THE NIGHT before we leave, my mother runs around the house checking every detail of the trip, making sure our clothes are packed, that we have snacks for the train ride, and that I have everything I need for my photo shoot and interview. The dog is accounted for, and the neighbor will feed her and let her out, and so on and so forth.
I ignore the chaos my mother creates and choose instead to finish the very last of my catch-up work before school. I’m starting late and nobody can stop me. It’s only a little while, a few days, but I’ll have a fashionably late entrance to school senior year. My mom and Jordan, my therapist, are in agreement that I should start late to reduce the stress and anxiety. I’m supposed to ease into it. Because frankly, I don’t know if I have the courage to do it, to go back to a place where I’m not accepted, where my actions outcasted me, to the so-called friends that really weren’t. I don’t know anyone anymore. What a way to kick off my senior year.
I go to bed that night after an exhausting texting session with Emmett, who wanted to know if an all-male a cappella group could get away with calling themselves the Testoster-tones because it would be perfect, but I feel completely awake and stare at the ceiling for hours, fear gnawing at my insides and butterflies trapped in my digestive system. I’ve never modeled before. What am I going to do? I’ve never interviewed before. What am I going to say? I’ve never displayed my scars so publicly before in such a nice dress. How the hell are the people in the audience going to react? The questions and worries circulate throughout my brain and push off the sleep.
Around three in the morning, I get up because I can’t take it anymore. I go down to the kitchen for a glass of water and fill it to the brim, watching the drops run down the sides. Why does gravity feel the need to drag those poor drops away from the cohesiveness they’ve always known? I’m no scientist, but it seems cruel, to the water at least. I had plans to drink those few swallows. I end up gulping down what is left, the other 98 percent of the glass. It doesn’t leave any lasting impressions, because it is merely water. Annoyed, I dig into whatever leftovers I find in the fridge before giving up on those, and I trudge back up to my bed.
Sleep takes a long time coming, but I eventually slip into the dreamless void while tomorrow happens.