Chapter 30
For breakfast, I make myself an omelet with cheese and banana peppers. It’s nice to have something that’s not eaten out of a cardboard tray.
I work a full shift that passes quickly. My boss tells me I’m doing a good job while I’m folding panties, which takes me off guard because I didn’t realize folding panties was a thing that one could be good at.
Back at home, instead of hurling myself into the usual internet spiral, I click on a twenty-minute butt and thigh workout on YouTube led by a girl named Maddy, which feels like the only possible name of someone who would lead a butt and thigh workout on YouTube.
I squat and squeeze my way to toned glutes as Maddy, who almost certainly has a teacup Yorkie and cries when she passes a homeless person on the street, tells me that I’ve got it, that I can do it, and I believe her.
I’ve broken a sweat by minute five, and by minute fifteen I’m drenched.
But I persevere. The workout is complete. Maddy was right. I could do it.
Frannie and Tristan pick me up to go looking at Christmas lights, which I usually find depressing.
The plastic snowmen winking and the LED Santas that wave with their rickety arms, all the decorations on the lawn display mocking you.
But tonight, I find it all kind of charming. I even buy a cup of cocoa.
Frannie tells me I seem well, and though there has never been a phrase that sounds more like a personal attack, I don’t mind.
Just like I don’t mind any of the usual heavy-rotation irritations—Mom’s absence or our clogging issues or the rosacea flares that splotch my cheeks. They actually give a little color.
Maybe Frannie’s right. Maybe I am well.