I fold my binder closed and let out a sigh. The first day of school is supposed to be easy. For most of my life, it’s been easy. But not junior year, apparently. All of my teachers passed out this stupid “About Me” worksheet that they want us to fill out and return tomorrow.

There’s seven classes a day, and like twenty five students per class. I really doubt these teachers are reading every single worksheet about all their students. There’s just no way. And even if they did, it’s not like they’d remember everything. They give us this crap to torture us.

But now I’m finally done writing about my favorite food and color and other pointless things that will never matter in the classroom. Livi has been texting me nonstop ever since she got named on Instagram as one of the girls with the best hair. It’s so unbelievably stupid, but a couple years ago, these girls started rating people online, trying to make it into a thing. I guess now it is a thing. I’ve never been chosen for anything, which is fine by me. I’d rather not have the attention of everyone, either online or in person.

I grab my phone and reply to Livi’s text about if she should spend the money to get a blowout at the salon this weekend.

I tell her no, because her hair looks gorgeous naturally.

She writes back: um, excuse you. This isn’t natural…I work really hard on it!

I send her the eye rolling emoji.

“Clarissa!” my mom’s voice rings out.

I poke my head outside of my bedroom door. “What’s up?”

“Can you give me a hand?” She holds out two large bags from Home Depot. Inside are two dozen lights that plug into wall outlets. They’re motion sensors, according to the packaging.

“What is this?” I ask.

“Motion lights,” she whispers back. Whispering is what she does when she doesn’t want Grandpa to overhear. Now, it makes sense. He’s finding it harder and harder to move around the house now, even though he has the layout memorized.

“I’ll take this side of the house,” I say, ripping open the packages.

Together, we go through, placing a motion light in the outlets all around the house. Grandpa is sleeping on the recliner in the living room, so I tip toe around him and plug in some more lights.

By the time we’re done, we turn off all the lights in the house and then test it out. Like magic, as you walk down the hall, the lights turn on and light your path.

“This is pretty cool,” I say.

“I don’t know how long it’ll help,” Mom says, a frown wrinkling her lips. “But it’s something.”

We’ve barely talked about what we’ll do when Grandpa loses all of his sight. We don’t want him to go in a nursing home, mostly because it’s sad, and also because we know he would hate that. But it’s also scary thinking of leaving him here by himself while we’re at work and school. Sometimes at night, I’ll close my eyes and try to walk the house by memory. I’m much younger and more agile than Grandpa, and yet I still crash into things when I can’t see.

Mom thinks he’ll be fine if he uses a cane and just stays in the living room while we’re not home.

I worry that won’t be enough. I’d hate to come home one day and discover that he’d fallen and hurt himself.

After testing out the lights, I find Grandpa in the living room and I get him to hold my hand while I walk him around the house. He says he can see the lights, and they kind of help.

“Clarissa,” he says after our third trip around the house. “I think I’m ready for bed. Can you take me to my toothbrush?”

I walk him into his room, which is the master bedroom. Mom gave it to him when he started losing his sight, saying it’d be better for him to have a big room with its own bathroom.

Before I leave, Grandpa squeezes my hand. “Clarissa, I am so proud of you,” he says. I don’t know how much he can actually see of me, but his eyes look into mine with a grandfatherly sort of admiration. “Those kids are going to love that greenhouse.”

“Well, it’s not ready yet,” I say as dread weighs me down, making me sigh. “We still have to actually plant the flowers, and I have no idea how to keep something alive.”

Mrs. Bradley was excited about the greenhouse when I pitched the idea to her, but she also said I’d get to be in charge of the whole thing. She said she doesn’t have a green thumb, and well, I have no idea if I have one. I’ve never tried to grow anything. The first time I was given a bouquet of flowers, it died after a couple of days because I didn’t realize it came with flower food you had to mix into the water.

“You’ll do fine,” Grandpa says. “Get a pack of seeds, plant them, and water once a day. That greenhouse will be flourishing before you know it.”

I grin, and then put his hand on the bathroom door frame so he can feel his way around. “Goodnight, Grandpa.”

I know I won’t be able to fall asleep easily tonight, so I just lay in bed and stare at the blank TV screen in the corner of my room. I spend half an hour flipping through Netflix but nothing sounds good to watch. I can’t really describe the feeling in my chest. It’s something like a cross between dread and anxiety, and I don’t even know why.

My greenhouse is done. All we have left to do is haul away the old pieces and pack up the tools, and Mom said she’d help me with that this weekend since Grandpa is now too blind to be helping me haul stuff.

