Fugue: A Short Story

Amy first realized something was amiss in the third grade. There she was one minute, staring out of the window, thinking about the blueness of her classmate Jonah’s eyes, when suddenly a week had passed.

It always happened like that. She would lose herself in a daydream and then lose herself in real life. 

She’d imagine a comet hurtling towards the earth, laying waste to the school, then wake up a day later in bed staring at the ceiling, her mom’s voice calling for her over and over. She’d imagine mountains folding into each other like origami paper, the sky cracking like glass, a boy in class passing her a love note. Next she’d be sitting in her mother’s car on the way to grandma’s house, December having passed with no notice from her.

She didn’t mention this to anyone at first. It didn’t matter much anyways—she was young and there was a lot of time to waste. There was always more where that came from.

So she let time pass like that. Sometimes she willed it on. When exams came during high school, she’d think about the future—apartments in New York, weddings in the snow, herself disappearing into the world with just a suitcase. When she was done, she’d pick up her term papers.

It wasn’t until she met Matt that it became a problem.

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