Through a Lens: A Short Story

By Jessica Grixti Stanley on June 30, 2024

Spring, 2010. It is 8:27 a.m. Monday. The young woman is busying herself with a towering pile of overpriced, dog-eared textbooks, looking like she was just shot out of the turbine of an Airbus A380. She struggles to steady her cat-eye Neiman Marcus frames as he leans against the brick wall to the lecture theatre. Just ten minutes ago, she was wild-eyed and urgent, wrestling with the ability to stay strong instead of just bursting at the seams like the button on her navy blue cardigan. She now holds the books higher to cover the mishap, but every passing eye seems to stare straight at her, sniggering and laughing, mocking and pointing. She looks ahead, appearing distant, but so much is on her mind. Still, the passers-by continue. They pass by in large gaggles, giggling and pointing like she's the main attraction at one of the big zoos. She tries to distract herself, imagine what these people are doing with their lives, what makes them tick, what makes them so mind-numbing. Two lovebirds pass by, and she thinks of them derisorily: he, studying Science, mocking her, studying Nursing, on the sidelines; jibes that appear fine on the outside, but are not really. She can see her struggles to keep up her awkward hours with the stress emanating from raising a newborn baby and he, on the couch, laughing at Sheldon—Bazinga!—and Leonard and ignoring her tripping up and down the linoleum. She sees a gaggle of final-year students, signs of Orientation Week crippling their demeanour, picturing the pictures that must have circled and dogged them around the place, affecting their chances of Honours, affecting everything. She sighs and looks down at the concrete, covered in a lazy scrawl of tags and pathetic attempts at graffiti: dogs pissing to mark their scent, Mine, it's mine now! She's glad when she finally hears the lecturer's voice calling for entry into her lecture theatre. Sweet relief.