Her footsteps recede down the hall and into her bedroom. I wait a moment, then dart into the bathroom before she can see me. Inside, I splash water on my face. I don’t know what’s happening, but it’s getting worse.
Something is wrong with me.
In the morning, I pack my lunch in the kitchen while Mom finishes up in the bathroom. When she comes in, her face is pink, like she just finished washing it. She must be running late again.
“Sidney!” Her arms close around me from behind, hugging me for a moment. “You were in your room all night last night. Did you sleep OK?” She puts her thermos under the spout of the coffee machine, waiting as her espresso pod pours into it.
“Yeah,” I say, but it’s a lie. I woke up over and over, out of nightmare after nightmare, and I still feel half in that horrible dreamworld, anxious and a little sick.
“Good.” She caps the thermos. “Let’s check in about homework soon. I know it’s been a minute and it seems like you’re doing good this year, but I just want to make sure everything’s still on track.”
“OK,” I say.
“Great.” She squeezes my arm and kisses my cheek, and then she’s gone and I’m alone.
My essay draft is due in three days, on Friday, and I still have just two pages languishing in my laptop. I need to avoid this talk until then, because I can’t let Mom know I’ve fallen behind. She thinks I’m doing well in school, and she thinks that because I’ve been lying to her. I’ve been so focused on Queer Alliance and Forrest that I let homework slip away.
Forrest. I’m going to see him for the panel in the library today. My chest flutters at the thought, half with butterflies, half with dread. What do I do when I see him? I want to kiss him, but maybe it’s safer to ignore him. I can’t ignore him, though, I can’t hurt him like that. Oh god, I have no idea how to act around him. I feel shaky and nauseous, and for a moment I think about staying home, pretending I’m sick, but I brush the impulse aside. I’m supposed to help him moderate the panel today, and I can’t leave him and the alliance in the lurch.
What if this was his plan, all along? To pretend to be friendly, to distract me so much that I’d forget about the revote—telling me he likes me would be the perfect way to do that—
STOP.
STOP.
STOP.
I press my hands to my face. I can’t believe I even had that thought. Forrest wouldn’t do something that awful.
Are you sure?whispers a voice in my head.
“That’s not real,” I say into the quiet of the empty house. “It’s not happening. That’s not real. It’s not happening. That’s not real. It’s not happening.”
I glance at the clock. If I don’t leave now, I’ll be late.
I push the bubbling thoughts and images down and head to the train station, arriving on the platform with a few minutes to spare. I zone out, staring down onto the tracks. They’re made of concrete, a cylinder scooped down into the ground below the edge of the platform, two metal railings running side by side down its length and disappearing into the tunnel at either end. I shuffle my feet forward, lining them up at the edge of the yellow strip that marks the nostanding zone. It would be so easy to jump in front of the train when it arrives.
I frown. Why did I think that? I don’t want to do ...that.
Do I?
A breeze picks up, and I peer down the tunnel to see the approaching train. I could jump, right now.
“No,” I say, and step back, then look around. Nobody heard that, right? Me talking to myself in public?
No one’s noticed me, and the train pulls up, its doors opening right in front of me. I move into it in a daze, finding an open seat and sliding over to sit by the window.
Why did I think that? I don’t want to jump in front of a train, I don’t want to die, I don’t want to...
Do I?
Why would I think that, if I didn’t secretly want to? When you’re suicidal, you think about dying. You thinkabout the ways it could happen, the ways you could do it. Like jumping in front of a train. It’s weird, how easy it would be. I never really thought about that.
If I haven’t thought about it before, maybe I’m not suicidal. But people don’t just have thoughts like that for no reason. Imagine if someone asked me what I was thinking in that moment. “Oh, nothing, just picturing killing myself!” That’s not normal. Fear flickers inside me, like kindling catching a spark.
I close my eyes. I’ll imagine it again, see how it feels, me on the edge of the platform as the train thunders out of the tunnel like a bullet from a gun, stepping forward, off the edge—
My eyes snap open and I pull in my shoulders, tensing my body, the image still playing like a hologram in my mind as I stare out the window into the concrete darkness. I don’t want it, I don’t want it, I don’t want it, I don’t want it, I don’t want it—if I don’t want it, I can’t be suicidal. If I was, then I’d want it.
