Chapter 153: Day 152

Day 152,

I was awoken by an unusually loud crack of thunder this morning.  Earlier than I usually wake, but late enough that I couldn’t really get back to sleep, so here I am.  How close must that lightning strike have been that I heard it so clearly in my twice-barred subterranean chamber?  I briefly went upstairs and stuck my head out the door to the street, but I didn’t see anything smoking or burning, so it probably didn’t hit a building.

And now I’m left with slightly more time than normal in which to ponder the coming day.  Maybe if there’s a break in the rain after the kids leave for the day I’ll take a walk.  I’ve been letting myself get too cooped up in here lately.  Maybe let the bracelet take me by wherever Vernon happens to be.  Let him start the conversation if he happens to notice me walk by.  Is that stalker-ish?  It feels a little stalker-ish.  But is it more or less stalker-ish than actively seeking him out and outright asking him if he wants to hang out?  Is magically locating him inherently more an invasion of privacy than just walking around looking for him and asking people where to find him?  Physically locating someone at all to find and approach them to talk when you don’t know if they want to or not just strikes me as wrong - selfish somehow.  It’s not like electronics exist here, so I can’t just call him or send him a message to reply to at his convenience.  So what else am I going to do, write a letter and slide it under his door?

Well, I guess I could do that.  Feels like a different kind of creepy though.  A bit cowardly.

Cass just walked in.  The kids will be here soon after, I’m sure.  Time to put this out of mind for the next few hours.

 

Well, I took the cowardly route and left a note.

It didn’t so much stop raining as slow to a light drizzle, but I took that as good enough, waited for Cass to leave after cleanup (even with the children cleaning up after themselves they’re not perfect, and there’s still my own clutter to take care of) I quickly penned an invitation (“quickly” after twenty minutes of second-guessing myself on whether or not to even do it), threw on my cloak, pulled up the hood, and stepped outside.

I wound up using the bracelet for what I suspect is the opposite of its intended purpose to try to avoid accidentally running into Vernon on the way to his house.  Harder to do than one might initially think since if you concentrate on someone while moving you start walking towards them without conscious effort or intention.  I wound up periodically stopping to “ping” the direction toward him before shifting my focus back to my actual intended destination.

Of course, the rain picked back up just a few minutes after I set out, but at that point I simply told myself I was committed by then and dealt with it, keeping my self-couried message dry as best I could.  Once I got to his door (and thankfully with no one around to explain my irrationally furtive behavior to) I wound up folding the paper a couple extra times to make sure it would stay stuck in the space between the door and the frame.  No simply sliding it under the door; too well-constructed for that.  And if it does fall out before he gets home, well then hopefully all this rain will make the ink run illegibly and dissolve the paper to keep unintended parties from reading it.

Deed done, I stifled the impulse to run from the scene like I was guilty of anything other than social awkwardness.  Just the normal brisk pace of someone not wanting to be out in the rain for too long.

Urgh… why did I let myself get so worked up about this?  It’s not like it’s a romantic thing.  I don’t feel that way about Vernon, or anyone else for that matter.  I thought I was getting better about this, but it seems that socially interacting with people is a different skillset from initiating the interaction.

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