Catalyst

Excerpt 9 – Ajarred

The preview for his senior class “look back at the graduating class” video went on as Kaji watched and saw not a single glimpse of himself. Not as if he expected to. These kinds of things always had the same people in them… right? It was just the same students doing the same thing. Why should he care that they didn’t even have a slip of his arm accidentally left in a picture by a corrosive editor’s mistake? But to his utter shock, it did bother him. He wanted to be seen, to be acknowledged. But this… this… There was no evidence of his mere existence in the whole of this. Not even the back of his head was accidentally in view. In the will of the video, the memories of it, he was not. He was there, but not there—just another part of the scenery. And for the lack of him, his unbeing, they wanted six dollars. Kaji had been looking forward to leaving the high school, this is true. He’d miss some friends, some teacher, and other little things. But for the most part, he hated this place. Its walls white, plain, uninspired; its halls, plain, uninspired; its students stark white, drab, devoid of aspirations of none but the basest sort. Yet still… he felt empty. He’d be forgotten, forgotten forever in the sands of time.

Unless... College. Why the hell should he care about being remembered for this crimson-throated establishment? He would become much and live much and be remembered forever in all of their minds. “Kaji” would be a name they would not soon forget. As said once before and many times past, more and more: “There’s a reason it’s called ‘commencement ceremonies.’ It is not an end, it is a beginning.” And Kaji would make his own beginning.