"Upward Over the Mountain" A short story by Sara Eddy
Upward Over the Mountain
Amelia’s alarm goes off at 6:30 a.m., and the staticky sound of the radio wakes her up. Her mom walks into the room with her breakfast, where Amelia eats it in bed. She scrolls through her phone and reads the most recent news headlines. Murder, rape, abuse, theft, gangs, corruption. All around Amelia, there’s sadness, and she loves it. If you look hard enough and close enough, anywhere in the world you can find something to be sad about. It’s almost a game for her, and when she wins, she loves being rewarded with that heavy feeling of sadness in her gut.
After breakfast she changes into her school uniform, hiking up her gray plaid skirt to show the right amount of leg, and leaves the house, walking to her car at exactly 7:30 a.m.
Her green 2000 Honda CR-V unlocks with a click, and she throws her backpack into the passenger seat. The sky is blanketed in gray low clouds, so, on cue, she clicks shuffle on her sad music Spotify playlist titled: Important Music.
Taking the freeway to school, she listens to the singer holding long low notes, with instruments accompanying them in a sorrowfully slow downbeat, mimicking the same forlorn, lowly pitch, and rhythm of the singer.
Sad songs are Amelia’s muse. Some come with lyrics, others are just instrumental. Some are spoken word poetry, while others come in a closed mouth hum. They call depressing images to her mind of loneliness and the suffering of the human spirit. Most of the sad songs in the world have lyrics detailing the pain of a broken heart, but she’s never had a broken heart, so she lets the somber instrumental background dip her into a shimmering pool of depression. As she drives, she focuses on the singer’s voice calling for an answer, and she gets her eyes to water, but no tears fall out.
As she drives along with her suicidal symphony, Amelia catches quick glimpses of the faces of the drivers around her. Hurrying white moms with frizzy dyed blonde hair and empty eyes taking their children to school in pearly white Cadillacs. They know their husbands are seeing other women, but they know they have to be strong and hold it together for the kids and their own well-being.
Or there’s the sad Mexican and Asian immigrants, new to the ways of the hurried and materialistic American life, who drive small Nissans or Hondas with the paint fading, on the way to clean someone's house, or to go work at a minimum wage job like at Subway, folding sandwiches all day. Or they stand for hours in uncomfortable black shoes at the cash register of a convenience store like Walgreens. They’ll never make enough money to live a better life, always only making enough to survive day by day. Their eyes stare forward ahead at the road, hands clutched at the 10:00 and 2:00 position.
Then there are the elderly drivers, still having the luxury of owning their license. Amelia doesn’t really feel sad for the elderly when she sees them. She just gets chills, reminded that one day she will be old and dead. Maybe soon. Life goes by fast. She’s already graduating high school in four months and she just has to blink a few times and soon enough she’ll be in a retirement home sitting in a plush chair, mind blank with dementia, and then death.
Amelia pulls into the student parking lot and parks in a spot between a white BMW and a steel gray Mercedes. She turns off her whining melancholic music, and steps out.
She quickly peers into the window of the BMW and sees a junior in his dress code khakis and white polo on his phone. Diamond earrings sparkle, and his hair is shaved on the sides in the crew cut style that reminds her of the Nazi youth haircut. Amelia feels sad for him that he tries so hard to fit in with his looks, fancy car, and his chiseled face.
She sees many boys at her school that look just like him, all afraid to be different, and she also feels bad that their youth is only temporary. This is the most fun they will ever have, until they will be stuck married with children who have ADHD, living their simple lives with receding hairlines, and bulging stomachs from drinking too much beer. The only vacations they go on are every two years to Disneyland with their tired and disheveled wives and their children who will follow exactly in their parent’s footsteps. Living their lives exactly how society expects them to act. Sad.
There are ten minutes to spare before the first period of the day begins, so Amelia walks with slow purpose to her English class.
