Letters From The Dead

Chapter 12

My desk in English class had two hundred and eight fake-wood ridges. There was a ‘fuck school’ carved into one corner, poorly scratched out, likely by a teacher. There was a smiley face in another corner, and someone’s messy handwriting scrawled in the center asking who sat in the seat each hour.

I couldn’t hear anything that was going on around me. My ears seemed to be stuffed with cotton, and I could only hear loud rushing sounds that had me dizzy and gave me migraines. My vision was black around the edges, likely from lack of sleep, I could feel the burning of my eyes that told me I had dark rings under them, my lifeless hair was in a very messy knot, and my lips were raw and painful from chewing on them too much. I knew I didn’t look like I had it together any more. This horrible ugly shell of myself was just how I’d been feeling inside for longer than I cared to admit.

My English teacher slamming down my newly failed reading comprehension test onto my desk jerked me out of my numbness for just enough time to clear my head as I jumped, having been half-asleep, and studied the massive black zero scrawled on the top of the page next to my name—first only. I’d not even written my last name. ““You did not answer a single question of this test, Miss Emerson,” she said, frowning at me as if I’d killed her dog and not just failed a quiz.

“I didn’t read the book,” I replied dutifully and she scoffed.

“You didn’t have to—you read it two years ago.”

I scowled at Mrs Hecks, who’d coincidently been my freshman yearbook staff teacher as well. That was back when I actually did read everything and she’d always been telling me to put my books away or she’d confiscate them.

“I forgot how it went.” I said flatly, shoving the test away from my line of sight and at the very end of the desk. Across the room on my left, I could see Eric’s face pointedly looking away from me, but I knew he was listening in. On the far right was Tyler, who was openly watching the scene with mild interest.

“What is going on, Halley?” Mrs Hecks asked and I snapped, standing up from my chair so rapidly that it fell backwards.

“Just before Christmas,” I began in a seething voice, “During my math midterm, I got a phone call. I ignored it, but it rang twice more afterwards and I walked out of my test because I’d known who was calling. It was my best friend in the whole world—the girl I would have died for, the girl I considered my sister, the only person in the world who knew every single thing about me. She was calling to say goodbye.”

“Was she going on vacation?” Mrs Hecks asked and I laughed loudly, right in her face, my voice dripping with scorn.

“Permanent vacation,” I said, my voice hysterical. “She swallowed her whole bottle of pills just minutes after that. She killed herself and I’ve been left struggling to keep myself above everything and not start up slicing my wrists again and I’m so sorry if your pathetic reading comprehension quiz wasn’t at the top of my priorities, but my life is completely fucked over right now and since you know that I would have passed that with a perfect score, you can do with that information what you will.”

I snatched my pen and sweatshirt from my desk, not having bothered carrying anything else but that around lately, and stormed out of the room, leaving a silent class and an absolutely appalled teacher behind.

I made it all the way to the girls’ bathroom at the end of the hall and shoved through the door, relieved beyond measure to find it deserted. Just inches from the door, I collapsed onto the ground, pulling my sweatshirt that I’d been carrying everywhere to my chest and curling up tight.

And finally, in the corner of the girls’ bathroom, my chest heaved with gasping sobs that prevented me from breathing almost completely, tears spilled over my eyelids, hot and angry against my cheeks as I cried. I cried for my parents, and their problems, and for myself and how I’d been too afraid to hold a knife lately at dinner and had been left to bite into various pieces of food without cutting them up, and I cried for how right now, the only person who seemed to have any idea how screwed up I was happened to be Tyler who couldn’t have been further from the last person I’d ever want to know how messed up I was. I cried about my fight with Eric, and the loneliness that was engulfing me and swallowing me up, for the wave of depression that had settled over me and dragged me deep under, for keeping so many secrets bottled up for so long. And I cried for Deidre, my best friend—my sister—who’d killed herself and left me alone to face this world by myself.