The Killingly Intermediate School 1599 Upper Maple St Dayville, Ct 06241 (860) 779-6700
A literary arts magazine. And so much more. Yeah, we pretty much do everything. And we do it at night.
Time
By: Allison Devolve
The Elephant Keychain
by Courtney Greene
Her softly spoken words occupied the space in the room, and I slowly tried to transform them into a memory. The most meaningful moments always appear when I’m talking to my grandmother. Our conversations inspire me to make the most of the gradually decreasing time we all have. While sitting in the bedroom at my grandparents house that day, my thirteen year-old mind became aware of the true meaning of time, all because of a tiny elephant keychain.
I gripped the patterned quilt that draped over my grandmother’s bed, staring into her caring blue eyes as she spoke. We mostly shared our thoughts and feelings about the recent days we were unable to see each other.
The bedroom was small. Actually it was my mom’s old room as a child, with green walls the color of olives. Photos of family memories were stuffed into the side creases of the mirror, and pictures I drew for my grandmother were tacked up all along the walls. The tight spacing and large dressers left little room for anybody’s voice to echo. With only one window to let a beam of light shine in every now and again, it was a comfy little bedroom.
My eyes scanned the walls as I revealed a little smirk of reassurance at each picture displaying a quick memory. Every drawing resembled my creativity as a little girl, with different colored marker lines that seeped my love and imagination into the thin paper. Paintings and old photographs danced through my searching eyes, but there was one object that I steadily fixed my eyes on.
It stood out because it dangled as the only object in the room with no color. Although it didn’t sparkle and only reflected a dull silver tint, it held more of a story and inspiration than anything else that hung on those walls.
It was a keychain.
The key ring hung around a small, red pushpin that was forced into the wooden walls. Seven tiny metal rings grasped each other tightly, creating an interlocked chain. At the very end dangled an elephant charm. Every detail was distinguished on the small charm, creating a realistic visual of an elephant. Each crease on its cold, metal body held shadows along with a blackened rust, making the tiny bumps and lines stand out with great detail.
My eyes slowly widened in disbelief as I reached my hands out to grasp the object. I gradually released my grip, revealing a memory that I now held in my hand.
My mind raced back to my childhood. As a three year-old, I sat in the back of my grandparent’s faded blue car. My hands glided along the cold, hard, leather seats, and my fingertips tingled as if they were frozen. I gazed up to the rearview mirror, where that familiar metal keychain dangled.
As a small three year-old, I developed an obsession with elephants. I remember grasping the keychain tightly in my small hands. Reality drifted back to me, and I realized I loosely held the same object, but now in my much larger hands.
I reassured my grandmother that I recognized this keychain, and I asked her the only question that remained on my mind: “Where did you get this keychain in the first place?”
My grandmother shrugged, leaving the question with an unknown answer. All I knew was that such a miniscule object impacted my life enormously.
I looked back down to where it lay across the palm of my hand. For an odd reason, it didn’t seem too long ago that I felt it with my small fingers.
I realized that time grasped my young life, and dragged it away too quickly. Though, maybe time wasn’t to blame, but the way I used it was. Instead of focusing on the minutes, why didn’t I focus on the seconds? Later, I realized that every second of your life is a gift. Though seconds may seem small, appreciate any time you are given. Use your gift to your advantage, but use it wisely. I felt I had wasted my gift, and my time.
However, many great times were spent, especially with my grandparents. As I looked back on the years I was my youngest, I spent almost every day with them, creating memories. As the years passed, time spent with my loving grandparents decreased. Weekends became busy, friends and activities cluttered my life, and I never thought much about it. I now realize these were poor excuses.
Before leaving the house and saying our good-byes, the last words my grandmother spoke about the keychain were, “It stands for good luck.”
Clutching it in my hand as I walked out the door, I whispered to myself, “It stands for good luck.”
I felt as though I needed that small reassurance.
Every now and again I stare at the keychain, resting on the corner of my bookshelf. It’s a reminder of the fast approaching future, and the new seconds for which I will not waste.
Page Title
Page Title
I guess I just figured that time would go on as life goes on. Physicist Vincent Mianji says that “Time is infinite.” I always considered this to be my life motto, until Great Gram died.
Now I know just how much you have to accomplish in a short amount of time. Nothing lasts forever. It’s like she always said, “You have to live in the moment, and if at any point you have any regrets, you need to know there’s nothing you can do to change it.”
​
****
Pastor Jeffrey from our church comes from the back room where the wind just came from. I glance at him out of the corner of my eye. All he does is nod. I spend the next two hours listening to people talk about Great Gram, half of them I don’t even know. I hate the looks that everyone’s giving me, half false sadness, half pity. Why can’t I go back to two months ago when she was just at my house celebrating Christmas with the family? Why can’t I rewind to when she taught me to paint my nails?
Why can’t time just stop?
​
After the service, Pastor Jeffery comes over to me and hands me a small wooden box. “Eleanor wanted you to have this,” he says.
Eleanor is, I mean was, my great grandmother’s name. I gently open the bow and inside there is an old watch, the one she always wore. I used to take it off her wrist and watch the seconds tick by. Now the hands on the watch are still. I pocket the watch and attempt a smile for Jeffery.
Four Weeks Later
​
I wake up to my alarm clock blaring. It takes me a minute to remember that I’m on the floor. Last night was awful. Not only did I have homework after the dance, but I still hadn’t filled out my application for Princeton Prep, the most prestigious private school in the country. I have to work extra hard to get in since I need a full scholarship. I stand up and pin my application next to the pamphlets for Harvard, Yale, and Juilliard. Then I make a neat stack of all my papers and shuffle them into my book bag with my lunch still packed in it from yesterday. I can just barely hear my mother shouting my name from downstairs.
