Chapter 19
In the morning, I pack my lunch in the kitchen while Mom finishes up in the bathroom. When she comes in, her face is pink, like she just finished washing it. She must be running late again.
“Sidney!” Her arms close around me from behind, hugging me for a moment. “You were in your room all night last night. Did you sleep OK?” She puts her thermos under the spout of the coffee machine, waiting as her espresso pod pours into it.
“Yeah,” I say, but it’s a lie. I woke up over and over, out of nightmare after nightmare, and I still feel half in that horrible dreamworld, anxious and a little sick.
“Good.” She caps the thermos. “Let’s check in about homework soon. I know it’s been a minute and it seems like you’re doing good this year, but I just want to make sure everything’s still on track.”
“OK,” I say.
“Great.” She squeezes my arm and kisses my cheek, and then she’s gone and I’m alone.
My essay draft is due in three days, on Friday, and I still have just two pages languishing in my laptop.
I need to avoid this talk until then, because I can’t let Mom know I’ve fallen behind.
She thinks I’m doing well in school, and she thinks that because I’ve been lying to her.
I’ve been so focused on Queer Alliance and Forrest that I let homework slip away.
Forrest. I’m going to see him for the panel in the library today.
My chest flutters at the thought, half with butterflies, half with dread.
What do I do when I see him? I want to kiss him, but maybe it’s safer to ignore him.
I can’t ignore him, though, I can’t hurt him like that.
Oh god, I have no idea how to act around him.
I feel shaky and nauseous, and for a moment I think about staying home, pretending I’m sick, but I brush the impulse aside.
I’m supposed to help him moderate the panel today, and I can’t leave him and the alliance in the lurch.
What if this was his plan, all along? To pretend to be friendly, to distract me so much that I’d forget about the revote—telling me he likes me would be the perfect way to do that—
STOP.
STOP.
STOP.
I press my hands to my face. I can’t believe I even had that thought. Forrest wouldn’t do something that awful.
Are you sure? whispers a voice in my head.
“That’s not real,” I say into the quiet of the empty house. “It’s not happening. That’s not real. It’s not happening. That’s not real. It’s not happening.”
I glance at the clock. If I don’t leave now, I’ll be late.
I push the bubbling thoughts and images down and head to the train station, arriving on the platform with a few minutes to spare.
I zone out, staring down onto the tracks.
They’re made of concrete, a cylinder scooped down into the ground below the edge of the platform, two metal railings running side by side down its length and disappearing into the tunnel at either end.
I shuffle my feet forward, lining them up at the edge of the yellow strip that marks the nostanding zone.
It would be so easy to jump in front of the train when it arrives.
I frown. Why did I think that? I don’t want to do . . . that.
Do I?
A breeze picks up, and I peer down the tunnel to see the approaching train. I could jump, right now.
“No,” I say, and step back, then look around. Nobody heard that, right? Me talking to myself in public?
No one’s noticed me, and the train pulls up, its doors opening right in front of me. I move into it in a daze, finding an open seat and sliding over to sit by the window.
Why did I think that? I don’t want to jump in front of a train, I don’t want to die, I don’t want to . . .
Do I?
Why would I think that, if I didn’t secretly want to? When you’re suicidal, you think about dying. You think about the ways it could happen, the ways you could do it. Like jumping in front of a train. It’s weird, how easy it would be. I never really thought about that.
If I haven’t thought about it before, maybe I’m not suicidal.
But people don’t just have thoughts like that for no reason.
Imagine if someone asked me what I was thinking in that moment.
“Oh, nothing, just picturing killing myself!” That’s not normal.
Fear flickers inside me, like kindling catching a spark.
I close my eyes. I’ll imagine it again, see how it feels, me on the edge of the platform as the train thunders out of the tunnel like a bullet from a gun, stepping forward, off the edge—
My eyes snap open and I pull in my shoulders, tensing my body, the image still playing like a hologram in my mind as I stare out the window into the concrete darkness.
I don’t want it, I don’t want it, I don’t want it, I don’t want it, I don’t want it—if I don’t want it, I can’t be suicidal. If I was, then I’d want it.
But maybe that’s how it gets you?
I replay the movie and check again, scanning my chest, my shoulders, my stomach for any trace of desire, and the more I look, the less sure I am of what it even feels like to want something, but it doesn’t matter because I need to keep going, I can’t stop, I have to figure it out somehow, before it’s too late.
