Prologue
Stupid flat hair. Stupid pointy nose. Stupid stubborn tear lying stagnant on my cheek. Why can’t it just roll down the rest of my face and splash onto my shirt like all the others? Because it’s stupid, that’s why.
Looking around my room I can’t help but be angered. All those awards for perfect attendance and community service on the wall? They don’t mean anything. All the smiling faces trapped in the picture frames? They aren’t smiling, they are mocking me, because those girls aren’t my friends. They don’t care about me. No one does. I don’t even care about me. Because what do I mean in this world? Nothing. I’m just taking up space, created only so that my parents could pretend that they have a purpose in life. But no one does, so I guess that doesn’t really matter. There is no point to life, so why even bother being a part of it?
The tears are falling more aggressively, this time pooling onto my pillow. I lie like this for hours, face down, hands under the pillow, until I’ve cried out all the liquid in my body and am so exhausted that I fall asleep.
1
Morning came far too early. Streaks of light came slanting through the half open blinds, like stripes on a fashion-forward sweater. Groaning, I tossed back the covers and swung my stiff legs onto the floor. I stood up and was rushed with a sense of dizziness, my vision going black for a moment before returning to normal.
I had laid my clothes out the night before. I hated everything I owned when I got up, so if I didn’t pick out my outfit ahead of time I ended up wearing jeans and a tee to school. After slipping into the pleated khaki skirt and aqua blouse, I moved on to the dreaded task of dealing with my hair.
I must have looked like some hair metal band from the 80’s flipping my head up and down like that. It was all I could do to try to give my blond hair some volume. It looked perfect for about three seconds before settling back into its more familiar place. Giving up, I slid a wide headband with a black bow behind my ears, pulling the front forward to make it look like I had side bangs.
After slicking on some eyeliner, I left my room and sat down in the kitchen. I stared at the cabinets a moment, trying to figure out what I wanted. I settled on a key lime yogurt and a granny smith apple. I smiled when the sweet juice of the apple slid down my chin upon the first bite. Heavy footsteps sounded from the stairs and a moment later my sister, India, entered the kitchen.
“Hey, Tess.”
“Morning,” I mumbled back. She popped a bagel in the toaster oven before gathering some papers. India was fourteen, two years younger than me. Our parents liked to travel, and thought it would be a great idea to name their children after the place where they were, well, made. My full name was Theresia, a city in Greece. As for my sister, my mother didn’t feel like Delhi was an appropriate name, so they just went with India.
I threw my apple core in the trash and waited for India to put butter on her bagel.
“Hey, I have to go in early this morning. Can you eat that in the car?” I asked.
“Sure. What is it that you’re doing today?”
“Student counsel meeting. Apparently our class has no money left after we finished paying for our prom deposit and we need to figure out a way to get our funds back up.”
“Why are you all dressed up this morning?” India asked when we had settled into my car. I loved my car. It was a tan 1998 Toyota Camry, and I got it for less than four thousand dollars. Pulling into the school’s front parking lot felt more like driving into a junkyard. It cracked me up how everyone had such junky cars but the to owners, it was like they were driving a brand new Bentley.
“I’m not dressed up. I just like to look nice.”
“It is possible to look nice in jeans, you know.”
“I know. I do it all the time. I just didn’t feel like wearing jeans today. I don’t have to dress like you, India, and you don’t have to dress like me.”
“What’s wrong with the way I dress?”
“Nothing! That’s what I just said, isn’t it? You dress very nicely, and I dress very nicely, but just in different ways. Why are you getting so defensive about this?” We were stuck at a red light. I turned to look at her. She took a bite of bagel, trying to avoid the question. “What’s the matter?” I repeated a moment later. We were on school grounds, and I turned the car into my spot.
“You wouldn’t understand.”
“I probably would.”
“No, you wouldn’t!” she screeched, suddenly upset. “You wouldn’t get it, because your life is so perfect!”
“Oh really? My life is perfect?”
“Yeah, it is.”
“Explain this one to me, please. My life is not perfect.”
“Yeah, Tess. It is. You are one of the most popular girls in school, you have perfect grades, you’re involved with everything, and you get all the awards pouring in every week. You are the best child anyone could ever asked for!”
“Maybe if you didn’t scowl all the time you could have more friends. If you studied a little harder, your grades would be better. You could join more clubs if you wanted to, and you could get involved with community service if you wanted too!”
“But I don’t want to!” She opened the door and got out. “I told you you wouldn’t understand.” She slammed the door and walked away.
She thinks my life is perfect? What does she know? She has no idea the stuff I go through. I had no intention of getting angry this morning. Checking my bag to make sure I had everything, I got out of the car and went into the school.
