It was two hours, forty-three seconds and twenty-two milliseconds into the afternoon. It was one day in a series of days that made up a year when nothing really big happened. Only small things happened, and these things more often than not went unnoticed. The day was humid but cool, the fall weather reaching out at the tail of the summer months and coming back with nothing but a single feather in its fist. The sky wasn’t gray, wasn’t white like a mind run out of explanations, but silver. The tree trunks were dark and swollen with animals who hadn’t realized yesterday’s rain was over.

A man sat on the bench of a bus stop. He was sheltered by a little half-cube of plexiglass covered in graffiti and half-torn-down environmental activism posters.

The man, whose name tag read Phillip J. Baxter, but whom we will simply refer to as Baxter, was dumpling-shaped and practically steaming with internal heat, which manifested itself in the stains under the arms of his white-button down shirt and his bright pink cheeks. He had brown eyes and abnormally skinny fingers. His hair was brown except for the one gray hair he hadn’t yet had the misfortune of finding. His face was smooth, although it seemed as though the wrinkles were merely holding their breath and waiting for the day when they would sigh and settle into his skin permanently. At his loafer-covered feet sat a laptop bag, one of the black ones with a nice strap that goes over a shoulder.

Baxter shifted in his seat, blew a long breath out through his nostrils, and waited for the 3:00 bus home. His eyes wandered and stuck on a squirrel having a particularly difficult experience with a bird feeder. He chuckled to himself.

The nearby pavement crunched and crackled, and Baxter turned away from the squirrel, now hanging precariously upside down on the bird feeder and licking its lips, and watched as a teenage girl sat herself down heavily next to him on the bench at the bus stop. She gave him a sideways glance and a half-smile. He returned the gesture.

The girl turned away and pulled an iPhone out of a pocket of the backpack she had propped up next to her. The squirrel at the bird feeder lost its only audience member, and Baxter studied the girl from his peripheral vision.

Her hair was brown with a streak of red at the bottom coming forward from the back of her head. Her face was round and her lips were thin but full of color. Her eyes, fixed downward on her phone, were framed by short, spiny eyelashes and under-eye circles covered with the wrong shade of makeup. She was heavy, but not in an unattractive way, it was more like she was ripe and full without her knowing it, the perfectly ready fruit on the somewhat hidden branch of the tree that the overtired worker fails to notice. She wore a green patterned sweater, dark jeans, and brown boots that tied like sneakers. Her leg jiggled frantically.

By this time, the squirrel had disappeared from the bird feeder, and Baxter, craving entertainment, glanced over and down at the girls phone. She was typing and sending messages at a frightening speed, and each time she hit the enter key, a new blue oval appeared on the screen with her words in it. She sent five messages in less than thirty seconds:

“wait no stop”
“did you”
“you didn’t”
“YOU DID YOU DID YOU HOOKED UP WITH HIM”
“story the full story right now”

Baxter smiled at her excitability and appetite for gossip. Relationships had never been so thrilling when he was young. He had always been the passive player, shuttled along a choppy sea by the games and winks and phone calls of girls. They knew everything and controlled everything. This, it seemed, held true even now.

The girl’s phone then started to buzz loudly as she typed. She startled and the device bounced around in her hand like a hot potato for a second. She answered it, stood up, and began to pace, boots clicking rhythmically.

“What? I’m waiting at the bus stop! No I’m not lying to you, why would I be lying to you? No, Mom, I don’t care if your GPS tracker s*** says I’m at Overbrook, I’m not! Jesus Christ…nothing, nothing, I said nothing. I don’t care, think wherever you want to think I am. I’ll be home in like twenty minutes. No. No, I’m not. I’M NOT! Whatever, see for yourself. Bye.”

Baxter felt her frustration down in the pit of his belly, but he also felt with it the nervousness with which she sat back down and started to bite her nails.

Her fingers started flying again.

“i feel like a dog in obedience school im so f------ sick of this gps s***” read the little blue oval she sent.
the reply came quickly: “you got the short end of the parental stick, my friend. sorry”.
The girl huffed and switched to a different text conversation, but a second message came through from the previous engagement: “still wanna do tonight though?’
“yeah,” said the next blue bubble, “i’ll find something creative to tell her and i’ll get out whenever you want me to come over”.

Like a virus, thought Baxter, always one step ahead of the vaccination that tries to squash it down. His mind raced.

