Something that I wrote after the tax paper

I am in a parking lot. In the parking lot of my examination center. I have this best of luck for your exams text from a friend opened in my phone, this thing I am writing was supposed to be a simple thankyou text but I need to jot this down. It feels strange. Everything around me feels like it's holding its breath. There’s an eerie calm wrapped around me, like I’m standing in a long queue to get an ice-cream. The sky is overcast, but the air is still, unnaturally so, like the moment before a wave crashes. The usual chaos in my mind is muffled as if every thought has been pushed just out of reach, hiding behind the grey clouds above. The calm is deceptive, like the silence of a hallway right before someone shuts the door, trapping the noise outside. But I can feel it. I don't know why the fuck am I writing these things instead of a simple thankyou but just to distract myself I started observing the parking lot, maybe it's the parking lot. I don't know what it is about this parking lot.The wind carries silent conversations—unspoken pleas mixed with coffee-stained desperation. A kid standing two activa's away from me drops his pen. The clatter cuts through the silence, sharp as a needle breaking skin, I feel the shift. I don’t acknowledge it—it’s just there, pulling me deeper. The pen, tumbling, bouncing—takes me to a desk from years ago but for some reason it feels like it was three hours ago, a classroom bathed in fluorescent light. My own pen falling, slipping from my grip. I see it tumble in slow motion, bouncing off the edge of the desk as if mocking me, reminding me that some things you can’t hold on to. There’s a tremor in my chest, a familiar one, like the steady drip of time that refuses to stop, no matter how hard I want it to. Back in the parking lot, the kid has already picked up his pen, gripping it like a lifeline. A car rumbles nearby. There’s a father sitting in his car, unaware that the engine is still humming. His hands rest on the steering wheel like he’s praying, though I know he isn’t. His child is somewhere inside, battling expectations as thick as the grey clouds hovering over me. The father’s face is blank, but his knuckles are white, gripping too tightly, as if he’s trying to steer a life that isn’t his to drive. A gust of wind stirs the papers in the hands of girl standing across me, scattered across the ground, catching and curling like they’ve forgotten where they belong. The papers lift, and I’m with them, floating back to a different parking lot, another car. The night is heavy, and the boy in the driver’s seat is holding his breath, hands trembling against the wheel. He isn’t praying either—he’s waiting for something to happen, for the world to stop. But it won’t. His last attempt. The headlights from passing cars blur like distant dreams. He doesn’t move, doesn’t even blink. The test tomorrow is everything. Or maybe it’s nothing at all anymore. But in his silence, there’s no peace. Only the weight of failure that hangs in the air like a storm refusing to break. The wind dies down, but it takes me somewhere else again. A girl is tapping her foot, a steady beat against the concrete. She’s gripping a page from her notebook, the ink smudged from where her fingers lingered too long, lost in thought. Her lips move silently, rehearsing the answers she knows she’ll forget the moment the clock starts ticking. She’s tense, her foot still tapping, as if it’s the only thing keeping her grounded. Each tap echoes like the pulse of panic she’s too scared to admit to. Around her, papers flutter and fall, but her focus is elsewhere—wait what? Why is she looking at me? Was I staring at her for too long? The kid dropped his pen again. She was looking towards him, trying to escape her thoughts by observing others. This time, the clatter is louder, sharper, like a thread snapping under too much tension. I feel it, deep inside. It’s a reminder—a return to that moment in my past when the future slipped from my fingers and I couldn't do anything but to watch it tumble in slow motion, bouncing off the edge of the desk as if mocking me, reminding me that some things you can’t hold on to. The parking lot is empty, too still. The father, the girl, the restless tapping—they're gone. The papers on the ground, the tension in the air, all vanished. I check my watch and realize it’s been over an hour since I walked out of my examination hall. I’ve been sitting here, all alone.The parking lot is a vacuum now, just the hum of my own breathing. I’ve been here longer than I should, but what is ‘should’ anyway? The exam is over, and I missed it. Maybe the real test wasn’t in that room, with pens scratching paper—it’s here, in the in-between spaces where I think I am still in control. Maybe everything I am afraid of missing has already happened.