I was the first person in the library, our usual before-school meeting spot. Sitting down, I opened up my agenda and planner to see what was coming up for the rest of the week. Today was Tuesday, so I had a SADD meeting after school, followed by guitar lessons. Tomorrow there was a math team meeting and I was tutoring at the middle school. Thursday, all the girls were going to dinner at the local sushi joint, and I had to finish my article for the paper. As of the moment, I had nothing on Friday except for the regular student counsel meeting. I was looking forward the going home after to get some sleep.
I wrote a note reminding myself to catch up with Casey on Saturday. His family had lived next door to us all our lives, and he was my best friend. He didn’t run with the rest of my crowd, but he was the one I knew I could always count on.
I sighed, erasing the entry. I already had plans with Jase to go to the movies on Saturday, and I don’t thing he would appreciate it if I blew him off the hang with Casey. He and I had been officially dating for a few months, and no, Jase was not my nickname for him. His name really was Jase. I considered Sunday, but Camilla and I always got manicures on Sundays. Camilla was my best girl friend. She would die if she knew I told Casey things I didn’t tell her. I resigned myself to the fact that I would have to find some time to squeeze Casey in. What had my life come to that I had to schedule in time to hang out with my neighbor?
I heard the door open, and the rest of the girls came in. President Taylor, Secretary Joshua, and Treasurer Camilla lived in the same neighborhood, so they carpooled to school every day. I was Vice President. Our advisor, Mrs. Joseph, entered before the others even had the chance to sit down.
“Thanks for coming in so early, everyone,” she said, placing her bag on the table and grabbing a seat. Mrs. Joseph was in her early fifties and everyone’s favorite math teacher. All her students knew it was time to get down to business when class started, but they all still managed to have a good time. “Okay, so Camilla, since this is your area, why don’t you give us a report.”
“Sure,” Camilla nodded, straightening her shirt and standing up. “So as you guys know, we just finished our final payment for the venue for prom. Unfortunately, that means we have very little money left in our class’s account. School policy dictates that we submit a fundraiser 30 days before we do it, so it is important that we get ideas fast. Any suggestions?” She walked over to the easel board and snapped off the cap of a marker.
“We could sell something,” Joshua offered.
“That was very specific,” Taylor said, rolling her eyes.
“Well, she said we needed something fast, so I just blurted out the first thing that came to mind.”
“It’s okay, Josh,” I said. “Why don’t we stick to what we know? This is a high school. Kids like candy. The Chorus runs out of their chocolate bars in days, and SADD’s lollipops disappeared quickly too.”
“True, but we don’t want to copy anyone, and we can’t sell the same stuff as the school store,” Taylor reasoned.
“What if we just did a bake sale? Those have been successful in the past,” Mrs. Joseph suggested.
“Yeah. Tess can make those cookies of hers. Everyone loves them. We’d make a ton of money if she could make enough of them,” Camilla said excitedly.
“That would give our account a boost, and in the meantime, we could come up with something even bigger. Does that work for everyone?” Taylor asked. Everyone nodded. I noticed that no one else volunteered to make anything yet. Those cookies took a long time to make. I would have to plan out a block of time to make sure I could make enough of them.
“When would we be doing this?” I asked, grabbing my pen.
“Well, today is the fifteenth. I can write up the form tonight and turn it in tomorrow, so how about we shoot for October 16th?” Mrs. Joseph asked.
“That works,” I answered. I wrote down the appropriate entries.
“Alright then, I’ll see some of you later.” Everyone got up and headed off in different directions, getting ready for their first classes.
2
“Not eating today, Tess?” Camilla asked when she returned to the table at lunch. She unfolded a napkin and placed her salad on top of it. Our friend Marcia did the same, unpacking a yogurt and apple from her bag, the same thing she had every day. I guess that was where I got the idea for my breakfast.
“No, I’m really not all that hungry,” I lied. I was starving. But I had too much to do to even consider eating lunch today. Besides, my family was going on vacation in a few weeks. I didn’t want to get fat.
“Are you sure?” another of our friends, Hannah, asked. “I can share my turkey wrap with you.”
“Oh, thanks. But I’m good, really. I actually think I’m going to go to the library to start my homework. I got a lot to do tonight.” I stood and picked up my bag.
“When don’t you have a lot to do, Tess?” Camilla asked.
“Never,” I smiled. “If Jase comes over, will you tell him where I am?”
“Of course,” Marcia answered.
“Awesome. See you girls later!” I shifted the weight of my backpack to keep it from capsizing me and went out into the hall.
I took my time getting to the library. The brick walls scuffed my fingers as I ran my hand along it. There was a pleasant contrast when I came to the magnetized walls. There was a new poster on the first floor bulletin board. It was teal with a yellow border and hot pink letters. The freshmen were holding an 80’s dance.
