face, it’s just- it’s so cute when you lie and it turns red.”
Sean fights hard to break through his inexplicable immobility. Now that he’s seeing his mother in the flesh, he wants to say all kinds of things- ask all kinds of questions. Ask her why she left behind their happy family, why she broke everyone’s heart. Maybe even shout and yell curse words at her, but Dad raised him better than that.
Finally, after what must have felt like five minutes, Sean does manage to muster one brief question. He asks out loud why she left. Weirdly, Sean doesn’t hear himself asking the question, but he does catch Karen’s wide grin faltering ever so slightly.
Karen’s expression shifts to a grayer tone. “Honey, I… it’s nothing to do with you or Daniel, or even Esteban. I just needed to break free.”
This time, Sean does hear himself respond to Karen. “But… why? We were one big happy family. Why would you want to run away from… having something like that?”
For some strange reason, Karen smiles yet again, her imperfect teeth slightly showing. She mouths something, but..
—
Sean recoils in cold sweat. That… was a dream? He thinks to himself, inspecting his right hand just to make sure he’s back in reality. The whole experience had felt so real, after all.
Some level of comfort returns to his state of mind after he realizes he can freely rotate his hand and inspect it just as freely. But Sean is still kind of fucked-up from the whole experience- just what the hell was that dream all about? He forgets most of the details, unfortunately. He knows Karen makes an appearance but doesn’t recall what she said, or what his interaction with her was exactly about.
Strangely enough however, Sean latches onto the objects of the room in the dream- yeah, the missing desk, the strange brown wall, the phone on his nightstand, the twin-sized bed… a faint, distant memory suddenly relapses. Could it be … grandma and grandpa’s place down in Oregon? He asks himself. When was the last time-
Wait . Sean realizes. The phone on his nightstand. The phone on his nightstand.
In a frenzy, Sean leaps out of bed and snatches his phone off the nightstand using pure muscle memory. The time: 10:11.
A meek voice calls out: “Yo bro, you still here?” Sean turns around to see his little brother Daniel yawning and stretching his arms right outside his door, which is wide open. “I thought you had school.”
I do, Sean groans internally.
—
The morning becomes even worse as Sean correctly remembers that his math test is today- and it’s starting in less than half an hour. Well, maybe half an hour is a bit too generous- he has around fifteen minutes to get ready, cycle to school and be in his seat for the test. It’s not that his teacher wouldn’t let him sit the test if he is to come late, but rather it’s Sean knowing that there’s no way he could come at least 10 minutes late and still get a good grade on the 40 minute long test. He has to make it in time. Plus, he already feels somewhat guilty for skipping most of his morning classes.
Everything is on autopilot. Sean doesn’t remember brushing his teeth or getting changed, but he is at least conscious of running out the front door. His stomach growls, and he supposes that he had skipped breakfast as well.
Okay , Sean tells himself. Got my backpack, water bottle, bike lock and everything . It’s still gonna be tight, but if I speed I can reach school and have 5 minutes to get to class.
Sean practically leaps onto his bike. He notices that his bike conveniently faces the direction he’s going in- also, isn’t his bike usually parked inside the garage? What’s it doing resting against the mailbox? These questions are swiftly swept away as Sean rapidly pedals away from his house.
Just before leaving his street, he hears Daniel yell at him, but Sean can’t afford to turn back. Oh shit, maybe he hasn’t eaten breakfast yet, Sean realizes. He’ll apologize when he gets back home for the day.
Sean twists and turns down the winding neighborhood streets and races for the main road to school. Fortunately, his journey on the main road could be traversed with mostly bike lanes, but there’s still a short stretch of road nearing school where the bike lanes end and converge into where the cars are driving. However, he could still cycle on the sidewalk, at full speed even granted that there aren’t that many joggers or walkers.
Sean turns smoothly onto the main road, his pedalling becoming even faster as he eases into the straight bike lane. Despite the circumstance, he lets himself enjoy the breeze of the cool autumn wind. Somehow, the calm fluttering of orange leaves in his peripheral does calm his nerves down ever so slightly. The vibrancy of it all reminds him of a sketch he was working on last week. Oh fuck, I completely forgot to finish it, Sean realizes. The deadline for the art contest was… coming close? Next week maybe? However, another lingering thought finds itself looming in the back of his mind:
Why did I dream of Karen, of all people?
Sean doesn’t remember the last time he had a dream- well, more accurately, a dream that wasn’t just a wet dream (though in his defence, that was easily more than a year ago). He’s not really much of a dreamer, unlike his brother who often went on fantastical journeys in his sleep. When he did dream, it often concerned trivial or insignificant matters; the kind of dream you forget about the moment you wake up or the kind where you’re half aware of it being a dream or reality. But he’s never had such a vivid, visceral dream like the one he just experienced. More importantly, the dream felt important- like he was supposed to obtain some “moral of the story” or whatever. What was Mo- Karen even trying to say in the last few moments of the dream?
The worst part about when Karen left them was that no one saw it coming- Sean had a feeling that Dad didn’t, either. Was she always unhappy deep down? How long had she been bottling up her feelings for it to all blow up eventually? Sean never really understood it, since she left when he was still so young. Even the happy times, when she took Sean camping in Vancouver seem muddled and distorted, almost as if they weren’t genuine, even if they felt like they were. In some twisted way, Sean sometimes envies Daniel- he doesn’t have to grapple with these conflicting feelings since he never really got to know Karen. Daniel gets to find comfort in the fact that one of his parents won’t just walk out of the door one day without explanation.
