BEFORE
JUNIOR YEAR OF HIGH SCHOOL
After the party,I don’t speak for days.
Not a word. Not a sigh. Not a sound. But if my mouth could form words, I would whisper six of them.
Why did this happen to me?
Time starts blurring together, the minutes, hours, days distinguishable only bybeforeandafter. When I look down at my hands, I don’t recognize them. Nails bitten to the quick. Freckle on the left thumb. Fingers so pale they belong on a corpse.
Fitting. It feels like a part of me died.
I let my body rot in the bed I rarely leave anymore, and I stop going to school until they notify my parents, who have no idea I’ve skipped six consecutive days.
Mom throws a hissy fit in the doorway to my bedroom, and Dad gives me theI’m so disappointed in youspeech, and once they’re finally done ranting and raging, they forge me a doctor’s note to give to the main office.
They don’t ask what’s wrong, which is unsurprising, and when I make some misguided attempt at telling Mom what happened, she doesn’t want to hear it. Not when it involves aparty I shouldn’t have gone to in the first place. Not when I’m a disappointment.
I shut down. I spin out. I raid my parents’ liquor cabinet, and then, alone in my bedroom, I drink too much. Way too much. So much that I end up in the hospital.
Now they ask,why did you do this?Now they ask,what were you thinking?
I don’t have it in me to give them an answer, and then summer goes by in a blur.
I return to school in the fall. Physically, I’m there. Mentally, I’m somewhere else.
I sleepwalk through senior year.
ONE
FRESHMAN YEAR OF COLLEGE
Second semester startswith my worst nightmare.
Public Speaking.
I don’t want to take it, but all the other classes I need for my curriculum requirements are booked up because freshmen get last pick. I thought about going with some sort of unrelated elective, but my parents would chew me out if I took an unnecessary class like Sculpture 101 or Intro to Jewelry Making. Never mind Noah lost his baseball scholarship his junior year of college and cost them thousands of dollars. He was “going through a rough time,” as they put it, but I don’t get the same luxury.
It sucks not being the favorite.
Dread keeps me awake the night before the first day of class, thick and metallic in the back of my throat. Come morning, my stomach can’t handle food, so I bundle up in my winter coat and boots and trek across campus with uncomfortable rumbles in my abdomen.
As I trudge through the sludgy remains of last weekend’s snowfall, I daydream hundreds of different scenarios that would prevent me from making it to class—a broken bone, a burstappendix, a sudden onset of the flu. I arrive at the Foundations building without so much as a runny nose, unfortunately.
Exhaling, I step into the empty classroom. It’s small. Intimate, even, and I start to panic as I realize the people in the first row will be able to count every pore on my face, every bead of sweat on my forehead. I want to turn around and walk right back out, but I don’t.
I’ve made it this far.
Twenty minutes early, I have my pick of the seats. I hurry through the rows of desks to the very back corner. Out of sight, out of mind…until I’m forced to stand in front of my peers and make an absolute fool of myself.
You can still drop, I remind myself. You have time.
I could drop, sure, but Public Speaking is a Foundations class for every student enrolled at this school. Drop it now, and I’ll just have to take it at another time.
You could take it when you’re mentally stable.
I fixate on my hands, noting the slight shake in the fingers. I tuck them between my legs and count backward from ten.