Entering the library, I sat down at my usual table and immediately pulled out my agenda. There was still another twenty minutes before lunch ended. I could most likely get my English reading done as long as I wasn’t distracted by anything.
But of course I was distracted. Not two minutes into my quiet reprieve, Jase came in and sat down next to me.
“Hey, are you trying to avoid me or something?” he asked, his voice too loud for proper library decorum.
“Keep your voice down. If I were trying to avoid you, would I have instructed my friends to tell you where I was if you asked?”
He was quiet for a moment, and then looked away. “No.” I kept reading, hoping he would leave me alone. “What are you doing in here anyways?”
“I’m getting ahead on my homework so I can get to bed at a reasonable hour.”
“Can’t you just talk to me instead?”
I sighed internally and shut my book. “Sure. What do you want to talk about?” I leaned forward on my elbow and raised my eyebrows, waiting for him to suggest something.
“Oh, I don’t know…I just wanted to hang with you. I never get to see you anymore.”
“You see me three times a day, sometimes four if you come to my lunch table.”
“Yeah, but that’s different Tess. We’re in classes then. And in the afternoons you always have all this stuff going on. Sometimes I feel like you’re only my girlfriend on the weekends.”
“We talk plenty in classes, and you do some of the activities I do, and we talk on the phone every night. Neither of us are allowed to hang out with each other on weeknights, so what is it that you want?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know why I said that. I’m gonna go see if the school store is still open. See you in history.” He stood up and left. Great. Jase was in a mood, and now I only had ten minutes left to finish my reading.
Don’t get me wrong. I really like Jase. Sometimes it just felt like he was another appointment in my planner, another stressor working to push me over the edge. Things weren’t always like this. Around March of the previous school year, we started talking to each other in bio class. He had sat at the table behind me all year, but I had never really talked to him before. He started texting me, and a little while later we were calling each other every night. The conversations were always useless, but we just wanted to hear the other person’s voice. We hung out in groups for a while, testing the waters. The first week in May we went for ice cream by ourselves. He asked me to be his girlfriend, and of course I told him I would.
The summer was amazing. I had very few commitments at the time, so I hung out with him nearly every day, worry free. I loved how his eyes took on a new shade of blue in the sunlight, how his midnight hair stuck up in the back when it was hot out, how he was just tall enough that I could rest my head on his shoulder, how everything felt perfect when his arms were around me…
I could have sat there remembering the perfect summer for hours, but the bell rang, forcing me back into reality. Walking to my writing class, I thought about how everything had changed when school started. Everything seemed strained between us. I was weighed down with all my extra curricular activities, and even more concerned with my grades than usual. After all, this was junior year, the most important year of your high school career. I just felt like preserving my relationship was no longer on top of my list of things to do. My priorities had changed, and in a way, my feelings for him had too.
Just then I realized I had walked past my writing class and ended up on the second floor. Pivoting on the spot, I hurried back to the room where I needed to be. I was still in there before the bell rang despite my unintentional detour.
The rest of the students filled in their seats. When class officially started, Mr. Robins put an opening prompt up on the board. We had to describe a color without saying its name. Every class started this way. The first ten minutes were a silent write on the topic posted on the board, and the last ten minutes were a silent free write in our journals. The in between part was far less structured. Mr. Robins encouraged us to shout our ideas and do anything else that would help get our creative juices flowing.
I chose black for my prompt. Without even really thinking about it, I went on about its connection to something deeper than sadness, death, and the odd peace that came with death, because everything that caused the sadness in the first place was no longer there. It was just you and the comfort of silence for eternity.
At the end of the ten minutes, we turned in our prompts for Mr. Robins to read during free write. Today’s lesson was about the development of characters. We were put into groups and were given a name of a person. From just their name, we were to brainstorm a list of what they were like. My group had Simon Norweather. We decided he was a stuffy British accountant who lived alone at the top of a hill so he could watch what everyone else was up to. He had no family, and amused himself by playing tricks on the people that walk along the road surrounding the hill on which he lived.
When it was time for free write I wrote about my frustrations with Jase. Mr. Robins didn’t read what we wrote, so I knew it was safe to say what I wanted. He only checked to make sure we did something and weren’t just wasting class time.
When the bell rang, I rushed down the aisle to put my journal on his desk and get out to my next class. We were giving presentations in history today, and I wanted to talk to Jase to make sure we knew who was talking when and all that.
“Can you hang back for a minute, Tess?” Mr. Robins asked when I got to his desk.
Crap. I hated when teachers asked me to hang back. It didn’t happen often, and when it did it was always a good thing, but I couldn’t help but be nervous with anticipation for the thirty seconds it took everyone else to clear out.
