Adina
I DON’T KNOW WHERE I am at first. The pillow is lumpy and unfamiliar beneath my face, and something heavy is crushing my stomach: a guy’s bare arm.
Rubbing my eyes, I throw the arm off me. The boy attached to it is Dennis Kim, second-chair violin. He stirs but doesn’t wake. After the fight with Tovah, I was distraught. He was sitting alone, and I was sitting alone, and we decided to be not alone together.
I stare at his sleeping face. The night clarifies itself in my mind. Dennis lives down the block from the party and we sneaked into his bedroom. He was too drunk to stay excited, so nothing happened besides some sloppy making out. He begged me not to tell anyone at school about the not-getting-it-up part and then promptly fell asleep.
I grab my tights from the floor, and before I put them on, I glance at my legs. The scar on my right thigh still hasn’t healed—maybe it never will—and a new one slices down my left. I added it last week. To match.
I am a mess.
Supposedly, I came to terms with everything months ago, didn’t I, when I first devised with this plan? The entire point of it was to make my result easier to bear, pursue my passions with manic vigor, knowing I would end my life before I became my mother. But my supposed choice has only sunk me deeper, back into my old habits. I am the same Adina I’ve always been. Doomed and pretty and utterly lost. The center of attention for all the wrong reasons.
I am more than this. I am not just a pair of legs or breasts or hips. I am a mind and a soul and I know with certainty that Dennis Kim didn’t care about any of that.
“No more,” I whisper to myself as I finish getting dressed and slip out the window, my traitorous feet once again failing to keep me from stumbling.
With eight percent phone battery, I google the early symptoms of Huntington’s disease.
Difficulty concentrating
Clumsiness
Mood changes, including aggression and/or antisocial behavior
Short-term memory lapses
Closing my eyes, I conjure my Debussy prelude, trying hard to remember the notes.