Thanks for the review! It is much appreciated. Here is a quick thing I wrote while in a gloomy mood because ugh school. It's supposed to be kind of incoherent and rambling, like thoughts straight out of someone's mind. Please enjoy!
At five thirty in the morning, Jessica started her day.
She rose from her bed— in her mind, she woke up looking flawless, but in reality she woke up with a small zit on her nose and a nasty case of bedhead.
She went into the bathroom and began the lengthy process of perfection: the base, the layers of foundation, more and more layers until she barely recognized herself anymore. Her face was a canvas, and she was the artist, free to edit and tweak every last feature as she wished. Dustings of eye shadow were strokes of bold color, and blobs of concealer were dabs of smoothing paint. She deleted the zit on her nose, she edited her hair with the straightener, she worked harder to fix herself than she'd ever worked on anything else in her life.
At six forty-five in the morning, she was done editing. She went briskly through the front door, moving like the final winter breeze left behind in spring.
Her car was a small hatchback, a little silver Hyundai, nothing special or fancy like the hand-me-downs her two older brothers had received. She was the afterthought, the final cloud that just wouldn't blow away from her parents' otherwise perfect sunny sky. Everything about her life was unplanned, even from her very beginning, and she used to hate it but now she embraced it.
Seven-fifteen, and she was at Emily's house. Two gentle taps on the steering wheel— honk, hooonk! — and she was graced with Emily's presence. Today was a Tuesday. On other days, days when it was Emily's turn to drive and Jessica's turn to be picked up, Emily would lay on the horn until the neighbors were complaining while Jess was just finishing her makeup.
Pulling up at the last intersection before their school, they witnessed an accident. An old rusty van with a business name displayed on its shuddering metal flank in chipping letters ran a red light. An SUV coming in the other direction slammed into it, creating a loud fireworks show constructed of twisted bumpers, bent rubber, and broken glass.
"Shit," Emily breathed.
Jess steered the car in a different direction that day.
Seven thirty was time for homeroom, and she arrived not a minute sooner. She collapsed in her desk, panting, the teacher's irritated stare burning her skin like judgmental lasers.
Seven thirty-five was first period, and she was still recovering from what she saw. The language of calculus was scrawled on the whiteboard, but it was nothing more than foreign letters to her. She read them but only saw blankness.
Eight twenty was second period. Other students snoozed around her, wasting their study hall. She used hers to text Emily. Anyone else but her would view that as a waste of time too.
Emily was never a waste of time.
Nine-ten, third period. Biology class was filled with textbooks and questions on the characteristics of life. "What qualities does an organism display to show it is living?"
She thought hard, what did it mean to be alive? Being alive meant summer days, walking in the middle of a residential street with fingers intertwined and popsicles dribbling down their chins, being alive meant gentle kisses and warm cuddles under blankets, being alive meant being in love with your best friend. Being alive meant that sometimes the best things are what can only be imagined.
She wanted to be alive.
Ten was fourth period, French, her fourth year studying it and yet her brain contained only half a year's worth of knowledge. The test that was passed back to her was unrecognizable. Last time she saw it, it was clean and white and marked vaguely with graphite. Now it was marred with red X's, completely slathered in red ink like a bloody battlefield. Her mind felt like a battlefield.
What did it mean to be alive?
Ten-fifty, fifth period, European history. A class where she liked watching the rain fall outside the window, where she got to twist a lock of hair around her pencil like it was some kind of cheap curling iron. That Tuesday, she twisted and twisted the blonde strand until she was at her scalp, and other kids were looking at her strangely.
Did she want to be alive?
Eleven-forty blessed her with sixth period lunch, and her eager feet carried her all the way to the cafeteria. She had friends to eat with, Mike and Sam and Ashley and a few others, all giggling over cartons of tasteless milk and fries like solid grease. And still she waited, and wondered, and fake laughed at Mike's jokes.
