2122
Title
2122
Date
06/16/2022
Text
Lulled by the boat's gentle rocking, Diana Gonzalez was almost able to fall into a deep sleep, until an annoying droning sound and a loud THUNK on the other side of the boat disturbed her rest. Her father and uncle had returned to the wharf with a truck filled with groceries and all the other items that their neighbors had requested. An array of men and women, whom she had presumed worked at the grocery store, had arrived in the noisy truck and were aiding in placing all the cargo onto our boat. There was not a cloud in the sky, which allowed the sun to give them its worst- scorching hot rays layered their skin thick with sweat. She regarded the workers quietly, as she always did when she joined her father and his brother on their boat trips, because Diana was not used to socializing with people from the inland. As she was too weak to help carry all the heavy cargo, Diana placed herself in a position that would not disturb the movers and entertained herself by watching the ocean.
She was not meant to be joining in on the long-haul boat trip, but her mother had insisted that she get out of the house and stop waiting aimlessly for the mail-boat to arrive. Diana and a handful of her classmates had participated in an entrance exam for a high school on the inland, because an anonymous sponsor had offered to pay full tuition as well as room and board for a student from the coast that had passed the exam. Although an offer as generous as this should have been the talk of the town, many of Diana’s peers along the coast did not participate in the exam, because the majority of these young kids had been planning on beginning work alongside their fathers and mothers. There are no high schools on the coast, and it is far too expensive to send your kids inland for school. Not that it really matters anyway because no one on the coast ever becomes doctors or lawyers or politicians, people from the coast simply stay to work on the coast. Those that are able to get jobs closer inland on the preserved agriculture fields are rarely ever home, and send their pay by mail to support their family. Life on the coast is not easy, and as many families do what they can to stay afloat, sometimes it is still not enough.
Diana heard the familiar sound of the boat engine starting up, and noticed that she was now completely surrounded by miscellaneous items from the inland. Her father returned to the captain position for the journey home and her uncle began prepping to disperse these items among their neighbors. She delighted in the fact that her family members never failed to come to the aid of their community- whether by monthly trips inland for necessary supplies, or by offering to help maintain the structures of many of the houses that were left in good condition after the floods came. She returned to lay back down on her usual spot, listening to the waves crashing onto the side of the boat, the conversation between her father and uncle getting increasingly quiet as she slipped into a deep sleep.
~~~~~
Around three hours later, the Gonzalez’s had dropped off supplies at the last stop of their voyage and began their journey home. The sun had already begun to set, painting the sky in such an array of colors. Red, Orange, yellow, blue, purple. The scene reminded Diana of her favorite childhood toy, a kaleidoscope, and brought her back to the hours spent peering inside it. The air was much cooler than when they had left that morning, and Diana relished in the cool breeze that was rare on summer nights. Arriving on their dock, the absence of her mother did not go unnoticed as she had always made a point to greet her husband and brother-in-law when they returned from their monthly excursions. As her father and uncle made their way inside, Diana rushed to the mailbox at the end of the dock. She respected her family’s valiant attempts to distract her, but finding out if she had been accepted or rejected into the high school was on the forefront of her mind since she had sat down to complete the test. Her heart sank as she found the mailbox empty, and slowly, she made her way inside.
“Congratulations!” A chorus erupted as she entered the front door.
Her mother, father, aunt, and uncle were all standing around the dining room table with the biggest smiles on their faces. While she had been out on the boat, her aunt and mother spent the day cooking all her favorite foods and decorating the house. They had hung up a home-made banner with the words, “WE ARE SO PROUD OF YOU” in her mothers handwriting and placed colorful candles and ribbons all around their home. She knew she would never forget that feeling- how her heart sank down to her stomach while simultaneously seeming as though it was going to rise out of the top of her head. Diana had gotten the scholarship, and looking around at her family’s faces- noticing how full of joy they were despite the bags under their eyes and their stressed-induced salty hair- she made a silent promise that this was the beginning of her work to make a better life for her family and her community.