At school, I skip my locker and dawdle in the bathroom until first bell rings.
When I walk into class, Forrest is already seated.
His face lights up the second he sees me, and I can’t help smiling back, even as my stomach lurches.
In my seat, I can feel him looking at me, and I pretend that whatever Ms. Lundahl is saying is the most fascinating thing I’ve ever heard.
My phone vibrates in my pocket. When I slip it out, it’s a text from him.
Can’t wait to run the event with you later, he says, and my heart sinks.
I want to respond, I want to tell him the same thing, I want to co-moderate the panel and kiss him afterward in front of everyone, but every time I imagine it, that romantic movie’s catastrophic sequel rolls through my mind right behind it.
Our breakup, breaking everything in its path, including me.
Forrest wouldn’t even want to date me anyway if he knew what the inside of my head was like.
I don’t know what’s happening to me, but it’s not good.
I’m not good—for anyone, and especially not Forrest. He likes me, and I like him, and I can’t even text him back.
Jayden has a crush on Alexander, and instead of being excited for him like Makayla and Anna, I’m worried about how it’s going to affect me.
Maybe I don’t have anxiety at all. Under my desk, I open a search browser on my phone and type in “sociopath symptoms.”
My phone buzzes again. It’s Dad this time, the first time he’s texted since this weekend.
Why is everyone texting me right now? I slide the phone into my pocket without looking at the message.
At the front of the room, Ms. Lundahl is droning on about something I should probably care about, but all I can feel is the fluttering in my chest, the churning of my stomach.
I have to stop getting anxious, or I’m going to break down in class in front of everyone, and everyone will know what a freak I am.
Stop, I tell myself.
Stop.
Stop.
It doesn’t work.
I take my time at my locker once the lunch bell rings, longer than I need to.
I never got to finish my Google search in class and it’s been itching under my skin ever since, the need to know, the need to figure this out.
If I’m a sociopath, my friends deserve to hear it, so they can get away from me.
I click on link after link and scan the articles: “6 Traits of a Sociopath,” “Here’s Why Spotting a Sociopath Is Harder Than You Think,” “Antisocial Personality Disorder Signs and Symptoms,” and on and on.
“Sidney!”
I close the browser as fast as I can and look up. Anna is coming toward me down the hall, a big smile on her face as she waves at me. I shut my locker and fall into step beside her.
“How was your morning?” she asks, linking her arm through mine.
I shrug. “It was fine.”
She squeezes my bicep. “You OK? You seem down.”
“I’m just tired.”
“I feel that.”
The hallway in front of the library is busy, lockers opening and slamming shut all around us in rhythmic cacophony, clumps of people talking and laughing as they push through the crowded corridor to the cafeteria.
Anna leads me around a group and then we’re passing through the library’s double doors, into an eddy of quiet outside the wild current.
“Hey y’all!” Mx. Prager calls out cheerfully, waving from their desk, and I smile weakly as we hustle past them toward the back of the library. Nyx and Stef are already there setting up for the panel, one at each end of a table as they slowly slide it out of the way.
“Hi,” Nyx says breathlessly as we approach. The two of them push the table lengthwise against the bookcases, and Anna and I take the cue to grab another one and do the same. Together, the four of us move all the tables aside to leave a large area in the center.
“Where’s Forrest?” I ask as casually as possible.
Stef fixes me with a pointed stare. The corner of her mouth twitches. I wonder if he told her. “He’s making up a quiz during lunch,” she says, pushing the first few chairs into a row.
“Cool,” I say, nodding.
I can feel her eyes on me as we set up the rest of the rows, but I ignore her. We leave a square of carpet at the front for a stage area, with three chairs facing the rows, angled slightly toward each other.
We’re just finishing up as Jayden and Makayla join us, and the others trickle in as we eat lunch. Most of the Queer Alliance is here, and they fill the first few rows, eating and chatting. More people join, some of them friends with our members, others I don’t recognize.
I hear him before I see him.
“Are! You! Readyyyyy?!” Forrest bellows over the chatter. We all turn, and he’s there at the back of the rows, posed like he’s the Hulk ready to smash.
“Forrest,” Mx. Prager calls out, and he grimaces.