Groups of students stand in clumps joking and talking, but she puts her focus on the students standing alone in calm or disquieted silence, with their hands on their phone or in their sweatshirt pockets. The students could just prefer to stand by themselves, but, most likely, they sadly don’t have anyone to talk to in the mornings.
Amelia steps into the heated classroom. She hates the morning cold and prefers the scorching heat. She sits at her desk in the back and takes out her blue notebook and blue ball point pen.
Her desk mate arrives soon after. “Good morning Amelia,” Tammy says.
“Morning,” Amelia responds carefully adjusting her pen so that it is perfectly straight along her notebook.
“How are you?” Tammy asks with wide eyes.
“I’m good. How are you?”
“Good, good,” she nods her bouncy brown curls, and turns her back to greet Sam walking inside, in just the same fashion.
To Amelia, Tammy tries too hard. She comes to school with a full face of makeup and laces her eyes with pink eyeshadow. Amelia always sees her hanging out with different groups each week during lunch, talking her head off, the whites of her eyes flashing as she speaks. No one really likes her. Everyone just tolerates her presence. She tried hanging out with Amelia for a little bit, but she got the idea that Amelia was too boring, so she moved on to find someone else. She also wears her skirt way too short. Yes, it looks nice when you pull it up a little higher than you’re supposed to, but Tammy always goes too far. Amelia feels sorry. Tammy’s mom is an alcoholic.
In English class they spend the whole time working on their argumentative essays. Amelia’s paper is about how the juvenile system is racist and not productive in helping criminals be better members of society once released. She feels down that there are kids out there stuck in an endless cycle of crime, in and out of jail. Most of their lives will be spent behind bars, unaware of what a life of normalcy could offer them if they were just good. If only people were just good.
After English she has ceramics, where she makes a clay box, decorating it with the shapes of small daisies. Next is civics where she learns to hate the government. Fourth period is math, where she assigns numbers one through ten with personality traits and each one is in a different kind of an abusive relationship.
Lunch comes and she walks to the oak tree to meet her friends where they sit, eat, and talk every day. By now, the sky is bright blue with scattered gray clouds that are wispy white at the edges. As she walks, Amelia sees the girl with the tangled brown hair run by. She wears her skirt too low, with bright pink Asics brand tennis shoes, and uses a suitcase instead of a backpack. She really makes Amelia’s gut throb. The girl eats alone on the ground outside of shut classroom doors. No one wants to hang out with her because she talks too strange, unable to understand social cues. But she tries really hard to meet people and attends every school event no matter what it is, from cheering loudly alone at the basketball games, to the improv shows, and the band concerts, she is always ignored. Amelia loves her.
“Hey Amelia,” her best friend Lana says with a downcast frown.
“Hi. Still thinking about him?” Amelia asks, setting down her backpack and bending down to pull out her lunch bag.
“Yeah. I just can’t stop thinking about him. He’s just, gone now. Forever. Like it’s still so weird sitting in history with his empty desk in the middle of the room. I don’t know why the teacher hasn’t changed our seats yet. Amelia, I haven’t been able to sleep at night,” Lana explains staring down and fiddling with the plastic fork in her salad.
Amelia doesn’t know why, but she’s getting a little tired of Lana’s mood. It’s been a week since a sandy blonde boy with a curved smile planted on his face 24/7 named Malachi accidently shot himself in the chest while out duck hunting with his dad. It hit Amelia pretty hard when she heard the news, her heart sinking when they announced his death during the school announcements. She was able to move on after a couple of days. She didn’t really know Malachi, but she appreciated the few days of being sad. Amelia was mostly disturbed by the details of his death that were dug out through news and gossip. His dad had to drag his son’s body through the marshy field, closer to the road so that the ambulance could pick them up. People said he stayed alive for fifteen minutes once he made it the hospital.
Amelia didn’t know Malachi. He had kind of just stood there along with his friends and smiled with his mouth closed. He never meant to hurt anybody. He was innocent of sin. He simply existed in life and then all of a sudden, disappeared to who knows where. He didn’t know he was going to die that day he went hunting. His life was over at seventeen. Too young. He’s supposed to die at the earliest sixty and at the latest maybe eighty-five in an old people’s home. Unexpected deaths were the saddest. Amelia gets the welcoming feeling of sad chills over her body when she reflects on it.
