I'm Sort of Okay with This

Five: Abby

The paint chip on my closet door was sort of shaped like the letter "H." I knew that because I'd been staring at it all weekend. There was also a long scratch on my bed frame which I estimated to be about six inches long. The My Chemical Romance poster at the center of my wall was beginning to curl at the edges, and there were exactly ten knobs in my bedroom, including the ones on my dresser drawers.

You tended to notice stupid little details like that when you spent as much time in your room as I did.

There were several activities I found myself doing, such as playing the same records on repeat and imagining the men on my band posters in obscene, pornographic positions.

I also liked to theorize about the aftermath of my own death. I wondered how everybody at school would react to it.

Actually, I doubted anybody would react at all, other than a few soft mutterings of, "that's too bad" and, "I feel sorry for her parents."

Or maybe some people I interacted with once or twice would say they were intimate friends of mine before I died. They'd give long, insincere speeches about what an amazing person I was at a candlelit vigil the school was holding in honor of me, in order to seem like they cared.

I laughed darkly at the thought and flipped over in my bed, pulling the sheets over my head until everything was cool and engulfed in darkness.

Monday arrived with little consequence. That bathroom stall seemed to get bigger and lonelier every moment I spent there.

On Tuesday, I stayed after school to meet with Ian Kennedy again. The library was relatively stagnant, aside from Miss Benson and a couple students flipping through textbooks and jotting down notes. Ian slouched at one of the tables, rubbing his eyes with his knuckles.

He lacked his usual demeanor, his unreasonable cheeriness absent. He straightened his back when he saw me, setting his hands down and smiling a flat, obligatory smile. It wasn't like the way he had smiled at our last meeting, which was completely unapologetic.

"Hi," he said. "How're you?"

I wanted to roll my eyes. I hated when people asked me how I was. It was so artificial, and I was always forced to be dishonest in my response for the sake of other people's comfort.

"I'm fine."

I sat down beside him and put my bag down by the leg of the chair. "How're you?" I asked, more out of habit than anything.

"I'm good," he said.

He wasn't telling the truth. His smile was the fakest one I'd ever seen in my life, and I was pretty familiar with bullshit smiles. I wasn't mad, though. Fake smiles were sometimes necessary for survival.

"Should we get started?" he asked.

"Yeah, okay," I said.

I began reading to him again, aiming to finish the book so I could start to help him with his essay. While I read, he wasn't as attentive as he had been previously, his gaze pinned on his sneakers. He wiped his eyes periodically, leaving reddish streaks beneath them.

After about twenty minutes of this, I paused reading.

"Are you alright?" I asked, trying to sound as casual and unconcerned as possible.

"Not really," he said, "I didn't get much sleep last night. I just feel like maybe my life is falling apart."

I raised my eyebrows and leaned back.

"What do you mean?" I asked, sort of reeling from the honesty of his reply.

"Do you remember when Holden Caulfield talks about wanting to be strapped to the top of a nuclear bomb?"