The Glass Wristband

The wristbands had been the assistant principal's idea, pitched at an assembly as a way of building "visible empathy" across the school. Each one displayed a single word on its translucent face — calm, focused, anxious, low — generated from heart rate and skin conductivity, updated every few minutes for anyone nearby to read. Nobody had asked the students whether they wanted their nervous system published to the hallway. Leyla had worn hers for six days before it betrayed her properly.

Gelang-gelang itu adalah gagasan wakil kepala sekolah, yang dipromosikan dalam sebuah apel sebagai cara membangun "empati yang terlihat" di seluruh sekolah. Setiap gelang menampilkan satu kata pada permukaannya yang tembus pandang — tenang, fokus, cemas, murung — yang dihasilkan dari detak jantung dan konduktivitas kulit, diperbarui setiap beberapa menit agar bisa dibaca siapa pun di sekitarnya. Tak seorang pun bertanya kepada para siswa apakah mereka mau sistem saraf mereka diumumkan ke seluruh koridor. Leyla sudah memakai gelangnya selama enam hari sebelum benda itu benar-benar mengkhianatinya.

It happened during her history presentation, in front of thirty people and, more specifically, in front of Finn. He sat two seats from the front, and she had spent most of the semester trying not to visibly care about him. Halfway through her second slide, her band's display flickered from focused to anxious in block letters bright enough to read from the back row. She kept talking. She did not, could not, stop the word from sitting there on her wrist the whole time, announcing exactly what her voice was working so hard to hide.

Itu terjadi saat presentasi sejarahnya, di depan tiga puluh orang dan, lebih khusus lagi, di depan Finn. Finn duduk dua bangku dari depan, dan Leyla menghabiskan sebagian besar semester ini berusaha agar tidak terlihat peduli padanya. Di tengah slide keduanya, tampilan gelangnya berkedip dari fokus menjadi cemas dengan huruf-huruf kapital yang cukup terang untuk dibaca dari baris belakang. Ia terus bicara. Ia tidak bisa, tidak mampu, menghentikan kata itu tetap bertengger di pergelangan tangannya selama itu, mengumumkan persis apa yang susah payah disembunyikan suaranya.

What she assumed, walking back to her seat afterward, was that everyone had seen it and drawn the obvious, mortifying conclusion. Either public speaking undid her, which was true — or worse, something about the room itself, about a particular seat in it, had something to do with the spike. She spent the rest of the class rehearsing ways to avoid Finn at lunch.

Yang ia kira, sambil berjalan kembali ke bangkunya, adalah bahwa semua orang sudah melihatnya dan menarik kesimpulan yang jelas dan memalukan. Entah berbicara di depan umum membuatnya goyah, yang memang benar — atau lebih buruk, sesuatu tentang ruangan itu, tentang satu bangku tertentu di dalamnya, ada hubungannya dengan lonjakan itu. Sepanjang sisa pelajaran ia sibuk merencanakan cara menghindari Finn saat makan siang.

She never got the chance to. He found her at her locker instead, holding up his own wrist without being asked. "Mine did the same thing during your slide about the railway strikes," he said. "Anxious, right when you started talking. I have genuinely no idea why my body thought that moment needed adrenaline."

Ia tak pernah mendapat kesempatan itu. Finn justru menemuinya di lokernya, mengangkat pergelangan tangannya sendiri tanpa diminta. "Punyaku juga begitu waktu kamu presentasi tentang mogok kerja kereta api," katanya. "Cemas, tepat saat kamu mulai bicara. Aku benar-benar nggak tahu kenapa tubuhku merasa saat itu butuh adrenalin."

Leyla stared at his wristband, still faintly lit, and then at him, trying to work out whether this was an admission or just an awkward joke that happened to land somewhere true. Not until he added, a little too fast, "I don't actually think it was the railway strikes," did she understand it was the former.

Leyla menatap gelang Finn, yang masih menyala samar, lalu menatap Finn, berusaha memahami apakah ini pengakuan atau sekadar lelucon canggung yang kebetulan mengenai sesuatu yang benar. Baru ketika Finn menambahkan, agak terlalu cepat, "Sebenarnya kurasa bukan gara-gara mogok kerja kereta api," ia mengerti bahwa itu pengakuan.

Had the wristbands only ever displayed her own nervous system, she would probably have spent the rest of the year hating hers. Instead, standing at her locker while the two devices sat there quietly, honestly, disagreeing with neither of them about what they'd measured, she found the whole mortifying experiment a little easier to forgive.

Seandainya gelang-gelang itu selama ini hanya menampilkan sistem sarafnya sendiri, ia mungkin akan menghabiskan sisa tahun itu dengan membenci gelangnya. Namun, berdiri di depan lokernya sementara kedua perangkat itu duduk diam, jujur, tidak saling membantah soal apa yang mereka ukur, ia merasa seluruh eksperimen yang memalukan itu jadi sedikit lebih mudah dimaafkan.

"So we're both broken," she said, "at the exact same moment."

"Jadi kita berdua rusak," katanya, "di saat yang persis sama."

"Statistically interesting," Finn said, "is one way to put it."

"Menarik secara statistik," kata Finn, "itu salah satu cara menyebutnya."

She left her band on for the rest of the day, for once not particularly minding what it might say next.

Ia membiarkan gelangnya tetap terpasang sepanjang sisa hari itu, kali ini tidak terlalu peduli dengan apa yang mungkin ditampilkannya berikutnya.