~~~~~
She had been on the inland for a couple of hours now. Her parents dropped her off at the wharf that morning, and were promised that Diana would be picked up as soon as they were able to have someone go and get her. There were not many workers on the wharf when she had arrived, and there were even less now, so the dock began resembling a ghost town in Arizona that Diana had recalled completing a book report on in primary school. At the time, she believed it to have been a fictional western story because anything over 350 years ago seemed so impossible and sometimes even completely make-believe to her. She was constantly surrounded by water, and the idea that anyone would choose to live in such dry and dusty places when the ocean existed was shocking. Even more so, she’d always been jealous of those that were able to experience the country before sections became uninhabitable- the west doused in flames, the east submerged in water. But Diana grew up, and she would come to understand both sides of the coin very well- after all, how shocked would those Ancient Arizonians be to hear that her family had stayed in a town that would be indefinitely submerged instead of fleeing at the first sign of danger?
A harsh horn sounded in the distance, and Diana was swept from the ghost town only to find herself back on the stiff bench that she had been patiently waiting on. The horn belonged to a compact car, smaller than how Diana had imagined these vehicles to be. The windows were completely blacked-out and Diana could barely make out the silhouette of a person sitting in the driver's seat. The driver had lowered the window as the car pulled up next to Diana, and revealed herself as a young and serious-looking woman. She hadn’t smiled when Diana walked to the door, nor had she offered to help Diana with her bags.
The car ride was long and Diana found it difficult to ignore that her driver was acting as though she were in the car alone. Diana had never known anyone to exhibit such rude manners, and felt she could send unwavering disapproving looks at the driver without shame. Beginning to notice that Diana was not going to stop staring at her, the driver brought her spindly-boney fingers to the car radio's volume and blasted the music to ensure that there would be no conversation amongst the two of them. Diana had never heard this song before, but she was not surprised as she was sure that it must be a new one. On the coast, it became too costly to protect the radio antennae and to keep any type of technology that needs a signal to work properly, so they were never able to listen to the up and coming artists. When Diana’s father and uncle journeyed inland to collect supplies, they would sometimes come home and complain about the music that the inland workers had been playing- they had called it too synthetic for their taste, and Diana now understood what they meant. Whatever her driver preferred to listen to sounded like computer noises on a loop. No words, just never-ending noise. Back home in the Gonzales house, whenever they could, they would get sheet music from their attic and play some songs together- it became a tradition in their family, and there were even original compositions that their family had passed down through generations. Recalling all her fond memories with her family filled her with a comforting warmth that replaced the cold feeling she had when she entered the car.
~~~~~
It had completely slipped her mind that Diana was experiencing her first ever car ride on land. In fact, Diana was experiencing a lot of things for the first time- she had never seen a road before and was now zooming along one, she had never seen people running outside of the designated gymnasium in her county and was currently not only seeing people run beside the road, but also riding bicycles and motorcycles- things she had only ever read about and seen in old family photographs. She had never seen so many buildings sharing the same foundation, packed so closely together on the same plot of land, compared to the miles they had to boat around to get to the library or even to her school back on the coast. The driver had then pulled into a gated community of what appeared to be an infinite number of eerily identical homes. They were all white, multiple stories tall, and she could make out the man-made wall that was built to protect the inland. Her father had explained to her that the people who lived on the inland had enough money to build man-made fixtures, such as the wall, to protect them from the rising sea levels. It was both highly impressive and completely dull, and Diana had a difficult time deciding whether or not she liked it. They had pulled into a driveway, and the driver quickly grabbed the smallest of Diana’s bags and hurried inside. The two of them had yet to say a single word to one another.
Despite the driver's rush to get inside, Diana took her time. She grabbed her belongings from the car and slowly made her way into the home, noting how solid the ground felt with each step she took. Moving inside, Diana was met by the whitest room that she had ever seen in her life, filled with equally as white objects, each camouflaging into the other that at a quick glance it just looked like an empty white room. The house was cold, a painfully-empty cold, and seemed as though no soul had ever stepped foot inside of it until today.