“Why don’t you grab a seat for a second,” he instructed when the room was empty. Mr. Robbins shut the door before sitting in the desk in front of the one I had taken. He twisted so that he was facing me. My heart was racing, and not just because Mr. Robbins was really cute and seated inches from myself.
“So, what’s this about?” I asked. I hated the waiting.
“Well Tess, when I was reading over your prompt today I was a little concerned.”
“Why? Was it really bad?”
“No. I guess what I want to know is, why were you writing about that stuff?”
My brain went blank. I couldn’t remember what I had written, let alone why. “I don’t know. I wasn’t really thinking about it. It just kind of wrote itself, I guess.”
“Is anything bothering you, Tess?”
“No,” I lied, answering far too quickly. A look of understanding spread across his face.
“Okay. But if you need to talk to someone, you know my door’s open, right?”
“Sure.” I adjusted my bag. “Can I go now?”
“Oh, of course.” He stood up and walked to his desk. “Let me write you a pass…There you are. See you tomorrow.”
“Bye.” I took the pass gratefully and rushed out of the room.
Was something bothering me? Was it possible for something to bother me without my knowing it? I supposed it was. My breathing started to come fast and heavy, like it did whenever I was at my breaking point and was pushed over the edge. I sat down against a locker in the deserted hall. I knew I had to get to history, but I couldn’t go in when I was in the middle of a panic attack.
One of the double doors to my right swung open. I braced my self for an onslaught of questions. Was I all right? Yes. Then what was I doing in the hall? I don’t know. Was I trying to cut class? No. Then didn’t I think I should go to where I was supposed to be? I guess so. And then I would stand up and force myself into history with my mind still a foggy mess.
But none of this happened. Whoever walked through the doors sat down beside me. Overgrown curly brown hair protruded into my vision. I smiled.
“Hey Casey,” I said.
“Hey Tess.” He was quiet for a minute, and I knew he was giving me the opportunity to explain if I wanted to. “So what’s up?”
“Oh, you know. I thought I’d just take a little nap. The usual.”
“The usual,” he nodded. “So why are we sitting in the hall? Theresia Andrea Hughes, are you cutting class? Oh my goodness, you have gone to the dark side on me, I can’t believe it.” His face was twisted into an overdramatic look of disbelief.
“Oh, Casey!” I swatted his forearm with the back of my hand.
“Then why are you here?”
“I don’t know.”
“Yes, you do Tess.” He was serious again, his voice showing signs of concern.
“Okay, so maybe I kind of do. But I really need to get to class now. The time on my pass doesn’t match up anymore. Are you going to be around Sunday afternoon?”
“Yeah, I should be.”
“Alright, I will talk to you then.”
“Okay. Now get to class!”
My teacher was a little less than happy with me when I finally got to class. Luckily, everyone was being as rowdy as always, so nothing had really gotten done yet. Jase and I got through our presentation without any problems, but I think everyone could kind of tell things weren’t quite right with us.
In SADD we discussed what we wanted to do next. We did a mock car crash before prom in May, and that was pretty much the only year-to-year activity that went on. I zoned out during the meeting, pretending to check dates and take notes.
The first time I felt like I could relax was during my guitar lesson. My instructor was pretty laid back. He was into mellow stuff, like Collective Soul and Coldplay. He had a son in middle school. Sometimes I wondered what he was like when he was younger. The tattoos decorating his arms spoke of a wilder youth. This week we worked on some song I had never heard of before but pretended that I had. One chord was giving me trouble. My fingers just refused to form into the proper position.
When I got home I ate a quick bowl of pasta before working on my homework. I finished at about 9:30, so I made myself some ice cream and sat down in the living room to watch TV. I hadn’t talked with India since that morning. She had her own stuff to do after school, and then went straight into her room once she got home. I wasn’t going to let it bother me. I hadn’t done anything wrong. It wasn’t my fault if she wanted to believe something that wasn’t true.
After a while my eyelids decided they didn’t want to stay open anymore. Changing into a pair of fuzzy shorts and a tank, I slid into the covers. They felt cool at first, but soon became warm and I settled in comfortably. Exhausted from the day, it wasn’t long until I fell asleep.
3
It is in the night that the darkness comes. And I don’t mean just that the sun has gone down. It’s the desperation, the feeling that I haven’t accomplished anything. I feel like nothing I’ve done matters. No one matters to me, and I don’t mean anything to them. It is always around 3 in the morning that I wake up and have these thoughts. Sometimes I think I haven’t woken up at all, and all of this is coming to me in a dream. But as quickly as these thoughts come, they leave, and I fall back to sleep.
