Why bother to get up at all?
I put the remaining crackers on my nightstand and roll over. I didn’t brush my teeth today and I can smell my own breath. Acrid. Stale. My hair is still wet from the shower. I couldn’t be bothered to dry it, and I know when I wake up, it’ll be a tangled nightmare. I’m also 99 percent sure I forgot to put on deodorant.
I should just live like this. Abandon my ablutions. Let my teeth go yellow with rot, gums red and receding. Allow my skin to break out, forget exfoliation. Let the dead flakes congregate, create societies of zits on my face. Evil empires.
I should let my hair gnarl together. Form a giant nestlike mass on top of my head. I could keep things in there. Credit cards. Snacks.
I should develop a smell so terrible that no one will ever come near me. Create a force field of stink.
Wouldn’t that be easier? To be left alone in my misery. To lean into what I feel, match my exterior to my interior.
I won’t do it, though. I’ll wake up in the morning and floss and brush my teeth and my hair. I’ll put on deodorant and perfume. A little mascara. Apply some tinted lip gloss.
I’m not brave enough to be who I am.
HOPE IS STUPID
“Can I have lunch in here, Miss Crane?”
Madison stands in the doorway of my classroom, holding a thermos in one hand and a copy of The New Yorker in the other. I would much prefer to be alone for the opportunity to put my head down on my desk and whimper softly to myself for the next forty-five minutes, but . . . I’d feel guilty saying no to a student who’s just looking for somewhere to be. I’ve been that kid.
I still am that kid.
“Sure,” I say.
She sits in the desk directly across from mine. “Beth is absent today and I cannot deal with the rest of them. I cannot.”
She unscrews her thermos. I get a whiff of an earthy smell.
“It’s kombucha,” she says. “I brew it myself. It’s really good for you.”
“Is that all you have?”
“I eat. Don’t worry,” she says. “I just don’t really believe in lunch.”
She opens The New Yorker and I gather a stack of papers that I’ve been putting off grading.
When the bell rings, she screws the top back on her thermos and smiles sweetly.
“Thank you for letting me hang in here, Miss Crane,” she says on her way out, her eyes wide, her expression earnest. She looks so young right now. She is young. It’s easy to forget that kids these days don’t act like kids.
Kids these days. Oof. Let me just disintegrate into dust and be carried off by a gentle breeze.
“You’re the only cool teacher here,” she says.
I wish it were possible to catch a compliment, to hold it in the cage of your hands like a firefly and never let it go.
But . . . it isn’t. The high is transient.
After school, I stop at the Verizon store in Aster to get a new phone. The guy who sells it to me seems annoyed by my very existence, and to be honest, I find it deeply relatable.
I go to Tops Friendly Markets and get a rotisserie chicken and a liter of ginger ale. Then I stop at Simple Spirits for a bottle of bourbon.
“What’s the occasion?” Alex asks me, her eyes narrowing with their usual judgment.
“Had a hankering,” I say, surprising myself with my lack of shame.
If I want to drink straight from a bottle of bourbon on a Monday night, that’s nobody’s business but my own.
I let this attitude keep me company as I plow through a hefty fraction of the bottle while eating the rotisserie chicken with my hands, sitting on the kitchen floor.
When I’m done, I leave the carcass on the counter and go straight to bed.
* * *
—
On Friday, I run into Jill while getting coffee in the teachers’ lounge.
“Hey!” she says. “I was just thinking about you.”
I don’t say anything. I search the fridge for half-and-half.
“Are you sure you don’t want to meet Pascal? We saw him last weekend and I just really think you guys would hit it off.”
“There’s no half-and-half,” I say. I give a long, defeated sigh as I pour 2 percent milk into my tumbler.
“We could all do dinner. Or drinks?” She’s persistent. “Double date.”
Of course, I’m thinking about the picture. Of course, I’m thinking about Sam and Shannon.
I wonder how he’d feel if he saw me with someone else.
Probably indifferent.
“Sure,” I say. “Let’s do it.”
“Really?” she squeals.