Emmy swallowed, pressing the heels of her scuffed converse tightly together.
It was moments like these when Emmy wondered nervously about herself. Other days she gossiped and laughed in the hallways with the other girls, her clear voice ringing out. She growled about the presentation Mr. Eggers had assigned and laughed at herself when she tripped over the doorstep. She whined over the rain, and smiled at strangers. She wore too much hairspray and hoped nobody noticed the rent in her scarf. She tutored a seventh grader in English. She was ordinary on those days. And life was comfortable.
Frank Sinatra’s smooth voice drifted through the office air, trilling a Christmas carol, as Emmy rubbed her clammy palms together, feeling faint. The room was spinning, and the face of the registrar looked unfamiliar and otherworldly. Emmy tried to shake the feeling that gripped her.
The faces around her looked so calm, so at ease. So….ordinary. Emmy longed to feel that comfort, yet dreaded it as well.
The way she felt now, this hunger and separation, was strange, foreign and lonely, but her heart thrilled to it.
Emmy felt as if she were a wolf among a flock of sheep. She didn’t belong. She was too different, too far away, too passionate, too defined to belong. Her heart beat quickly, queerly. She glanced around the room, its busy activity suffocating. The heat made her dizzy. It was stuffy, confined, unbearable.
Emmy heard distantly the sound of beating wings as the geese met the wind. She closed her eyes and forgot everything but imagining how it would feel to leap into the sky and soar away.
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