If I decide to go out and smoke tonight and I don’t come home THAT late, which I still might do, I don’t know I haven’t decided yet, I’ll have to go past Mom because she’ll think the red eyes just mean my allergies are flaring up and she’ll ask me where my eyedrops are and I’ll say I don’t know (which I really don’t) and she’ll sigh and say she’ll get more in the morning and then I’ll be free. Dad would be less oblivious because he smoked pot in college and would probably kill me so I’ll just stick with Mom and then run upstairs and sleep until I look like less of a potential juvenile delinquent…

He smiled at the precarious, neurotic planner that was his teenage self. His mind fell back into the internal monologue as if it were exhausted and finally falling into sleep.

god there’s just so much to DO there’s girls and flag football in Joe’s backyard and a six pack in the old duffel under my bed and there’s music so loud I’ll be deaf like Annie’s uncle is but it’s okay it’s okay it’s okay…

Baxter pushed the monologue back aside, although it resisted, and went back to reading the girl’s texts over her shoulder. This new conversation was about schoolwork.

“No its not due till Tuesday” she sent, and right after that: “Its like ive done all the f------ work and everyone else does nothing”

I have a project too, thought Baxter. The thought came so quickly it actually surprised him, but it seemed so solid and so right that he laid his guard down and let it unravel. The catapult, the stupid catapult that keeps bending and breaking even with all those layers of duct tape and if I f*** this one up I’m done for the term because Ms. Bates hates me even on her good days and…

His train of thought disappeared mid-trip, because the girl switched to yet a different conversation. Baxter’s optical nerves were beginning to burn under the intense use of his peripheral vision.

the first blue blip she sent read “no i have soccer” Baxter rubbed his eyes, trying to dispel the pain, and missed the friend’s response. But he caught the girl’s next message: “till 6:30, sorry not today”.

I run, Baxter thought, I run cross country and I know girls don’t like it but if you just maybe wanted to come to a meet once? We could hang out after and get coffee, after I changed obviously, unless you liked my outfit in which case I’d keep it on but I’d be sweaty so I probably should shower anyways and what time do you want to, ah meet?

Wait, he thought, who was he asking this to?

He looked up at the girl, the human girl this time, not the phone, and she looked back up at him. His heart jumped and he blushed furiously. He smiled sheepishly. But this time, the girl did not return the gesture. Her eyes flickered with suspicion and discomfort. Baxter looked away.

D---! You ruined it.
Ruined what?
Good job, Boneless Bax.

Baxter cringed and hoped the girl didn’t know that the boys called him Boneless Bax.
He decided he would try again to make a connection with her. He leaned closer.

The girl tensed up and stopped typing on her phone. The direction of her gaze didn’t change, but the entire environment of her body did.

Baxter became sidetracked, and forgot all about his mission to connect with the girl. He was still leaning close to her, but he wasn’t looking at her at all. He was amazed that she had actually stopped typing. He leaned even closer to see what her conversations looked like when they were at a complete standstill.

Baxter was looking down at the phone.The girl had been holding the phone very close to her body, so close that it was inches away from being directly in contact with her breasts. The girl looked at Baxter, who was looking at the phone. The girl looked down at her breasts and then back at Baxter. Her eyes grew wide with horror. Baxter didn’t notice. He was still staring at the phone.

In the next second, the girl stood up, shoved her phone into her bag and hoisted the back onto her back. She glared at Baxter and spat out angrily, “Pervert!” Then she took off at a brisk pace down the street.

It took Baxter a second to process what had happened.

D----- man, you scared her off. Are you trying to make sure you stay alone forever?

First he was embarrassed, then he was disappointed, then angry, then simply distressed. The bus still hadn’t come. Baxter started to tap his foot impatiently. His mind started to work through all the things he had to do in the near future. It rolled in and in and in on itself and gathered momentum, like a snowball running down his backyard hill, and with each item added to the list his foot-tapping got faster.

two college applications left
I should call Marianne because she is HOT the guys’d kill me if I passed that one up
It’s Jenna’s birthday this weekend
and F*** I’ve still got to finish that catapult
I’ve got to go home and maybe there’s something of Dad’s I can use in the basement…

The bus finally pulled up to the curb, wheezing like an asthmatic and stopping in front of Baxter. He wiped his sweaty hands on his slacks, pulled his laptop bag over his shoulder, and stepped up on to the bus. Even as he got up and walked, he felt as if his foot was still tapping. He sat alone and rested his head on the window.

S*** I’ll NEVER finish that catapult (Baxter’s fists clenched), and maybe she won’t show up to get coffee and then how stupid would I look? (his heartbeat double-timed) I’d never live that one down I’d have to move and dye my hair and change my name (his intestines performed contortion acts), wait if I did that then I would have to re-send all my college applications with my new name and the deadline is soon (his shoulders cramped and his dominant hand tensed), oh god who cares I’m not getting in anyway Dad will disown me and Mom will sigh as I move out into my cardboard box on the street playing my flute for pocket change and… he let out a great, whining “Umph!” and bent forward, putting his head in his hands. He felt nauseous. He felt he might pass out but at the same time the nervous and dreadful energy in him made him feel like he could run a marathon. It was terrifying.