Amelia sees their other friend Gabby coming along to their spot with another person. It’s Ben. Amelia doesn’t really like him, but she likes looking at him because he makes her feel down. He’s a fat, lonely, gay kid who doesn’t have any other friends, so Gabby decided to take him under her wing when they met in culinary.
His pants are always falling down because he doesn’t think to wear a belt. Amelia feels sad for all the weird, gay, ugly people, because it’s already hard enough for them to meet someone being gay, and then they have all of these other tough factors piled on top of that. She thinks there has to be someone for everyone, but she feels sad when imagining two socially awkward, ugly lovers living together. They only have each other and no one else. They treasure their love and hold hands while people ignore or stare. Her gut woefully hurts as she imagines Ben holding hands with another man. She wonders how old he will be when he gets his first boyfriend or has his first hookup.
Amelia’s salami sandwhich makes her mouth water before she even unwraps it like Pavlov’s dog. As she eats, she watches as Ben talks loudly, gesticulating his hands around, and makes meme references at all the wrong times, and Amelia gets reminded why she dislikes him. Gabby laughs every time he tries to make a joke, but her eyes don’t crinkle in the corners.
One of her last classes of the day is U.S. history, where she sits through the teacher’s lecture on WWII, with deformed Japanese babies from Hiroshima on the projector. And her final period, P.E, where she just walks laps around the track. She has no friends in this period and she’s fine with that as she likes to listen to her sullen songs and question if there’s a heaven. She hopes there is.
Amelia changes out of her gym clothes and walks to her car. It sits alone, the two spots next to hers now empty. She makes the trip back home alive and greets her mom who is standing on her phone, just back from work. Amelia grabs an apple and stops to talk to her mom.
“So how was school?” Amelia asks her mom, resting her arm against the wooden kitchen chair.
This is all confidential information, but who is Amelia going to tell? Her mom works at the local public school with special needs kids. Most of the kids are diagnosed with autism. There’s Samuel who can’t talk but has scars streaked down his back from his abusive mom’s beatings. Allie, who just turned twenty, and likes singing in whispers today’s top ten to herself. She does her own makeup every day, looking like a panda with thick rings of black eyeliner surrounding her small eyes. Kevin, who repeats the same questions over and over again, along with gestured tics he can’t control. He has buck teeth and thick rimmed glasses. All of the kids will never know what it feels like to be normal. But are they really missing out on much? Amelia feels sad knowing that all these children are content with the way they are, because they don’t know they are any different.
After the quick snack and the greeting to her dad, younger sister, and her cat with one eye, she gets a head start on her homework. Just math equations and history questions. She’s done in an hour. Amelia changes into her puppy printed pajamas at 5:00 p.m. and opens her laptop, going straight to Netflix. She hates the corporate site with no good movies, but she’s found a few good things to watch. She gets into her covers and clicks on the documentary she’s already seen six times. It’s about three children in three different families, with three different lives, who don’t have much to their future because they are poor. Amelia wishes she was like them. She has no reason to be sad about anything. Hell, the saddest she’s ever been was having to eat lunch alone while Lana and Gabby were both home sick, when her grandma and dog died in the same month, and every time she looks in the mirror and realizes she is pretty ugly, with rough brown hair that always sticks up, too small of eyes, and too small of a nose. She wishes she had something to worry out. Something that will cause her pain, and suffering. She wants to feel struggle and feel hopeless and suicidal but in the end overcome it all. She wants a true reason to be sad instead of always being sad, when life is so good.
The movie ends with a sad song. She stands up, turns off her bedroom lights, and crawls under her bed sheets, draping them over her head, and puts in her earbuds. She listens to “Dark was the Night and Cold was the Ground,” and cries, until she gets a text from her dad telling her to come down for dinner.