“Your room is the first room on the left and your sponsor will be home at 6:00 to have dinner with you,” The driver said as she descended the stairs.
Nothing more, nothing less, with that she walked back to her car and drove off.
~~~~~
Diana hadn’t walked around for long, and the muscles in her legs were already burning. She knew that treading on solid ground would prove to be a bit difficult at first, but she had not expected it to be as hard as it was. The cookie-cutter dollhouse aesthetic of the home had begun to make Diana uncomfortable, and she decided to get outside and explore her new neighborhood. All the houses were identical down to the decorative foliage, which made her walk visually unengaging, but she had reveled in the ability to walk places as she had never been able to do that on the coast.
The sky was beginning to get darker, the air less close, and Diana re-entered her new home to find the same white walls and white furniture unmoved and untouched. The air smelled strongly of something foriegn to Diana, but it had nonetheless made her stomach rumble. Still not having acclimated to the house format, she simply followed the scent which led her into the dining room. The dining room, similarly to all the other rooms in the house, was completely white. Though the room itself was large, it housed only an 8-seater dining table and on the far end of the room the entire wall was glass, showcasing the backyard. Only now had Diana noticed that there was an old man sitting at the other end of the table. The man had terrible posture, he was hunched over his plate of food and Diana was afraid that his long white beard would get all over his meal. He had been looking at her, silently, and when their eyes connected, he had motioned for her to take the seat opposite him.
“Have you been exploring the neighborhood?” He asked her. Diana nodded. “It’s a bit ugly isn’t it?” He asked. This made Diana laugh out loud, “I was going to use the word dull,” Diana said. The man smirked in response. “But it is impressive,” Diana began, “I’ve never seen anything like it.” Diana was unsure of why she felt the need to defend the inland, perhaps she had not wanted to hurt her sponsor's feelings. “I was impressed when I first arrived here,” He confessed to her. “Where are you from originally?” Diana asked, suddenly interested. Her mother had told her that the majority of the people who lived on the inland were from out of state, but Diana had never thought she would actually meet someone that wasn’t from Florida. “The coast actually,” He responded. Diana's eyes were practically popping out of their sockets, “Really?” She continued, “is that why you offered the scholarship? To give back to our community?”
He scoffed, “it’s not my community anymore, the best thing I did was get out of there. I just wanted to help another kid do the same.” There was a pause in the conversation as he stuffed a forkful of food into his mouth. All Diana could do was look at him and try to discern if he was being truthful or not. “It’s hell out there, you haven’t even seen anything yet and you already love it here,” He started. “I didn’t say all that,” Diana said with a calm voice. Diana could see that he expected her to agree with everything he was saying. Diana continued, “The coast isn’t perfect, I know that, and life out there could definitely be better. It’s why I’m here. I’m here because I’m going to try and make life on the coast better for us.” He laughed at her, a very wicked sounding laugh, “You think you’ll want to go back after living life here?” “I will go back,” she answered, “my family is there, it’s my home.” Still laughing, “I’m sure you really believe that,” he said. “But let me tell you something, you’ll change your mind. I’m sure of it.” He finished the rest of the food that was in front of him, stood up from his seat, “I won’t be able to take you to your school tomorrow, so I’ll have the driver come pick you up,” and left her alone.
Having forgotten her dinner, Diana rushed upstairs to her bedroom. She was left confused and angry after having that conversation with her sponsor, and she was becoming increasingly aware of the fact that she had nothing on the inland. Diana had no place to vent, no one to confide in, and the inland had proved it was a cold place. Diana felt the most unwelcomed and uncomfortable, and for the first time in her life, she wanted to give up and go home. Diana layed on her bed, and found that she was unable to fall asleep. The bed was too stiff, the walls were too white, and the silence was deafening. She ventured over to her luggage, and tore it open hoping to find solace in her belongings from home. Inside, Diana had found a polaroid picture from the party her family had thrown before she left with the words, AN UNFORGETTABLE DAY! WE LOVE YOU DIANA!
