The music was too loud, everything was too loud, even the thoughts in my head. I couldn't get things to the right level. Hold on, I've got to turn the music down. Okay, that's better. It's Sunday night, that slow dead time night that makes me want to kill myself. School looms ahead like this, this thing. This thing you can't avoid. It's never more clear that there are five more school days to go then on Sunday night.
I wanted to not think about Jordan Catalano, I wanted that, even though thinking about him made me feel, alive. Sort of. But dead in a way, too. I wanted to just own him, possess him, I was obsessed with him. This wasn't healthy. This wasn't a relationship like my parents had, or even like Sharon Cherski had with Kyle. It was mostly fantasy and mostly I was okay with that.
But I wasn't. I was miserable. He was all I thought about and he, he didn't even notice me. Like I was invisible. For all I knew I was. Like those cartoons you see when you're a kid, Tom and Jerry and stuff like that, where the character falls into this invisible ink and then they're invisible? Maybe that had happened to me.
I would just not think about it, about him. I could do that. I could control my mind, my thoughts. I could. Oh, who was I kidding? I saw Jordan Catalano leaning against the lockers, closing his eyes because he always closed his eyes. Sleeping in class, his head down on the desk. Walking in that group of friends of his who I hated, they always seemed to be in the way. Smoking under the bleachers. Sitting in his car. I couldn't stop thinking about it, about him, seeing him, wanting him.
I could hear my family downstairs. My dad telling Danielle to do something. My mom telling my dad to do something. The smell of the dinner my dad cooked still kind of lingering in the air. He was a good cook. This was something I'd always sort of taken for granted about him. I guess I took a lot for granted.
Sometimes I wished that I was, like, more like Rayann. She didn't get emotionally involved. That's all I was with Jordan Catalano, that's all I was. She could, like, separate herself from things, from people, from situations. Whereas I, on the other hand, was capable of none of that. I was so emotionally involved with Jordan Catalano before I'd even said like eight whole sentences to him that it just, wasn't, funny.
None of this was funny. I could see Brian spinning in those lazy circles on his bike. I could see my dad talking to that, that woman out by the car. I could see Rickie in the girls' bathroom covering up another black eye with make-up. I could see Sharon with Kyle's stupid ring on her finger and the yarn all wrapped around it so it would fit her. That yarn. That was a big deal. To have that ring, to have that yarn all wrapped around it, to have that person, to belong somewhere, with someone. I didn't think Jordan even had a ring.
Okay, so Sunday night had to end sometime, didn't it? It was just, it would be easier if he was obsessed with me. Then I could pretend that I was important and fascinating. This way I just know the truth. That I'm not. That I'm safe and probably boring. That I'm, like, no one he'd even notice.
It's funny about obsessions, the like, life of them. Like a star that either becomes a super nova or a black hole. I think I know which one this is headed for. No. It's weird to think of it. Like, at first, when whatever it was inside of me decided I liked something about Jordan Catalano, and I don't even know what that one thing was, it was just weird. It became like a conversation with myself, like some alien in my brain saw him and went all mental and the calm, rational part of me was like, 'Oh, him? That boy? Well, let's see…he is good looking,' And that alien thing was jumping up and down, shaking, saying, 'No, you don't understand, we have to have this, we have to own it,' And somewhere along the way the rational part of me was just burned away, and I would see him and not be able to think, it was just this need. This animalistic base instinct need, and in a way it felt good. At first. Like doing opiates. But it just goes on and on, the need wearing me down, and it doesn't feel good anymore but without it I don't know what I'd feel so I…I guess I need it.
Things are calming down. Danielle went to bed. My parents aren't telling each other what to do. I'm just sitting here, waiting for Sunday night to end.