Chapter 21 Friday
Friday
(Twelve Days Left)
Before I became a full-time teacher, I was a student teacher, a tutor, a camp counselor, a babysitter.
I have been working with kids for close to twenty years, and in all that time, I’ve never once taken a sick day.
I’ve pushed through countless sore throats, body aches, stuffy noses, and one full-body rash that had me wearing turtlenecks and leggings for the entire month of May.
But I can’t push through this.
It’s still dark out when I email Shannon.
Taking a sick day today. Sorry for the inconvenience.
-Phoebe
Knowing how slow Shannon is with emails, I should have left a message, but the thought of opening my mouth and speaking feels impossible.
Everything feels impossible.
Walking to the bathroom, taking off my corset and jeans, brushing my teeth—I can’t do any of it. My body feels too heavy for me to lift.
If I wasn’t a lost cause before, I am now.
I close my eyes, and the darkness behind my lids transforms into a montage of images from last night.
It feels like I’m watching a home movie of someone else’s life rather than reliving moments from my own.
I watch as I cross the threshold of Finn’s room.
There I am, clutching the fabric of a green shirt in my fists.
And there’s Jonathan at the bottom of the stairs, eyes pleading and brimming with tears.
A sharp pain in my chest startles me into opening my eyes, but even so, that last image stays with me. I finally understand what Jonathan’s been trying to communicate this whole time, not with his words, but in the way he’s looked at me.
And I didn’t hear him.
Did I do something that made him feel like he couldn’t tell me?
The guilt threatens to swallow me whole.
I am a terrible friend. Worse than that, I am a terrible person, because deep down, I am angry. At Jonathan, at myself, at the rest of the world. I am hurt and embarrassed and so many other things that feel too difficult to process. So I don’t even try.
I lie in bed with my eyes open, long enough to watch the sun rise through the cracks in my blinds; long enough to hear Jonathan walk out of his room, pause in front of my door, and then keep going; long enough that if I don’t get up now, I am going to pee in my favorite pair of jeans.
My bones feel leaden as I sit up and use all my strength to put one foot on the floor, and then the other. I avoid every reflective surface as I make my way to the bathroom. I grab my phone from its charger on the way back to my bed.
I have too many texts for a Monday morning, and the thought of answering even one of them fills me with a profound sense of dread.
It’s too much.
My fingers go slack. I watch as my phone slowly slips out of my grip while I do nothing to stop it. It hits the floor with a thud.
I manage to fall asleep without ever making a conscious decision to close my eyes.
—
I wake again at noon, this time with enough energy to hold my phone.
There are two texts from Cheryl:
Is everything OK? Shannon said you’re sick, you have me worried.
Just let me know that you’re OK
A slew from Meg that I missed last night:
Are you home??
Phoebe????
Ok, your location says you’re home.
Are you feeling better?
HELLO?!?!!?
Are you awake?
I’m calling Jonathan.
And a few more from her this morning:
Phoebe?
Are you feeling better?
What the hell happened last night?
Why aren’t you answering???
But most of the messages come from the group chat.
I scroll through the messages anxiously, fully convinced that Meg’s told everyone about my odd behavior last night.
She hasn’t. But my heart sinks anyway.
It’s Nora.
She got a job offer at a counseling center. Under other circumstances, I’d be thrilled for her. But under these circumstances, I can’t be.
Because the job is in San Francisco.
She’ll be gone by the end of the month. That’s in less than two weeks.
She didn’t even tell me she was applying outside Los Angeles.
Everyone offers their congratulations in the form of exclamation points and balloon emojis, but I throw my phone to the end of the bed. How can everyone pretend this is okay when she is leaving and everything is changing?
And I will die a virgin.
The last drop of hope I’ve clung to has evaporated. This is rock bottom. It’s simply not possible for things to get any worse than they are at this moment.
At least things can only go up from here.
There is something oddly comforting about living through the worst-case scenario.
With that over with, there’s not much left to worry about.
The revelation fills me with a small sense of relief.
It’s not enough to stop my body from aching or my head from buzzing, but it is enough to motivate me to stand up again.
I change out of my corset and jeans and into my oversized Queen T-shirt and athletic shorts.
I manage to collect my tangled hair into a bun on top of my head.
I follow my feet down the stairs, returning to my room a minute later with a box of trash bags in hand.
Without hesitation, I begin the process of filling them up with every single romance novel I own.
Propaganda. That’s what they are.
I throw my box set of Bridgerton books into a bag without looking back. I don’t so much as flinch when I toss my collection of FBI romances in after it. Good riddance to all the books I’ve read for book club with Ethan. Goodbye to my tattered copy of The Fault in Our Stars that I reread every year.
Once I’m sure that I’ve disposed of every single book, I’m left with four full trash bags. It takes me an hour to drag all of them down the stairs and out the front door.
As I’m walking out of the apartment with the last trash bag, something catches my eye.
The laminated edge of my list peeks out of my tote, mocking me.
My stomach turns at the sight. I snatch up the list and shove it into the bag with the last of my discarded books.
I leave everything on the sidewalk outside with a note:
Free books. Help yourself.
—
The static in my brain has yet to disappear.
For better or for worse, it’s kept me from having to think.
So did the mindless activity of heaving hundreds of pounds of books down the stairs.
Sweaty and breathless, I stumble into the kitchen for a glass of lukewarm sink water, planning to take it up to my room and crawl back into bed.
I never make it to the faucet.
The photo of Jonathan and me taped to the fridge, the one of us at graduation, knocks the wind out of me. I reach out and press my fingers against it, remembering exactly how I felt the moment the flash went off.
How lucky am I, I thought, to have my whole life ahead of me and to get to experience it with my best friend.
The memory is enough to quiet the noise in my head for just a moment, long enough for the weight of what’s happened to hit me like a sucker punch to the gut.
I’ve walked past this photo of me and Jonathan thousands of times before, but today, it strikes me differently.
Today, it serves as a wake-up call, a reminder of the things that matter. Of how much his friendship means to me.
It means everything.
And I let myself lose sight of that.
Without letting another second pass, I grab my keys, walk out the door, and begin to drive.