Diana remembered that feeling- how her heart sank down to her stomach while simultaneously seeming as though it was going to rise out of the top of her head. Diana recalled the looks on her family’s faces- noticing how full of joy they were for her. She remembered how they cared for their community, for their home. She remembered the silent promise that she made to herself, about working to make life better for her community, and she grew a newfound urge to keep that promise.
She was not meant to be joining in on the long-haul boat trip, but her mother had insisted that she get out of the house and stop waiting aimlessly for the mail-boat to arrive. Diana and a handful of her classmates had participated in an entrance exam for a high school on the inland, because an anonymous sponsor had offered to pay full tuition as well as room and board for a student from the coast that had passed the exam. Although an offer as generous as this should have been the talk of the town, many of Diana’s peers along the coast did not participate in the exam, because the majority of these young kids had been planning on beginning work alongside their fathers and mothers. There are no high schools on the coast, and it is far too expensive to send your kids inland for school. Not that it really matters anyway because no one on the coast ever becomes doctors or lawyers or politicians, people from the coast simply stay to work on the coast. Those that are able to get jobs closer inland on the preserved agriculture fields are rarely ever home, and send their pay by mail to support their family. Life on the coast is not easy, and as many families do what they can to stay afloat, sometimes it is still not enough.
Diana heard the familiar sound of the boat engine starting up, and noticed that she was now completely surrounded by miscellaneous items from the inland. Her father returned to the captain position for the journey home and her uncle began prepping to disperse these items among their neighbors. She delighted in the fact that her family members never failed to come to the aid of their community- whether by monthly trips inland for necessary supplies, or by offering to help maintain the structures of many of the houses that were left in good condition after the floods came. She returned to lay back down on her usual spot, listening to the waves crashing onto the side of the boat, the conversation between her father and uncle getting increasingly quiet as she slipped into a deep sleep.
~~~~~
Around three hours later, the Gonzalez’s had dropped off supplies at the last stop of their voyage and began their journey home. The sun had already begun to set, painting the sky in such an array of colors. Red, Orange, yellow, blue, purple. The scene reminded Diana of her favorite childhood toy, a kaleidoscope, and brought her back to the hours spent peering inside it. The air was much cooler than when they had left that morning, and Diana relished in the cool breeze that was rare on summer nights. Arriving on their dock, the absence of her mother did not go unnoticed as she had always made a point to greet her husband and brother-in-law when they returned from their monthly excursions. As her father and uncle made their way inside, Diana rushed to the mailbox at the end of the dock. She respected her family’s valiant attempts to distract her, but finding out if she had been accepted or rejected into the high school was on the forefront of her mind since she had sat down to complete the test. Her heart sank as she found the mailbox empty, and slowly, she made her way inside.
“Congratulations!” A chorus erupted as she entered the front door.
Her mother, father, aunt, and uncle were all standing around the dining room table with the biggest smiles on their faces. While she had been out on the boat, her aunt and mother spent the day cooking all her favorite foods and decorating the house. They had hung up a home-made banner with the words, “WE ARE SO PROUD OF YOU” in her mothers handwriting and placed colorful candles and ribbons all around their home. She knew she would never forget that feeling- how her heart sank down to her stomach while simultaneously seeming as though it was going to rise out of the top of her head. Diana had gotten the scholarship, and looking around at her family’s faces- noticing how full of joy they were despite the bags under their eyes and their stressed-induced salty hair- she made a silent promise that this was the beginning of her work to make a better life for her family and her community.
~~~~~
She had been on the inland for a couple of hours now. Her parents dropped her off at the wharf that morning, and were promised that Diana would be picked up as soon as they were able to have someone go and get her. There were not many workers on the wharf when she had arrived, and there were even less now, so the dock began resembling a ghost town in Arizona that Diana had recalled completing a book report on in primary school. At the time, she believed it to have been a fictional western story because anything over 350 years ago seemed so impossible and sometimes even completely make-believe to her. She was constantly surrounded by water, and the idea that anyone would choose to live in such dry and dusty places when the ocean existed was shocking. Even more so, she’d always been jealous of those that were able to experience the country before sections became uninhabitable- the west doused in flames, the east submerged in water. But Diana grew up, and she would come to understand both sides of the coin very well- after all, how shocked would those Ancient Arizonians be to hear that her family had stayed in a town that would be indefinitely submerged instead of fleeing at the first sign of danger?
