Emulation Handbook: Patrick Rothfuss

Emulation Handbook - Ayala

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Sofia Powers (Student 2019)
Sofia Powers

The room was still dark and the wind was whipping a curtain out from where it was tucked behind the radiator when I woke up on Saturday. I went to go close the window, my cold feet padding across the wooden and creaky floors. The sky was a deep purple with clouds, with hints of light of an early sunrise. I closed the window and eagerly returned to bed. I sighed as yet another thing disturbed my slumber. My phone buzzed across the slickly finished nightstand, threatening to fall off the edge. A call from Marco. Groaning, I swept it up and waited until I was out the front door to open the out-of-date Nokia; I was still afraid someone could be listening inside my empty house.

I composed myself and attempted to shift my anger at him to power and grace. I swiftly answered without emotion, my eyes dead and set on the rising sun, acting as if I were defying him from across a table not from across the Atlantic Ocean and then some. I agreed to picking up his smuggling mule from the airport later tonight, attempting to hide my disgust.

I stood out in front of my house in the night again, this time the sky was shifting from light to dark, the sliver of departing sun causing me to squint at the beams of light bouncing off of my car. I gripped the electronic key and that buzzing out-of-date Nokia in one hand, and everything else I cared about in the other and stiffly walked to the Prius.

As I made my way to the highway, Marco called, likely because I was late. Angrily, I threw the cheap phone out of the window, symbolically throwing him out of my life. The airport exit sign to the left flashed with the light of the hundreds of shining headlights, but I took a deliberate right. I didn’t recognize the names of the places on the signs, but anywhere seemed better than what I was leaving behind.