I am standing in the corridor of my high school. The same high school I have attended for nearly four years. The same high school where I gave a speech in the tenth grade about endangered Green Sea Turtles. The same high school where I had my first kiss in that hidden corner on the other side of room 122 that leads to the stairwell. The same high school where just a couple of weeks ago my mom and dad talked to Mrs. Gonzales about an art scholarship to CCS.
And that’s what strikes me so hard about it…
The sameness.
The bell rings in my ears, too loud and too sharp, and kids stream out of the doorways into and around my space. I am a rock in the middle of a rapids. Large boys, almost men, brush past me smelling of sweat and cologne and Axe body spray. Girls, almost women, ease around me trying not to touch me because it would be awkward. For some inexplicable reason, just me standing there suddenly puts all of these people in an awkward position. Should I feel sorry about that?
I hate them for being the same as they were twelve days ago. I hate them for being the same inside their lives, but different in relationship to me. Why didn’t they know that nothing could be the same now? Nothing could ever be the same. How could they keep pretending?
Lizzy McCall squeezes my arm as she walks past. I don’t have to even look at her to know her mouth is turned down in a sympathetic smile-frown hybrid. Her eyes are filled with stupid concern. But whatever. She’ll take three steps and start thinking about her prom committee meeting, wondering if she should get that mole on the back of her neck looked at by the dermatologist, hoping her mom doesn’t find the condoms in her underwear drawer.
I hate her mom. I hate her sympathy.
When the hall is empty again and I can breathe, I lift my foot and take a step. It’s heavy and slow. Everything is slow now, like I’m playing my life in stop-motion film. I’m a blue clay monster with huge heavy feet. Stop. I inch forward in barely detectable increments. Stop. I close my heavy eyelids just a hair. Stop. A hair. Stop. A hair. Stop. A hair. Stop. Until they’re finally shut. Then I have to do it again, in reverse, to open them.
I walk slowly into my American Government class, very late for no reason at all except for the fact that I am made of clay. Some eyes turn toward me and other eyes turn away. Mr. Glenn looks at me and trails his eyes from me to my empty desk. He is pulling me there with some invisible string attached to his retinas, which is perfect because I am clay. I sit. My head falls heavy onto my desk as soon as he releases his visual grip.
I hear Mr. Glenn droning on about some kind of legislative bodies and documents. On and on about things I don’t think I know because I wasn’t here a week ago or six days ago or five days ago when the rest of the class learned them. I was standing above a perfectly rectangular hole in the ground, under a cold and cloudless sky praying that somehow something would make sense.
“Okay, folks,” says my predictably boring American Government teacher with the magic eye-string. His voice sounds far away. “Bell’s about to ring. I expect to see your homework on my desk at the beginning of class tomorrow.”
I won’t have to do it. No one expects anything of me yet. I’m not sure how I feel about that. I’m not sure if I feel anything. Wait. I know I feel hate. And anger. And rage. And despair.
I raise my head; my shoulders follow it up. I reach for my bag, but it rises on its own.
Miles Davison has it in his big, freckled hand. He smiles at me. He lifts it onto his shoulder. He’s being friendly. Miles Davison has never even spoken to me before, ever. He gets something special, now. Something I’ve been holding onto for a while. He gets rage.
I rip the bag off his shoulder. He steps back, holds his hands out showing his palms. It’s a truce, he’s trying to tell me.
I’m breathing hard through my nose, eyes squinted, lips pinched. I swallow. My scalp and forehead tingle. I’m a blue clay bull ready to charge. No strings.
“Whatever, dude,” Miles says as he turns toward the door.
Yeah, run away coward. You have no idea the fight that’s in me.
This time when I step into the hall, people move away from me. I’m not a rock anymore: I’m a live wire, a fire, an electric eel swimming upstream. I’m still breathing hard, every bit of air rasping through my sinuses and whooshing out my nostrils. I never knew that breathing could say so much without a word.
Energy vibrates through my muscles, my bones, my skin. My steps are charged. Not clay any more. I think my feet don’t even touch the ground. I’m a Bic-flick away from full combustion.
Someone touches my back. I spin around and shove, hard with both hands. Air rushes out my nostrils. My teeth clench.
I look down to the floor, where my victim is frozen in shock.
I am suddenly confused. Who pushed this girl down? My eyes fill with tears. I squeeze them shut. I clench my fists and release. Clench and release. I breathe again, but this time my breath says something different. It says that I’m sorry. It says I’m not me. It releases the vibrations, captures the lightening, calms the bull.
I reach down and the girl takes my hand. I pull her up.
She says, “I’m sorry–”
“I don’t want your sympathy.”
“Shut up for one second,” she says. No one has spoken to me like that since it happened. Everyone has tiptoed, smiled, touched. No one has squinted their eyes and told me to shut up.
“I was going to say I’m sorry I scared you. I’m Emily.” She reaches out the hand that I had just held to lift her up. She obviously wants me to shake it.
“Okay, Emily,” I answer and start walking toward the door. I just want to go home. She follows me. I stop suddenly right next to the high brick wall that edges the side of the gym. I turn and face her.
“What?”
She puts her hands on my shoulders. One on each. She pushes me against the wall. I don’t fight it. I feel the strength of the bricks press against my back. I really look at her. She’s small. She’s pale in a porcelain kind of way… but I see that she’s not fragile. Her nails are blue and her eyes are black and sharp.
“Your. Mom. Died.”
My stomach jumps into my throat. She doesn’t stop. Her sharp eyes cut through me.
“Your mom died and life completely sucks. Nothing is fair. Everyone is stupid and you hate the whole stupid world. Sometimes, you don’t even want to open your eyes or you want to but you can’t. Nobody understands.”
She takes a breath and steps back.
I release the breath I didn’t realize I was holding. She said it. She just came out and said that thing that no one would acknowledge, that everyone pretended didn’t happen unless they were trying to coat the gaping wound with honeyed sympathy. But she just said it.
I slide down the wall until I’m sitting on the cold concrete. She sits next to me. We just sit together saying nothing for a long time. It’s like a tension is broken and I feel blissfully exhausted. We breathe together. I am not a rock or an electric eel or a fire. I’m a maple leaf floating gently on the top of the water.
“My dad died last year,” she says. Her voice is calm and steady.
I keep my eyes forward. “I’m sorry.”
“Shut up.”
“I’m sorry I pushed you.”
She laughs. So do I.