The Sea-Wave by Rolli Page A

god’s an eccentric and she’s proud she was gifted with such a beautiful child. When she said that I shut the door and cried for a long time. When I opened it again I could just hear leaves.
    Another time, Mom said how hard her life was and wondered why god was punishing her. I’m not just a wheelchair kid: I double as a kind of holy wrath.
    Listening to her, overhearing her . . .
    It’s listening to acid rain.

Circuit Sam

    I had the Chatter for almost a year. It sounds like a disease; I guess it was. It was a computer. It clamped onto my armrest like a feeding tray. I pressed letters on a screen and the Chatter said them out loud in a loud voice. The voice was called Circuit Sam, a deep male voice with zero expression. Which is just how I imagined my voice sounding.
    My parents loved the Chatter because it made their lives easier. It made my life a bit easier, but . . .
    In a bookstore, if I pressed the bathroom icon, there were icons that saved time, Circuit Sam would shout “Bathroom,” and everyone would turn their heads then turn them back and pick up the book they’d just put down. Sometimes the button would stick, and Sam would just keep saying something over and over until I felt like dying.
    I stopped using the Chatter. I got sick. I felt like a sick machine. My parents wanted me to keep using it, but I’d only mash the keyboard or type profanity. So they took it away. They never really got rid of it, just packed it away, like a wedding dress, hopeful.
    I write notes now. It’s slower, but I like it better. When you read a note in your mind, you read it — you think of it as being in a human voice, the voice of whoever wrote it. I hope that when my parents read my notes they hear the voice of a sad, bright kid who’s at least trying.
    They might just hear Circuit Sam.

The Loner

    I like being alone but not really. Every day I wake up and think: What if Mom’s dead, what if she just dropped dead? If she doesn’t get me up by 7:35, I’m sure she’s dead. I lie there under a thought bubble of her on the floor with a broken jam jar and a broken head. A closet shutting means she’s collapsing. Then she comes in the door, and it’s okay to hate her again.
    I’m a loner. It’s just easy. It protects me. It’s safe in my room. I read books, I’m a bookmark. You don’t get loved but you don’t get hurt either by people you love, which hurts more than anything. It’s easier to hate people the way they hate millionaires, they’ll never be one. I’m alive, I have a skeleton, but I’ll just never be a real kid or feel like a real human being.
    When people see me they feel sad. They might smile sadly. I shake up their moral centres. I wreck their shopping day. There are people who do that even to me.
    I hate being one of those people. I can’t just hide all day though I sometimes want to. I sometimes do. I’m trading happy for not being the wrecking ball and the house it’s wrecking. I can do that for people, at least.
    It’s not much.
    It’s something.

Murder

    I didn’t see who stole me, not for hours. Not till we were out of the city.
    I pictured — in the bubble above my head was a pudgy guy with glasses and acne, floating in sweat, who filled the whole bubble.
    The guy who walked in front of me when my chair stopped moving and climbed down the riverbank and knelt down . . .
    He was just a frail old man. A stick man, who pricked the bubble.
    The old man knelt down and looked at the water, at his reflection in the water, I’m guessing. Like Narcissus only old and puzzled. He didn’t drink at all, just stared.
    When he got up, I closed my eyes. I’m not sure why. I didn’t open them until he was back behind me, and we were moving again.
    I think if he was going to murder me or hurt me . . .
    He’d’ve done it a long time ago.
    Right?

Writing

    M y memorandum book was