All week: Laura’s chair is still empty in every class, in the cafeteria. Jolene draws wobbly overlapping circles in her notebooks, covering entire pages in black lines. Hector and I catch each other’s eyes and he smiles tentatively and I look at him, willing him to come say hello but he just looks away. I smile a lot at other people. They keep laughing at my jokes even though I’m not making any. I’m not eating. And every night I get home and lock myself in my bedroom, lock everyone out and write a draft of an essay. At four in the morning I delete it again.
Then, the interview is tomorrow. The application deadline is tomorrow. There can’t be any more missing pieces. So I fill it in.
When I write the last word, put the period at the end of the sentence, briefly consider the urge I have to write THE END in all caps at the bottom of the page, I realize my head is pounding. It’s four in the morning again and all the lights in my room are on, and all down the hallway and down the stairs and in the kitchen. I have turned on the few lights my father hadn’t, so that the whole house except for the guest room and my grandmother’s room is glowing while Dad drools on a pillow on the parlor couch and Grandmother is off in Palo Alto at a conference. The windows rattle in the wind once, and then again, and I hear my father snoring, a sound that has been drifting in and out of my consciousness all night.
I stand up and pace around the bed as Soto watches me with half-closed eyes. I shut the laptop and tuck it under my arm and head downstairs and into the kitchen with her at my heels. Jolene is sitting at the counter eating a bowl of raisin bran. She’s wearing my robe, which looks more like a queen-size blanket wrapped around her. She smiles at me tiredly when I’m at the door. Even when she’s exhausted she has perfect posture, her spine like the straight stitching on a hem.
“I finished it,” I say. “Did you get any sleep?”
“Not really,” Jolene says. “Do you want cereal?”
“No,” I say. “I have to hit the submit button.” I sit at the counter.
“Do you want to submit it?”
“No,” I say. “I have to.” She picks up the empty bowl to drink the milk, but stops when I say, “I wrote about getting weight-loss surgery. I can’t think of anything else to write about. And I have an interview.”
“Those aren’t good reasons,” she says, setting down the bowl.
“It’s a lie. I wrote that my weight has been holding me back all this time,” I say. “It was a lie.” Then I look at her. “What if it’s not a lie?”
“Are you trying to talk yourself into it?”
“I don’t know!” I say. “I don’t know. What if my body really is just broken?”
“You’re not broken,” she says.
“Neither are you,” I say. She smiles at me crookedly, tiredly. Soto stands and nudges her head against Jolene’s knee. She drops her hand on Soto’s head, who sighs.
Jolene says, “We will be okay. Whatever we decide to do.” Her eyes are drifting shut as she scratches Soto’s head. Soto is drifting off too. “We don’t”—she yawns—“we don’t have to decide right now.”
“Go to bed,” I tell her softly. “Maybe you can get some sleep.”
She shakes her head but she slides off the stool. Soto pads after her, up the stairs. They creak all the way up, and the door clicks, and there is silence. Even the wind has stopped outside and it has gotten warm.
I open the laptop. Just a few clicks and my mouse is hovering over the submit button. I read the first sentence involuntarily. “Weight-loss surgery: It is my only choice, and my only chance to make a difference for both myself and the world.” This isn’t making a decision. It’s just presenting a possibility, I think. And before I can call myself on my own bullshit, my finger twitches on the mouse and I’ve sent it and my application is complete and I am done.