Chapter 4 #3
My thoughts are so loud they push my eyes closed.
By the time lunch ends and I rejoin the hallway herd, my inside world is louder than the outside world.
I think about how last year in English, we did book groups pairing an older classic with a more recent classic, and my group read Catcher in the Rye and The Perks of Being a Wallflower .
I liked both and gave my underlined copies to Andi along with a big dramatic note.
But before wrapping them up, I carefully cut out the pages at the end where the characters are hospitalized for their mental health and they realize the traumatic parts of their past that caused them to be the way they were.
It never felt true to me. Or it doesn’t feel true for me.
I’ve tried to figure out the Big Reason I’m like this—depressed and anxious—but there was no singular traumatic event.
We were broke? Mom had highs and lows? Doesn’t feel traumatic enough.
I just get sad and worried and I don’t know why and I don’t know what to do about it.
Or maybe sad and worried aren’t the right words. Walking into Student Leadership, I want to smash my head against the wall.
By the time I’m sitting in last period English, I’m struggling to stay upright.
When the bell rings for the end of the day, the sound is miles away.
Christy writes, Banana wing?
The panic wakes me up. Adrenaline pumps as I stand.
“You can do this,” I say aloud to myself as I stand. “You’re gonna make it.”
I enter one end of the curved hallway of yellow lockers—the banana wing—as Christy enters the other, and we dance toward each other. I do hands in the air. She moves with her butt. When we get close, she puts both hands on my face and kisses me.
“I just had the best cookie of my life,” she says.
“Today you did?”
“Today I did.”
“What a day,” I say.
“I saved you a bite.”
“What a life!”
She swoops her mini backpack off her shoulder and takes out a piece of a white cookie with white seeds on it. Seeds on a cookie sounds disgusting but I pop it in my mouth. It’s soft and crunchy and a flavor I’ve never had.
“It’s incredible,” I say.
“It’s a pignoli. Kaye’s work makes them.”
I shake my head. “I need a new job.”
I work at the library. A lot of naps behind bookshelves. Very few baked goods.
“Me too,” Christy says. “My shift starts in like fifteen minutes.”
“Really? Darn!”
She stamps a foot. “I’m around at night but I know your mom has off so you’ll be with her.”
“I should see her, yeah.”
She doesn’t break eye contact but I’m not sure what else there is to say.
The alarm on her phone blares. “Ugh.” She searches her backpack and shuts it off.
“You want to hang Friday night?”
She beams. “Yeah!”
“My mom’s working, so we can do my house.”
“We can bake pignolis.”
“Genius.”
She makes a serious face and flicks her eyebrows. I give her a kiss. She rushes through the double doors at the end of the hall and I watch for a few seconds as other kids rush out too.
I lean back against a locker and close my eyes. I don’t think I realized until now how much I’d needed that interaction with Christy to go okay. The skin on my face gets heavy and tired. It’s exhausting being on all the time, but it’s easier than figuring out the alternative.
“You okay?”
It’s Christy. She’s standing in front of me.
“Enjoying a brief self-guided meditation,” I say.
“I wanted to tell you something.”
“Oo!” I lift my hands and wiggle my fingers.
The firemark up her neck burns red. “The other night was really beautiful. You’re really beautiful.”
“Thank you.” My brain shouts at me. “ You are.”
She takes my hand. “And we don’t need to rush to have sex. So don’t worry at all about what happened.”
The embarrassment is so profound, it’s almost a religious experience.
I nod. I try to smile. “Okay.”
“Do you definitely want to be with me, though?”
“Seriously? Of course.”
“It’s okay if you don’t.”
“I’m surprised you want to be with me, ” I say. “You’re so cool and you have the best butt on the planet.”
She laughs.
“Maybe Friday night we can see your butt.”
She laughs again. “Maybe we can.”
“The only problem is now I’ll be thinking about your butt until then. You’ll go off to work and I’ll be standing here thinking about your butt. You’ll go to bed and I’ll be lying in mine thinking about your butt. You’ll wake up and—”
“All right.” She laughs. “I was worried for a minute, that’s all.”
“No need to worry.” I tell myself to stop talking.
She kisses me on the cheek. “Thank you for being the sweetest.”
I tell myself to say something. “You!”
I wave as she leaves.
The door shuts behind her.
The floor starts to move.
The hallway tips.
The noise in my head gets louder and louder until it’s so loud I wince.
“Come on, be a man,” I whisper, and it makes me want to cry.
All the things I would never speak about onstage, in private, or even alone with myself, push against my face. I don’t know how to hold them in.
There’s a bathroom around the corner by the main office. That’s as good as it’ll get right now.
“Go,” I say aloud.
I go.
I push open the bathroom door and, in a minor blessing, the inside is empty.
“Straight to a stall.”
I lock the stall door behind me and rest my head on it. Heat rises to my eyes but tears don’t come. The pressure builds on my skull but I can’t release it. I squeeze all the muscles in my face, and my throat lets out a choked sound.
“Oh, God.”
I exit the stall and pace the bathroom, wishing for an escape hatch. If you’re threatened by fire, you can run. A monster on the loose, hide. But if the pain is inside, it’s got you trapped.
“Where am I supposed to go?” I let out.
A toilet flushes.
Out of the far stall walks the guy from the main office.