Sean’s getting teary-eyed, which is problematic because it’s not good to cycle this fast under blurry vision. Usually, he tried to shut the thought of Karen off from his mind as a means of dealing with his feelings. But now that the thought of her was practically burrowed into his mind just this morning- he starts realizing just how fucked up it the whole situation kind of is.
A hiccup gets forced out. Sean panics as it unexpectedly throws his body upwards, causing him to almost lose control of the bike. Okay, calm down Sean. You can have your breakdown later- after the math test , he tells himself. Just gotta focus on -
Sean sneezes from all the sniffling and the cold wind. It’s a big one, so he takes a few seconds to register the aftermath. However, he didn't realize- he had just run a red light and was now on the open road for any car to mow him down at any time.
He looks frantically to his left. Okay… no cars! I got lucky . What about -
A loud car horn blares from Sean’s right. Oh shit.
Sean brakes hard, but it wasn’t enough- his front wheel impacts the left side door at the front of the car. Sean closes his eyes, expecting to be flung like a ragdoll in the air like that movie scene where Joseph Gordon-Levitt was a NYC bike messenger… or something. But none of that happened- Sean’s body kind of just recoils forward violently, but he’s still mostly held in place due to his strong grip on the bike handles. The bike, alongside his body, falls back onto the ground- albeit in an abrupt fashion, but he still manages to land upright, by some stroke of luck.
Maybe the car had slowed down because it was about to make a turn into the main road? In fact, Sean thinks that the car actually came to an almost complete stop milliseconds before his bike crashed into it. In utter disbelief, Sean briefly inspects his own body for any bleeding or scratches, but there’s nothing. Nothing .
There’s no way, Sean tells himself, still shocked. He can’t believe his luck- a laugh nearly comes out. However, reality quickly comes crashing back in. He had just t-boned a car with his bike… from the looks of it, the car wasn’t completely cooked, but there was a surprisingly large inward dent on the left side door at the front as a result of the crash. It dawns on him that he was probably in the wrong too, since he was the one who ran a red light. No, he was in the wrong. In this moment of panic, he briefly locks into the glare of the driver, who is still seated inside the car.
It’s a young white woman- probably in university. Sean notes to himself internally that she doesn’t seem particularly upset, which is surprising given the circumstances, but the expression she’s wearing isn’t exactly all sunshine and rainbows either. She lets out a muffled groan from inside the car as she turns her body to roll down the driver window. “Hey man, you alright?”
Sean doesn’t realize it's his turn to speak before the woman clears her throat, exasperated. He still can’t believe it- he had really just crashed into a car and somehow got out unscathed. As a biker, even! “Uh, yeah. You?” He asks while avoiding eye contact.
The woman sighs. “Um, of course I’m alright. I’m the one in the car.” She bends over, slightly popping her head outside the open window to inspect the state of the side door. “Oh, crap. Um- look man, do you have like a parent? A guardian or someone that I can call?”
Sean feels like his entire body just collapsed. Dad’s gonna be so pissed. I overslept and rammed into a car? Alarm bells go off in his head. Then, it hits him like a truck- the math test! He’s screwed up this much already, he can’t possibly afford to fuck that up as well. Briefly taking his phone out to look at the time, he breathes a sigh of relief- he can probably still make it, but it was now or never. He needs to go now.
“Um, hello? You sure you’re okay, man?” The woman waves her right hand in front of Sean, who now looks like he might as well have gotten physically injured.
Sean nervously begins: “Uh, look, I- I’m sorry for ramming into your car. Maybe-” He frantically reaches into his bag and tears out a page from the sketchbook he always has. With absolutely no regard for his handwriting, he scribbles down his own number with ol’ reliable and gives the torn page to the woman. “Just- I’m in a rush, just call me back at this number and we’ll settle everything later today. I promise-” He doesn’t even finish his sentence properly before reversing his bike away from the car, preparing to flee the scene. For a fleeting moment, Sean realizes how quiet it is around him- no one was around to witness the accident. Not a single living soul.
Swerving around the car, Sean cycles away and continues along the bike lane. His heart feels stabbed with pangs of guilt as he hears the distant shouting of the woman, fading away in the distance.
Sean realizes that he didn’t really think this through- the woman’s probably right on his tail, any moment now. But he’s in too much of a state of shock to even entertain the idea of turning back to check- what if he rammed into another car for not looking? Fuck, fuck, I’m so fucked , he keeps thinking as he speeds for school. Fuck, fuck, fuck .
But by some twisted sense of humor, nothing is chasing Sean. Three minutes pass, and Sean barges the school’s front doors open, sprints down the brown, depressingly lit school hallways, finds the room of his test and practically dives into his seat, just in time for his math test to begin in under a minute.
Sean may be on the track team, but he’s completely out of breath. The morning he had just endured was batshit insane. From the corner of his vision, he sees his best friend Lyla nudge him from the left of his seat. The two exchange nods, and Lyla faintly utters to her exhausted friend: “Didn’t think you’d make it.”