One Last Thing ✅

twenty-five things

We pull up to the curb outside the high school about ten minutes before first bell. I clutch a paper bag with a pumpkin muffin inside, but there's no way I'll be able to eat anything right now. My stomach feels the way it did before I had to perform in my fifth grade holiday musical, like it's trying to turn itself inside out.

I watch kids stream out of the buses and walk toward school, talking and laughing, like they don't have a care in the world. I wish I could rewind the past few days and go back to last week, when I wasn't exactly happy, but the world wasn't falling apart. I had the Sea Monkeys. I had Jared and Riley and Abbott. I may have been hurting myself every evening, but that pain was tiny compared to hauling around the anguish of having ended someone else's life.

"Are you going to be okay?" Grams asks.

Of course I'm not.

But it's too late for that, and even if I did tell Grams the truth, she'd make me go through with this anyway. So I paste a smile on my face and say yes.

I suck in my breath and open the door. I walk past the main office, toward my locker.

In the halls, people are talking.

I mean, duh. People are always talking. But it's the way they're talking. You can tell something big has happened. They speak in hushed tones, whispering over one another excitedly, and then when they see me, they all go silent.

I remember what Grams said and try to hold my head up high, but it seems so heavy, or maybe that's the double dose of painkillers I took right before we got into the car.

Still, I try.

Even the teachers seem to be gossiping about me. There's a cluster of them standing outside the teacher's lounge, and the Spanish teacher has tears in her eyes. One of the math teachers is trying to comfort her. They look different, like their crisp, professional personas have melted away and left behind a raw core of sadness, an emotion they've decided it's okay to let the students see because pretty much everyone is suffering right now.

I have to look away from the crying teacher. Her tears represent the chaos I've thrown this entire school into, all because of my impulsiveness. I try to block it all out, pretend I'm drifting through clouds, weightless, toward my locker. The faces blur, and the hushed conversations fade into a meaningless buzz. Hunching down, I unlock the metal door, not thinking about anything other than each movement.

Carefully I slide my backback off my shoulder, unzip it, and retrieve my English folder and a pen before zipping the bag up and pushing it into my locker. I glance in the mirror before closing the door, not recognizing the girl looking back at me. Her features are similar but distorted, the eyes too far apart, the lips a strange shape. I feel like one of those Picasso paintings I've seen in an art textbook. All the parts are there, but they're in the wrong places, like I've been rearranged somehow.

The five minute bell rings.

I slam my locker door shut and turn to walk toward Mrs. Edwards's room, letting the crowd push me along. Face after face rushes past me, and I become fascinated by the way each one goes from slack to taut when they pass me by, like shit just got real.

I'm baaaaaaaaaaack.

And then I'm standing outside her room, and I can't breathe I can't I can't my stomach is clumped up in my throat and it's blocking my airway and I don't know how to I just can't I won't I have

to

get

away