But as I lay here, feeling weirdly anxious and full of dread, I wonder if building the greenhouse was the easy part. I had been so excited to recreate my late grandmother’s dream, that I hadn’t stopped to realize what comes after that step.

Planting freaking flowers.

I’ve even measured out the shelves and decided how many clay pots we need to buy, but I haven’t put much thought into what plants we’ll use yet. I figured that once school started, and I drop my daycare work hours down to two days a week, I can ask the kids what they’d want. We’ll take a vote, and let them choose what to plant. Now, I’m thinking that’s not a good idea. I’d hate to get their hopes up and then plant something I can’t grow. Instead, maybe I’ll research what the easiest, foolproof plants are, and use those.

All of these stupid greenhouse worries are just covering what’s really keeping me awake.

I roll over in my bed and pull the comforter up to my face, wishing I could block out my thoughts as easily as I can close out my bedroom around me by putting a blanket over my head. It only took one day of school to run into Shawn. I guess I’m stupid, but I’d been hoping it would take months, or that maybe I’d go all school year and never see him at all.

Is it too much to hope that the universe makes his parents decide to move them out of the state?

I can’t believe he moved on so quickly, and with someone so much prettier and shorter than me. I mean, I know we only dated two months, but I thought it was going well. We never fought. I let him hang out with his guy friends and I didn’t whine about it because I know guys hate that. I wasn’t clingy, and I didn’t make him take me to expensive places on dates. I was the perfect girlfriend.

And all of that means nothing, because I know what caused this relationship to fail. Me.

Big, tall, awkward, me.

I take a deep breath and throw the covers off. I stare at the ceiling and try to just fall the hell asleep like a normal person. But I can’t stop thinking about it. Honestly, all summer long was just like this. I’d throw myself into working on that greenhouse, and I’d feel better, but then bedtime comes around and suddenly I can’t sleep.

I don’t exactly miss Shawn so much as I miss what having a boyfriend feels like. It was easy falling asleep when we were dating. I’d lay right here in this same bed, but I’d have my phone. He’d Snap me a goofy photo and send bitmoji’s telling me goodnight.

I send them back. He’d send hearts and kissy faces.

I fell asleep every night those two months feeling like someone cared about me. Now I just lay here, hating myself for being tall. Hating guys for being shallow. Hating every short girl on earth.

 

*

 

It’s only the second day of school and yet it feels like I’ve been doing this for decades. Like waking up and dragging my ass to the bus stop is the worst sort of torture ever. It’s all because I know once I get to school, I might run into Shawn and his new girlfriend. And if I do, I’ll put on a smiling face and I’ll seem happy and normal and like I don’t even care.

And it’s all just so stupid I want to scream.

Livi meets me outside as soon as the bus arrives at school. She hands me a cup of coffee. “Good morning,” she singsongs as her golden hair flows around her shoulders. It’s somehow even shiner today, and I’m betting that’s on purpose.

I take the coffee and give her a wary look. “Why are you so happy?”

She shrugs quickly and takes a sip of her coffee. “I’m trying this fake it till you make it thing. If I act like I love school, then maybe I eventually will.”

I snort. “Good luck with that. And thanks for the coffee.”

“Only one hundred and eighty one days left of this bullshit,” Livi says as we step to the side. A group of ROTC guys are carrying a large cafeteria table outside for whatever reason.

“School just started and you’re already counting down the days?” I say with a laugh.

“Yep. Don’t underestimate the power of positive thinking. One day you’ll step off the bus and I’ll be like, ‘only one more day!’ and you’ll say, ‘wow, this year went by fast’.”

I roll my eyes. “Can that day hurry up and get here?”

Now we can’t even get into the school because more guys are carrying more tables out of the side entrance. Livi and I step off the sidewalk and onto the grass to wait for them to pass.

This is a bad thing, because my eyes wander to the parking lot, and I know I should stop them, but I don’t. I go straight for that part of the back row where he always parked his truck. And sure enough, Shawn’s truck is there, parked next to a shiny red BMW. I see Mindy climb out of her car and walk over to his truck.

My heart aches and my head tells me it’s all my fault for being so grossly tall that no guy can find me attractive. I force myself to look away.

And that’s when I see my greenhouse.

“Oh my God.” I’m not sure if I actually say the words or just think them, because I’m in shock. I can’t stop staring at it.

“What?” Livi says. A moment later she says, “Oh shit. What happened?”

At first, I think maybe the wind knocked it down. Maybe I didn’t build it as strongly as I thought I did. Maybe this is all my fault. But then, I notice the holes dotting the one back wall that’s still remaining standing. Nature doesn’t cause destruction like that. Humans do.

Someone destroyed my greenhouse.