The X Factor Winner

When I was little, I loved to watch X Factor. I don’t remember how much the prize money was, but in every dream it was enough.

If you won, what would you do? Simon Cowell looks at me with vivid curiosity. I tell him I would buy a big house for myself (and my family) with an even bigger bedroom. I don’t like living in my family’s studio apartment because the printer is too loud and when it spits out my homework assignments, I am always worried that my parents will wake up. What time is it? Why are you still awake?

In my sleep, I win and I put my mattress on the floor but I can’t decide what to fill my new room with. So I go to the lobby of the studio apartment but the vending machine is gone. I can’t find Ali, Santiago, or Massoud because their office that harbors our letters is no longer there. The paisley-patterned carpeting has been replaced with a clinical marble floor that I can see my reflection in. And when I look long enough to recognize where I am or even myself, I am not four but much older, though I’m not sure by how much.

So I take a plane to visit my grandparents where I once spent long summers catching tadpoles in glass jars. Their apartment is on the 24th floor and has large glass windows from which you can see mountains between the gaps of the neighboring buildings. If you press yourself against them you might even think you are a magpie. I go to the living room and the curtains have been drawn as if to remind me that today I am human. The floors have been padded to soften her falls or maybe mine. And in the bedroom, the lid of my grandmother’s piano is closed. It has metamorphosed into a home for many small pill bottles whose labels I cannot decipher from my own Proustian prayers for although I am much older, my understanding is only a little better.

So I take a plane back, and when I return to my new bedroom, it is now filled with far too many new things. I open boxes and find photographs of relief that I took to ensure that this granted wish did not betray my memories. My grandmother plays piano in her bedroom. Ali sits in the chair of the lobby’s office. But besides those, there are many photographs of places I cannot name. Black sand beaches, the aurora borealis, and a woman driving a motorcycle on an unfamiliar road.

So I return to the lobby of the studio apartment and I try not to look at the floor this time. Instead, I look up at the ceiling and see the crown molding is rotting but still there as if to reassure me that I am too.

Finally, Simon Cowell says best of luck, and on you go. I’ve forgotten all the lyrics to the song. But what I really want is for him to turn on the printer and ask me the question again so I can wake up and take more photographs to offer a sincere goodbye. Or maybe I’d plead these places to at least ask my permission before changing so absolutely.