A harsh horn sounded in the distance, and Diana was swept from the ghost town only to find herself back on the stiff bench that she had been patiently waiting on. The horn belonged to a compact car, smaller than how Diana had imagined these vehicles to be. The windows were completely blacked-out and Diana could barely make out the silhouette of a person sitting in the driver's seat. The driver had lowered the window as the car pulled up next to Diana, and revealed herself as a young and serious-looking woman. She hadn’t smiled when Diana walked to the door, nor had she offered to help Diana with her bags.
The car ride was long and Diana found it difficult to ignore that her driver was acting as though she were in the car alone. Diana had never known anyone to exhibit such rude manners, and felt she could send unwavering disapproving looks at the driver without shame. Beginning to notice that Diana was not going to stop staring at her, the driver brought her spindly-boney fingers to the car radio's volume and blasted the music to ensure that there would be no conversation amongst the two of them. Diana had never heard this song before, but she was not surprised as she was sure that it must be a new one. On the coast, it became too costly to protect the radio antennae and to keep any type of technology that needs a signal to work properly, so they were never able to listen to the up and coming artists. When Diana’s father and uncle journeyed inland to collect supplies, they would sometimes come home and complain about the music that the inland workers had been playing- they had called it too synthetic for their taste, and Diana now understood what they meant. Whatever her driver preferred to listen to sounded like computer noises on a loop. No words, just never-ending noise. Back home in the Gonzales house, whenever they could, they would get sheet music from their attic and play some songs together- it became a tradition in their family, and there were even original compositions that their family had passed down through generations. Recalling all her fond memories with her family filled her with a comforting warmth that replaced the cold feeling she had when she entered the car.
~~~~~
It had completely slipped her mind that Diana was experiencing her first ever car ride on land. In fact, Diana was experiencing a lot of things for the first time- she had never seen a road before and was now zooming along one, she had never seen people running outside of the designated gymnasium in her county and was currently not only seeing people run beside the road, but also riding bicycles and motorcycles- things she had only ever read about and seen in old family photographs. She had never seen so many buildings sharing the same foundation, packed so closely together on the same plot of land, compared to the miles they had to boat around to get to the library or even to her school back on the coast. The driver had then pulled into a gated community of what appeared to be an infinite number of eerily identical homes. They were all white, multiple stories tall, and she could make out the man-made wall that was built to protect the inland. Her father had explained to her that the people who lived on the inland had enough money to build man-made fixtures, such as the wall, to protect them from the rising sea levels. It was both highly impressive and completely dull, and Diana had a difficult time deciding whether or not she liked it. They had pulled into a driveway, and the driver quickly grabbed the smallest of Diana’s bags and hurried inside. The two of them had yet to say a single word to one another.
Despite the driver's rush to get inside, Diana took her time. She grabbed her belongings from the car and slowly made her way into the home, noting how solid the ground felt with each step she took. Moving inside, Diana was met by the whitest room that she had ever seen in her life, filled with equally as white objects, each camouflaging into the other that at a quick glance it just looked like an empty white room. The house was cold, a painfully-empty cold, and seemed as though no soul had ever stepped foot inside of it until today.
“Your room is the first room on the left and your sponsor will be home at 6:00 to have dinner with you,” The driver said as she descended the stairs.
Nothing more, nothing less, with that she walked back to her car and drove off.
~~~~~
Diana hadn’t walked around for long, and the muscles in her legs were already burning. She knew that treading on solid ground would prove to be a bit difficult at first, but she had not expected it to be as hard as it was. The cookie-cutter dollhouse aesthetic of the home had begun to make Diana uncomfortable, and she decided to get outside and explore her new neighborhood. All the houses were identical down to the decorative foliage, which made her walk visually unengaging, but she had reveled in the ability to walk places as she had never been able to do that on the coast.