Alive. Alive alive alive alive alivealivealivealiveal
Twelve-forty, taking her time getting to seventh period, knowing full well what was coming next. The gym was a swimming sea of uniform-wearing students, uneven waves of white t-shirts and blue mesh shorts. She played basketball with two bites of lunch sitting in her stomach, the tiny amount of food heavy like a stone.
What was it like to be alive? To be dead?
One thirty, eighth period English. They had the same plan set up every day, and it never failed to be carried out. Asking the teacher for a bathroom pass, skipping off down the hall— she always entered second, and Emily was always there first.
Running her hand along the empty stalls, pushing every door just a little to make sure it was unlocked and unoccupied. Alone alive alone alive alone alive—
They were alone. And when she opened the final door, there Emily was. The door was closed behind her, the loose lock slid into place, and in that moment all Jess felt was the other girl's closeness in that cramped stall, just her and Em and a toilet and a wall of graffiti. "Call me! 555-2598," "Becky sucks whale cock" plus an unneeded visual sketch of Becky's apparent hobby, "Follow me on Insta " with the username smudged into oblivion.
You could be alive, but you could just as quickly be snuffed out like a candle flame, be smudged into oblivion like ink on a bathroom wall. Not everyone was a permanent pen. Nobody was a permanent pen.
When Emily's lips touched hers, she felt remarkable. She was wonderful, every lungful of air felt like breathing helium, she was the highest she had ever been in her life. Everything was wonderful.
Maybe, right then in that bathroom stall of their nondescript high school, she was alive.
Being alive with Emily was the only type of alive Jess wanted to be, she decided as Emily's lips traced her collarbone and tickled her neck. She was pressed against the stall door, sweaty, fingernails scrabbling at it and its coolness seeping into her neck while Emily's warmth filled her up inside.
She wanted to ask, "Do you ever think we should just stop doing this?"
But she didn't ask.
She wanted to stop.
She didn't want to stop.
Emily was always the first to leave. She would abruptly stop, tear herself away as easily as ripping a page out of a notebook. Slip through the stall door, smooth out her hair, and leave leave leave.
Jess was always the last to go. When Emily left her, it wasn't a fleeting feeling, like ripping off a band-aid. It was a feeling that lingered, swarming her like a hive of angry bees and filling her lungs with a poisonous smoke that she wanted to scream out. The version of herself in the mirror, with sticky red lipstick stains all over her face and neck like those red X's on that French test, was not the same version of herself leaning over the sink with mascara tears running down her face, she was furious and heartbroken and most certainly not alive.
Two thirty, and school was over for that Tuesday. She walked out to her car and some time later found herself sitting at that same intersection.
There was no longer any sign of that morning's accident. All the evidence was cleared away, swept up into the dustpan and dumped elsewhere so no one would have to be reminded. Yet it lingered within her, what she saw. It could not be unseen.
She dialed a number at two thirty-nine and Emily picked up on the first ring.
"I can't do this," she said.
"Can't do what?"
Can't do what. Can't do this, Jess wanted to say, can't be tortured anymore, can't pretend what they had was nothing when to her it was everything, can't feel one way only for Emily to feel another, can't wish she could enjoy the perfect kisses when to her they only felt like daggers embedding in her neck, can't breathe when she was only ever alive for five minutes during eighth period.
"You're beautiful," Emily told her.
What did it mean to be alive? What were the qualities of life?
Emily was Jessica's oxygen. A five-minute supply of oxygen could not sustain a life.
"I love you," she said.
The red light still glared at her through the windshield. The seat belt was taut against her heaving chest. The fresh hickeys on her neck still sizzled on her neck like cigarette burns.
"What?"
Something happened. Glass splintered and shattered and pierced. Blood dribbled down her chin, sickly sweet like popsicles in summer. A phone landed on the grass outside as the first whines of police sirens sounded.
"Hello? You there?"
"Hello?"
"Hello?"
"He—"