I can’t do it. I turn and walk away.
My throat feels like someone’s punched it. My eyes are burning. “Sana!” Mr. Green is at the classroom door, calling me. I keep going. If I turn around, I’ll cave and go back. Or start to cry. Or both. Don’t cry. Don’t cry. Don’t cry. “Sana!” He tries one more time, then gives up. He’s probably calling security.
I have to hide before I fall apart. Before someone finds me and drags me back to class. I duck into the girls’ bathroom and shut myself in a stall. I squeeze my eyes shut against the tears. Don’t cry. But they come anyway, a torrent of them, along with ragged gasps and whimpers that I’m terrified someone outside will hear, but it’s like those awful words that came pouring out of me earlier, I can’t control it, they just come, and I can feel my mouth making that grotesque crying-face frown, and the tears and gasps keep coming, and my shoulders keep shaking, and I wish I were home in my bed instead of this ugly, smelly, little stall, I wish I were anywhere but here, doing anything but this, remembering anything but the last horrible, humiliating minutes of my horrible, humiliating life.
How did I end up here? Why, why, why didn’t I just trust Jamie? Why did I have to go and kiss Caleb? Why did I have to say all those things I said? In front of all those people? Stupid, stupid, stupid me. And now everyone thinks I’m a slutty, lying, lesbo bitch. Oh, no—a slutty, lying, conceited lesbo bitch. And it’s only October.
Eventually, thank God, the tears slow down, my breath comes easier, and I regain enough presence of mind to rip some toilet paper off the roll and blow my nose. I try a couple of calming breaths, blowing the air out slowly. My face feels numb and my teeth are tingling. But I’m okay. And no one heard me crying. I check my phone and realize that the last miserable hour of my life has actually only taken a few minutes. There’s still over an hour left before the end of first period, but I can’t go back to class, not after what just happened. Don’t think about what just happened. I don’t want to start crying again. I stay in the stall for a few more minutes, breathing and not thinking, waiting for my eyes to un-puff and my nose to un-redden before I go to the nurse’s office—sanctuary of the sick and the cowardly.
The rest of the day, predictably, sucks. Mrs. Hernandez, the nurse, says I’m not sick enough to go home, so I go to Spanish, where half the class has witnessed my humiliation and the other half gets the news via under-the-desk text messages by the end of the period. I don’t know what I’m going to say to Reggie, Elaine, and Hanh, so while everyone is getting started on their homework at the end of class, I go up to Se?or Reyes and say weakly, “I don’t feel well. Can I go to the nurse’s office?” When I show up, Mrs. Hernandez gives me an exasperated look but lets me lie down, since there’s only ten minutes left in the period. Halfway through lunch, I decide a little friendship might be nice, after all, so I head out to the quad. But my friends are sitting with Caleb and Thom. So much for friendship. I go back to the nurse’s office. Practice is terrible. Jamie stays far away from me, and most of the other girls won’t even look at me. Are they mad at me? Afraid of me? The boys, on the other hand, stare at me like I’m a new animal at the zoo, except for Arjun, who comes over and whispers, “Hey, I heard you got outed this morning!” and puts his fist out for me to bump.
When I get home, Mom is furious with me because the school office has already called home and told her that I have to schedule a detention for skipping class—looks like Mr. Green told them what actually happened. “Why did you skip the class?” she keeps asking, but of course I can’t tell her. Dad comes home early, for once, and looks at me with grave disappointment—as if he’s a shining example of ethical behavior.
I can’t eat dinner. I can’t do my homework. When I give up and go to bed, I can’t sleep. All I can do is what I’ve been doing all day: relive that awful scene, re-see Jamie’s face, re-see Caleb’s face, and feel my heart slowly breaking into a million pieces.
POETRY JOURNAL, HONORS AMERICAN LITERATURE
MONDAY, OCTOBER 25
“One Art”
by Elizabeth Bishop This poem is about losing someone. I wonder who Elizabeth Bishop lost? The poem’s kind of singsongy, so if you don’t listen to the words, it almost sounds happy. Except that practically every other line ends in the word “disaster.” I thought at first it was going to be funny, because Bishop talks about misplacing things as an art, which is kind of funny—losing things on purpose, for practice. But she goes from misplacing keys, or wasting an hour, to bigger stuff—her mother’s watch, houses, cities, and even a continent—“losing farther, losing faster” and “vaster.” Then she talks about “losing you (the joking voice, a gesture / I love).” Since it’s after all the other stuff, it makes losing the person worse than losing everything else, even cities and continents. She didn’t misplace the person. It was a real loss, like maybe someone left her, or someone died. And then she says it looks “like (Write it!) like disaster.” Like she’s making herself say something hard, like she’s trying to pretend that losing that person isn’t a disaster, even though it is.
This poem makes me really sad.
34
MY PHONE WAKES ME AT SIX THIRTY, AND FOR THE sleepy second that it takes me to turn off the alarm, I think it’s just a regular day. Then I remember what happened yesterday and a heavy fog gathers itself around me. I squeeze my eyes shut under the covers, as if that will somehow magically make it all go away. I wish I could stay down here forever. I wish I didn’t have to go to school; in fact, I wish I hadn’t gone to school yesterday, because I don’t know how else I could have avoided that debacle. Where did I screw up? Or more to the point, where did I first screw up?
There are a ton of texts from Elaine, Reggie, and Hanh that I don’t even bother to read because I can’t face their questions or their judgment. None from Jamie or Caleb. Well, what did I expect?
It’s a testament to Mom’s good parenting, I suppose, that I drag myself out of bed and get myself to school. Either that, or the fact that the only way she’ll believe I’m sick enough to stay home from school is if I have a fever, or if she witnesses me throwing up.