The sky was beginning to get darker, the air less close, and Diana re-entered her new home to find the same white walls and white furniture unmoved and untouched. The air smelled strongly of something foriegn to Diana, but it had nonetheless made her stomach rumble. Still not having acclimated to the house format, she simply followed the scent which led her into the dining room. The dining room, similarly to all the other rooms in the house, was completely white. Though the room itself was large, it housed only an 8-seater dining table and on the far end of the room the entire wall was glass, showcasing the backyard. Only now had Diana noticed that there was an old man sitting at the other end of the table. The man had terrible posture, he was hunched over his plate of food and Diana was afraid that his long white beard would get all over his meal. He had been looking at her, silently, and when their eyes connected, he had motioned for her to take the seat opposite him.
“Have you been exploring the neighborhood?” He asked her. Diana nodded. “It’s a bit ugly isn’t it?” He asked. This made Diana laugh out loud, “I was going to use the word dull,” Diana said. The man smirked in response. “But it is impressive,” Diana began, “I’ve never seen anything like it.” Diana was unsure of why she felt the need to defend the inland, perhaps she had not wanted to hurt her sponsor's feelings. “I was impressed when I first arrived here,” He confessed to her. “Where are you from originally?” Diana asked, suddenly interested. Her mother had told her that the majority of the people who lived on the inland were from out of state, but Diana had never thought she would actually meet someone that wasn’t from Florida. “The coast actually,” He responded. Diana's eyes were practically popping out of their sockets, “Really?” She continued, “is that why you offered the scholarship? To give back to our community?”
He scoffed, “it’s not my community anymore, the best thing I did was get out of there. I just wanted to help another kid do the same.” There was a pause in the conversation as he stuffed a forkful of food into his mouth. All Diana could do was look at him and try to discern if he was being truthful or not. “It’s hell out there, you haven’t even seen anything yet and you already love it here,” He started. “I didn’t say all that,” Diana said with a calm voice. Diana could see that he expected her to agree with everything he was saying. Diana continued, “The coast isn’t perfect, I know that, and life out there could definitely be better. It’s why I’m here. I’m here because I’m going to try and make life on the coast better for us.” He laughed at her, a very wicked sounding laugh, “You think you’ll want to go back after living life here?” “I will go back,” she answered, “my family is there, it’s my home.” Still laughing, “I’m sure you really believe that,” he said. “But let me tell you something, you’ll change your mind. I’m sure of it.” He finished the rest of the food that was in front of him, stood up from his seat, “I won’t be able to take you to your school tomorrow, so I’ll have the driver come pick you up,” and left her alone.
Having forgotten her dinner, Diana rushed upstairs to her bedroom. She was left confused and angry after having that conversation with her sponsor, and she was becoming increasingly aware of the fact that she had nothing on the inland. Diana had no place to vent, no one to confide in, and the inland had proved it was a cold place. Diana felt the most unwelcomed and uncomfortable, and for the first time in her life, she wanted to give up and go home. Diana layed on her bed, and found that she was unable to fall asleep. The bed was too stiff, the walls were too white, and the silence was deafening. She ventured over to her luggage, and tore it open hoping to find solace in her belongings from home. Inside, Diana had found a polaroid picture from the party her family had thrown before she left with the words, AN UNFORGETTABLE DAY! WE LOVE YOU DIANA!
Diana remembered that feeling- how her heart sank down to her stomach while simultaneously seeming as though it was going to rise out of the top of her head. Diana recalled the looks on her family’s faces- noticing how full of joy they were for her. She remembered how they cared for their community, for their home. She remembered the silent promise that she made to herself, about working to make life better for her community, and she grew a newfound urge to keep that promise.
Collection
Citation
Giovanna Valdes, “2122,” Everything Speaks To Me , accessed September 18, 2026, https://everythingspeakstome.com/items/show/107.