The bus stopped at Chestnut Road and Baxter got off. He walked for about a mile through a maze of decrepit suburbia. I’ve got to fix that catapult, he kept repeating to himself as he walked down the streets. Every time his foot landed in a new pavement square, he repeated the words to himself. I’ve got to fix that catapult. I’ve got to fix that catapult.

Baxter thought about that catapult so intensely he could see every square inch of it in his mind. He thought about the length, width, and texture of each piece of the great plastic beast, he knew the feel of all of its edges and felt the stick of the duct tape on his fingers. He came up with three - no, four ways he could fix it so that it would throw a tennis ball all the way down Senior hallway and out the door onto the quad.

He was imagining that tennis ball flying through the air, then bounce, bounce, bounce past Ms. Bates and the freshman and the rest of the cross country team and that girl who wasn’t going to show up to the coffee shop and a girl with a red streak in her brown hair…

As the tennis ball came to a stop in a shady patch of grass in Baxter’s mind, and his body came to a stop in front of a house.

34 Schuster Street. 34 Schuster Street. He knew the address of the house as well as he knew the fact that he had two eyes and a nose and a mouth. They had drilled it into him when he was three, just in case he ever got lost. He remembered being three and repeating the address of his parent’s house over and over again, except he had had a lisp as a kid and it had always come out “Thusther Street.”

The house was dark blue, two stories, with a screened-in porch in the front and a fence with several pickets missing. The lawn was brown, and all the windows were shut.

Baxter didn’t notice the realtor’s sign sticking out of the grass. He didn’t notice that the door was padlocked. He noticed the scruffy gray mutt that had trotted up the street and lifted its leg on a mailbox. He heard the ring of a bell and a woman’s voice yell “On your left!” but he didn’t notice the woman.

They left me, he thought. They left me here.
They went out and - he patted his pockets - I don’t have the right key and now I can’t get in and finish the catapult and Jesus Christ are they kidding me I have things to do I’ve got to do my homework, that stupid project that nobody will help me with and I have to get ready for cross country and soccer and I want to go out tonight and how could they do this to me how COULD THEY…

Baxter stood in front of the house until the sun went down, his fists clenched and tears pouring down his face, hot and bitter and twenty years too late. He reached for a cell phone, fingers anxious to type, to tell someone, anyone how angry he was. He needed someone else to hear the way his mind had stopped making sense, the way the girl at the bus stop had spat at him with such disgust, he needed an audience to hear him say how did it all run away from me? how did I end up here?

The night fully blanketed the sky now, and the humidity had disappeared from the air. The fall had lost the last feather it had held to remind it of summer, and turned a cool, breezy shoulder in disappointment. The streetlights began to turn on and Baxter’s face was lit up sunflower yellow as he turned and walked away from 34 Schuster Street. With each angry step he walked, the fire inside him turned into dust and began to taste like weariness. He was tired. He was so, so tired.

He turned onto a main road and sat for a while in a fast-food joint called MegaBurger, breathing in grease and spinning the salt and pepper shakers on the table. He didn’t order anything, and couldn’t remember if someone had yelled at him for not doing so.

It’s now been seven hours, two minutes, and twelve milliseconds since we saw Baxter sitting at the bus stop. It was still the same day in a series of days that made up a year when nothing really big happened. Only small things happened, and these things were still going unnoticed.

Baxter walked up to an apartment complex five minutes’ walk from the MegaBurger, and didn’t smile at the doorman. In the elevator, the lobby noises of scuffling shoes and rolling suitcases and unhappy animals stuck in pet carriers bound for the vet were muffled, and then disappeared. Baxter’s head was buzzing and throbbing, his stomach was cramping, and he smelled overwhelmingly of sweat. He felt the weight of his dumpling body and worried that tonight might be the night the wrinkles sighed into place.

The elevator dinged, and Baxter got off and walked down a long hallway. He paused at apartment 5G, pulled out a small silver key, and opened the door.

He knew that the place would smell musty because he had procrastinated on vacuuming and dusting again. His TV was on but the sound was off because he had been trying to concentrate on balancing his checkbook. The cat stared up at him from the armchair and mewed softly, then rolled over on its belly. Baxter walked over to the armchair and the cat got up so that Baxter could sit and it could re-settle itself onto his lap. Baxter held out his hands; they were shaking.

He had never figured out how to fix the catapult, he thought. But it didn’t matter now.

He put his shaking hands down on the cat’s soft, sweet fur, and tried to suppress his nausea. Eventually, he fell asleep.

He did not dream of catapults.