Chapter Twelve
Hannah isn’t under the stairs when I get to school on Monday morning. Instantly I’m uneasy. She’s never not been there.
i should’ve told her about friday night
The weekend was fine. Good, even. Dad and I went hiking on Saturday, I ate vegetables, I painted my nails. Sunday we went to the movies. I did some homework. Reorganized my drawers. Last night I actually slept, deep and dreamless, until my alarm. But Hannah not being where I expect her to be, that’s all it takes to throw me off kilter. As if I’ve ever been on kilter, in kilter, is that even a thing?
I pull out my laptop to work on the English paper I’ve been putting off. Ten minutes later I’m still staring at the screen. Distracted by everything and nothing in particular, per usual. Hannah still hasn’t come.
“Hi, there.” It’s a man’s voice, not Hannah but Dr. I, calling to me from the landing above. “I have a box full of pastries and a hall full of teachers who are watching their weight.” He holds up a bakery box. “Want one?”
I do, actually, but that will only prolong this conversation, so I shake my head.
“What’re you working on?” he asks.
“English paper,” I say dully. “If staring at my screen counts as working.”
“What’s the assignment?”
I hold up my book. “Twenty-five hundred words on the ‘separation of soul and body’ in Dorian Gray.” I remember what Hannah said about Dr. I getting her out of her English paper and have the thought maybe he’ll get me out of mine. “Due Wednesday,” I add.
“‘As it was, we always misunderstood ourselves and rarely understood others.’” He smiles a little. “Lord Henry, in the library, with his pipe.”
“Impressive. Want to write my paper?” I hear the casualness in my voice and am surprised by it. I normally suck at this, making small talk, but with Dr. I it’s weirdly fine.
“But then I wouldn’t get to read yours,” he says. “You sure you don’t want a pastry?”
eat well eat well
“Yeah. I’m sure.”
“Well. I guess I’ll leave you to it, then.” He disappears from view.
dammit why didn’t i take the pastry
I thumb through my copy of the novel, eyes skating over the pages. My mind is too scattered to think.
I give up on the paper and head to my locker. At the top of the hall a guy in skinny jeans and a fedora is organizing his books. He glances over as I pass, the way a normal person would. He smiles, I think, maybe he even says hello, don’t know, none of it registers. All I see are his scars. More scars than should fit on a face. are mine that bad? The boy catches me staring at them, staring at what, they’re not real, there’s nothing there. I jerk my head down. Abandon my locker, head for the bathroom instead.
It’s autopilot from there. Eyes on the ground, straight to the handicapped stall on the end. Shut the door so hard it rattles in the frame, fumble with the lock until it fits.
Chest heaving, I suck air in, chemically and dank, cheap disinfectant mixed with public bathroom smells. The smell is terrible and familiar, the smell of this, of hiding in bathroom stalls, of being afraid. Of gross things you’re trying to make less gross by covering them up without ever getting rid of the muck underneath.
The whirl in my stomach goes sour.
i’m gonna throw up
But I won’t, actually, I never do. In eighth grade I learned how to force the issue, stick my finger down my throat until something came up. Mom always let me stay home, even when it was obvious, it was always obvious, that I wasn’t really sick.
I could do that today. Call my dad from the phone in the front office, tell him I don’t feel well. Spend the rest of the day watching movies on his couch, the volume turned up so loud I won’t be able to think. Maybe I’ll feel better tomorrow, but maybe I won’t. Maybe I’ll be out the whole week.
and then what?
More of this. This smell, this bathroom, this hollow feeling in my chest.
here i go down circle road strong and hopeful hearted through the dust and wind up just exactly where i started . . . HERE
And all at once I want out of the circle. Suddenly I feel trapped. The circle is a merry go round. The horses aren’t going anywhere. I want to get off.
I yank the lock, push through the stall door, walk straight to the mirror, look myself in the face.
For a split second I see only the eyes, my eyes, blue-green and anxious; then my gaze shifts and I see the rest. The blond eyebrows that need waxing. A zit on my forehead I didn’t know to cover up. The scars like pink graffiti on the left side of my face
so many scars
I force myself to count them, all of them.
Fourteen.
Another wave of nausea ripples through me. I fumble for the edges of the sink.
“You’re okay,” the man at the accident said. Not you will be okay, future tense, but it’s already happened, present tense, you already are.
But I wasn’t. Not then, certainly not now, hugging a bathroom sink.
dear god please fix me just make me okay
It’s my refrain from that summer, the exact words of the prayer I whispered so many times my throat went hoarse. The answer now is the same. Silence. No comment. You’re on your own.
“Jessa,” someone says, and then I feel a cool hand on my arm. My palms are sticky on the sides of the sink, my tongue like a sock in my mouth. “Are you okay?”
oh-oh-kay
you’re oh-oh-kay
I turn. Hannah.
so not okay
Her black eye is all I see. The bruise has crept above her eyelid now. It looks like someone punched her in the face.
“What’s wrong?” she asks.
The word nothing springs to my lips automatically. The instinctual, self-protecting lie.
“I’m not feeling well,” I say instead.
“Like, sick?”
sick in the head
I swallow. Bile stings my throat. “I don’t know. Maybe. Do you have gum?”
“I think so,” Hannah says, unzipping her bag. As she’s digging through the contents, I see the top of a white safety cap, then hear the distinctive shake of a medicine bottle. The Rite Aid bag I saw in her backpack a couple weeks ago, are these the same pills? what is she on meds for? Hannah pulls out a pack of gum. “Here,” she says, handing me a piece.
“Thanks.” I push the gum into my mouth. “How’d you know I was in here?”
“I didn’t,” she says. “I just had to pee.” She disappears inside a stall. Alone again with the mirror, I go back to staring myself down.
“Did you just get here?” I ask, watch my mouth move with the question. It’s my face but it isn’t my face. Me, but someone else. This is what it means to dissociate, to disconnect from the self. But which is self and which is other, which is fiction and which is me?
“I’ve been here since seven,” Hannah is saying. “Mr. Tanaka gave me a key to the practice room in class on Friday. Said I could use it before school.” Her voice is fast, too fast, staccato, chopped. how much coffee has she had? “I think he felt bad about the Logan thing. Which he should, obviously. I meant to leave a note in our spot so you’d know but just spaced. Sorry.”
A flush, then the door opens. Hannah comes up beside me at the sink, her face appearing next to mine in the mirror. I stare at her black eye, willing it away. how long does accepting reality take?
“What?” she demands.
“Nothing,” I say, turning away from the mirror, and from her. “I gotta go. I still haven’t been to my locker yet.”
“Hey,” she calls. “My brother said to tell you he might miss lunch. He’s at a doctor appointment right now and doesn’t know how long it’ll last.”
I look back at her.
“Is he okay?” I ask. do you know we hung out on friday?
“Yeah, he’s fine. He just went to get his leg checked out. He hurt it skateboarding, I guess.”
“‘Kay,” I say, then start to turn away again.
“He says you guys had fun on Friday.”
“Oh,” I say lamely. “Yeah.”
“Why didn’t you tell me you were going out with him?” she asks.
“I didn’t want to make a big deal out of it. It wasn’t a date or anything.”
She rolls her eyes. “Yeah, he said that, too.”
“It wasn’t.”
“Whatever it was. I’m fine with it. Just as long as you guys don’t get weird about it.”
“There’s nothing to get weird about,” I say. “We’re friends, that’s it.” Then I’m out the door before she can say anything else.