​
As I race down the hallway, I yell to my brother,“I’ll be right there.”
I choke down a few bites of dry, burnt toast and head out the door to wait for the bus. I can already feel a migraine coming on from all the stress. Four tardies make an absent, and I can’t afford any bad mark on my report card. I glance down at my watch, the hands still frozen on the two. I am so relieved when I see the big yellow bus careening down the hill toward my street.
Classes are the same as always, lesson and lectures I’ve already heard with teachers always nagging at how important the future is, like I don’t already know. Time seems to go on and on. I constantly glance at my watch even though I know that it hasn’t changed.
Now it’s time for the fun part.
The Cafeteria.
​
Anyones who has been in a middle school knows that the lunch room is where the lions go to stalk their prey. I take a deep breath and push through the double doors. My table is all the way in the back by the windows were I can see outside. When I get there my friend Hillary is already waiting for me.
​
As I sit down, Hillary immediately starts in on one of her rants, probably about how I need to learn how to accessorize. She just so happens to have a deep love for fashion and wants everyone to dress just like her. She has short, dark, curly hair and thick nerd glasses. Usually she wears the same five outfits every week until she finds a new trend she wants to follow.
I tune her out, as usual, and try to go over the to-do list in my head for the tenth time today.
​
“Are you even listening to me?” she says.
​
I lift my head to see that Hillary is glaring daggers at me. I look around confused.
​
“Um," I say.
​
“And that’s another thing, you never listen." she says. "You’re so concerned about your own problems that you don’t care to listen to anyone else!” Hillary rolls her emerald green eyes and puts her fur trimmed boots on the table. “And I was talking about my birthday, which you missed!”
​
And in that moment, I swear time stopped, the kids around us staring like statues, Hillary and I glaring at each other, my best friend, my only friend.
​
“Why didn’t you invite me?” I’m starting to raise my voice but I don’t care.
Hillary just stares at me like I’ve suddenly grown three heads. I know I’m freaking out over nothing, but I’m running on a very short fuse with deadlines coming up for high school admission. Hillary out of all people should understand that, after all, that’s the only thing I ever talk about.
​
“Of course I invited you,” she spits out, “You were just too focused on yourself to care.” This one line, “too focused on yourself,” is what really makes me lose it. I am constantly trying to improve my grades just to attend high school while she’s surfing the web looking for the next cool trends. All I do in response is stand up and walk out, leaving my lunchbox with Hillary, and just like that, time goes on.
​
This was a big mistake on my part, walking out is never a good idea. You miss chances that could have changed your life for the better. The minute I walked away I knew that Great Gram would be disappointed in me.
After walking away from Hillary I quickly realized how much I needed her. She was the only one I felt comfortable talking to. Now, standing in front of my old friend Sydney’s house, who I’ve barely talked to in the past year, I’m filled with the same sense of nostalgia. This place were I used to spend hours and hours, and even weeks in the summer, has changed so much, it takes me a minute to soak it all in.
​
The front door is now a clean white color, rather than the evergreen. All previous signs of kids living here have been swept away, not a basketball or painted rock in sight. Where the swimming pool used to be, there now stands a giant trampoline. When I knock, the door is almost immediately answered by a bouncy, happy Sydney. Her auburn hair pulled in a tight ponytail on top of her head. Her smile reaches all the way to her eyes, something that even time can’t ruin.
​
“Come on in,” she says.
​
As I walk in I notice that the smell of vanilla is gone and replaced by a hint of cinnamon. It’s kind of sad, when things change that you used to be so accustomed to, but only the little things like a smell, or a door, or even a watch.
​
I quickly push the thought out of my head and smile at her, “Hey, long time no see.”
​
“I know, right? I feel like it’s been forever. Want to hangout in my room?” she asks.
It’s funny hearing her say those words again, the same words she used to say to me every weekend. All those nights spent telling each other ghost stories on her hardwood floor and daring each other to go out on the balcony and scream into the dead air of night.
​
I have to swallow, though my throat is dry, before I can finally respond. “Ya, sure.”
​
Once we’re upstairs, we immediately get into our normal routine, dancing around like idiots, talking and laughing until our throats hurt, and playing Would you Rather, and various board games we haven’t played since we were five like Shoots and Ladders, and, Candy Land. Then comes our serious conversations.
​
“How did you know you wanted to be a teacher?” I ask before I know what I’m talking about.
​
We’re sitting on the floor in her room, the cold, hardwood sending goosebumps up my arms. Bowls of ice-cream litter the floor with crumpled up pieces of paper from our hangman tournament.
​
“I think it really came to me,” she says, and takes a scoop of ice-cream from her bowl. “After listening to Kyla and how much she loves her classes at UConn, I started to notice the different styles that my teachers used and I eventually found, a kind of art, to it.”
​
I tug at the hem of my sweater, a habit that started about a month ago when Great Gram died. Why is it so easy for everyone else? Why am I the only one who can’t figure anything out? Who am I gonna be when I grow up? Eventually, I just can’t hold it in anymore.
​
“Can you help me?” I ask her. “I have no idea what I’m gonna do with my life, I don’t even know what high school I’m going to and it’s driving me insane! I’ve applied to every school on the East Coast and even got my grade point average up to a 3.9, but it’s completely useless if I don’t even know what my first choice school is!” Somehow I manage to get this all out without running out of oxygen.
​
Although I’m not really sure where that came from, I somehow feel kind of relieved from it. I take a deep breath and stare down at my watch, playing with the buckle on it. Then I see it, the face of the clock, the hour hand pointing to 2 like always, but the minute hand pointing to the 1.
​
“If you want my advice, don’t sweat it," she says. "Life’s too short to worry about the small stuff.” She smiles, and for the first time since Great Gram died, I finally relax and lose track of time.