Chapter Thirty-One
OfficialEndeavourHigh: Seniors: anyone doing anything fun
So this is fall break.
For all of my plans to catch up on reading and work on my Beta Club election campaign and enjoy the leisure of actual free time, I’ve done nothing in the past four days. While all of my time has been free, none of it has been leisurely.
I’ve been sleeping through the day and staying up all night, and my Tbr stack is sitting on the shelf, mocking me. I haven’t touched my Beta campaign. Every time I even think about it, I feel this tiny, sharp stab in my chest. I’ve been thinking about it a lot, because that stab is something.
The numbness has taken over everything. I haven’t left my bed for longer than it takes to make an appearance at dinner so my parents will stop worrying about me.
I’ve scrolled through every streaming service trying to pick something to binge, and I can’t fathom watching any of it.
That stack of beloved, anticipated reads I’ve been curating for months hasn’t been touched.
I was supposed to spend this time resting and recovering from the past few months. It was supposed to be like lying on the beach after a vigorous swim. I’m not lying on the beach; I’m caught in a riptide. I don’t know how much longer I can keep trying to swim against it.
There’s a knock at the door. I just saw everyone at dinner, and I would like to think I kept up a remarkable facade. (Even if I was wearing the same clothes as yesterday and my hair was sticking up at odd angles.) I don’t tell them to come in, but the door opens anyway.
Mom comes to sit on the edge of my bed, where I’m lying on my stomach with my face pressed into the pillow. I’m comfortable, so she’s going to have to have this conversation with the back of my head.
“What’s going on, Nova?” She whispers like this is a private conversation, even though we’re the only two in the room.
“I don’t know,” I tell her. I can’t explain it. Sometimes I just get Like This, and I don’t know how to find my way back.
“I’m worried.” She smooths down my frayed hair in a soothing, repetitive motion. “We’re all worried.”
“Yeah, right.” I chuckle. I can’t imagine the boys being worried about anything, least of all me.
“Yes, right,” Mom insists. “Gage is cleaning up the kitchen by himself. He told me to go talk to you instead.”
That’s oddly touching, and I feel the horribly overwhelming need to cry.
There’s a wounded whimper from somewhere deep in my chest, and I close my eyes against the onslaught of tears.
It feels so good to cry. It feels like giving up the fight against the riptide and somehow still ending up headed back toward the shore.
“Oh, no.” Mom rubs my back between my shoulder blades, like she used to do when I was a toddler who never slept. “Did something happen? Or is it all just too much?”
That’s what she’s constantly worried about, that this is all too much for me. That going to college and high school at the same time and joining every club and reading every book is going to overwhelm me enough to ruin me forever.
I roll onto my back. Look up at the ceiling fan. I can feel the tear-soaked pillowcase wetting the back of my hair.
“It was too much,” I admit. “It was way too much, and then I … hit a wall, or something. I don’t know. It was too much, and then it was nothing.”
Mom nods. Her face is grim, and I don’t think I realized how bad this all was until I saw myself through her eyes just now.
“There’s just nothing,” I admit, whispering it into the air like a confession.
“Okay,” she nods. “Tomorrow, I want you to do something. Just to fight the nothing.”
She smiles at me in encouragement, but I don’t think she knows what she’s asking. I don’t think she knows the Herculean task it’ll be to get me to do anything tomorrow. Or the next day, or the next.
“I’ll try.” It’s all I can promise.
“I know you will.” Mom leans over and kisses my forehead. “You’ll do your best, like always.”