Burnt Toast

The heat amplified the beating of the ticking clock in Sophie's kitchen. She felt the pulses every second throughout her whole body, constantly reminding her how slowly time passes. Even in her tank top and shorts, Sophie was sweating—it was mid-day during a San Antonio summer. She sat alone on the tile floor, blankly watching the day tick by. She sat crouched, her knees touching her cheeks, rocking back and forth to the pounding of the heat and the clock in her head.

Yesterday she went to SeaWorld. Sophie wanted to go back today, but her dad hadn't been home since last night and her stepmom was occupied with her baby half-sister. Sophie wondered how such a small, pink face could produce the glass-shattering screams that made her stomach turn. She liked to stand over the cradle, mesmerized by the transformation from a sleeping baby to a crin-kled, red face. Perhaps her parents were fervent believers in the Ferber Method, or they were just too busy yelling at each other to hear the crying child.

So Sophie's dad didn't do much, but he drove her to SeaWorld. He won the tickets in an online raffle, and he grumbled about wanting the bottle of cognac, but Sophie was glad he accepted the SeaWorld pass anyway. Anything with "sea" in the name sounded refreshing to someone sweating through the San Antonio summer —and pretty authentic to someone who had never even seen the Gulf, much less the ocean.

Sophie's favorite part of SeaWorld was the killer whale show. She liked the video that played about a boy who found a whale in the ocean. At first, the boy was scared; the whale is called "killer," after all. But, after a montage with many sunrises, the boy and the whale slowly grew close, eventually enough that the whale let the boy ride him. On the whale's back, the boy took a block of wood and carved the whale's tail, and wore the necklace forever to remember their bond.

When a man with a whale tail necklace stepped out from behind the screen, the crowd cheered. After so many years the boy and whale were still together, Sophie thought, they were still family. But then the show fin-ished, and her father tore her away from the (non)killer whale, and away from SeaWorld. They walked through the gift shop, stocked with towers of toys and trinkets taller than Sophie's head could even lift to see the top. Out of the corner of her eye, Sophie saw thousands of whale tail necklaces, like the one in the video. The necklaces were fake and even worse, the story was too. Sophie realized the man onstage was not the boy from the video. Their connection was pretended, made up for an audience to "aaah" and buy a replica necklace.

The whale was alone, with someone who did not really care about him, just money and attention. Sophie thought about the whale, and how she felt the whale had looked at her. When they shared the gaze, they shared their understanding of life, and Sophie realized that the whale was the only one in the world who knew her. So, Sophie begged for the replica carving of the whale necklace at the gift shop, because she wanted to remember the whale, and even the video and story too. She knew the truth but sometimes only pretending can make it real.

Just like how her building calls itself "Paradise Apartments," not "Broken Air Conditioner Apartments" so people would live there. At SeaWorld, "paradise" meant baby sea turtles, palm trees, and the wave pool. Maybe Paradise Apartments is just a different kind of paradise, Sophie decided. Maybe for some people paradise is small apartments and dry grass. Sophie thought about what her paradise would be. Not the paradise of Paradise Apart-ments, she decided. Somewhere with no crying babies, no heat, no ticking clock, but definitely a SeaWorld.

And yesterday felt far away, except that today, as she lay on the cool tile of the kitchen, she felt the wave tail around her neck, sliding her fingers through its curves. After every few ticks of the clock, Sophie's head clouded and the room started to blur. She covered her ears to drown out the ticking, growling, crying, and yelling. But the noises were so loud that they were in her blood and beat around her body, so then her insides screamed. Her roaring stomach drew her body to the table, to the loaf of bread. She scooped up her body and reached for a slice, its whiteness reflecting the blurry light like it was from a celestial paradise. The ticking flooded her head.

Sophie lifted her gaze towards the clock and then the microwave. Toast sounded better than bread. She put the bread into the microwave and the buttons clicked. She pushed several, and then several more. The clicks were music. The machine began to purr, whir. This was the sound of delicious toast in the making. Louder than the noise of the apartment, the house, her stomach, the sounds of toast surrounded Sophie as she softly fell back to Earth. She twisted the whale necklace in her hands, sliding her fingers through its curves.

First smoke, then steam clouded the kitchen, and the room, the floor, the microwave faded into light dancing underwater. Sophie was in the ocean, and the killer whale emerged from below the floor. "Sophie, I'm so glad to see you again,” placing his black and white nose in her small hands. Sophie leaped on the whale's back, and they dove below the crusty tile. Slowly, the light from the burning flames and the sounds of the ambulance drifted away as Sophie and the whale sank to the sea depths. Still clutching the whale necklace, Sophie finally found silence in a cold and dark place. She felt she found paradise.

Nat Larsen