Reasons to Live
3
School sucks. But everybody knows that.
So why do I hang around?
I think everybody here knows that, too, if they’ve been paying any attention at all.
I sit in my usual seat, which is empty for now, but isn’t for long—one of the other invisible people sits on me as the second bell rings. Ironic, right?
Luckily for him, I have no qualm with him, and I ascend to sit on Pine’s desk. I’ve always liked sitting on the desks more than sitting on the chairs anyway. Isn’t that always the case? But sitting this close to him feels invasive of me, so I move to another desk, of a guy with a cartilage piercing in both ears. His eyes look cracked with red. Drugs. I can sit here.
The teacher starts talking about something economical that I don’t understand after my period of absence. I continue to alternately marvel at the foreign language spoken at the front of the classroom, and marvel at Pine. Both are fascinating.
The guy behind me shifts, and I feel that really tingly feeling I get when I’m touching something living. When I look, I see his fingers are hovering in my hair. I flinch back, ascend to the clock at the back of the room. Beneath me, I see his dark hair, and then it moves, revealing an upturned face that stares blearily at me.
Dimly I hear the teacher tell him to stop staring at the clock, the clock that is right behind my transparent body. Which is probably all he’s doing, right? Looking at the dumb clock. But he doesn’t stop, just kind of stares at me like I just woke him up from a long hibernation. But it’s not me—it’s the clock. It has to be the clock.
Pine turns in early that night. He and his girlfriend were yelling about something, but I couldn’t quite hear what, and I doubt “murdering bitch” was one of the insults thrown. Shame.
You know, it would make my life (haha) so much easier if he broke up with her, got her out of the way, shoved her to the side of the road and splash water on her face with his tire. Oh, good mental image there. It would make my day to see her by some dirt road, in her short shorts and skimpy top, dripping with browned water and blinking away her mascara, as Pine drives away, plumes of dust billowing like a cloak and slapping her in her wet face.
I watch the little cow strut in her six inches out the driveway, hoping she trips on a crack or something (a pitiful revenge compared to what I’ve already imagined). As always, there is no justice to be had in the world, and she drives off with indignant grace and the purr of her car engine.
The tree cradles me as I stare at Pine’s darkened window, hoping to see some signs of relief or pleasure at her departure, but the light remains absent. Disappointed but unsurprised, I turn my head skyward and watch the stars. If I hadn’t been held back by some celestial failing grade, would I be up there? Or would I be somewhere else, much farther beyond my imagining?
I was wrong before. I’m scared to die.
“So do you stay out here every night?”
So let’s just say that if my head could whip around this fast while I was alive, I’d have died of a broken neck. In front of the house is the druggie from earlier, still looking sleepy, but now standing and looking into my tree.
Somehow I don’t think there’s a clock behind me this time.
So why do I hang around?
I think everybody here knows that, too, if they’ve been paying any attention at all.
I sit in my usual seat, which is empty for now, but isn’t for long—one of the other invisible people sits on me as the second bell rings. Ironic, right?
Luckily for him, I have no qualm with him, and I ascend to sit on Pine’s desk. I’ve always liked sitting on the desks more than sitting on the chairs anyway. Isn’t that always the case? But sitting this close to him feels invasive of me, so I move to another desk, of a guy with a cartilage piercing in both ears. His eyes look cracked with red. Drugs. I can sit here.
The teacher starts talking about something economical that I don’t understand after my period of absence. I continue to alternately marvel at the foreign language spoken at the front of the classroom, and marvel at Pine. Both are fascinating.
The guy behind me shifts, and I feel that really tingly feeling I get when I’m touching something living. When I look, I see his fingers are hovering in my hair. I flinch back, ascend to the clock at the back of the room. Beneath me, I see his dark hair, and then it moves, revealing an upturned face that stares blearily at me.
Dimly I hear the teacher tell him to stop staring at the clock, the clock that is right behind my transparent body. Which is probably all he’s doing, right? Looking at the dumb clock. But he doesn’t stop, just kind of stares at me like I just woke him up from a long hibernation. But it’s not me—it’s the clock. It has to be the clock.
Pine turns in early that night. He and his girlfriend were yelling about something, but I couldn’t quite hear what, and I doubt “murdering bitch” was one of the insults thrown. Shame.
You know, it would make my life (haha) so much easier if he broke up with her, got her out of the way, shoved her to the side of the road and splash water on her face with his tire. Oh, good mental image there. It would make my day to see her by some dirt road, in her short shorts and skimpy top, dripping with browned water and blinking away her mascara, as Pine drives away, plumes of dust billowing like a cloak and slapping her in her wet face.
I watch the little cow strut in her six inches out the driveway, hoping she trips on a crack or something (a pitiful revenge compared to what I’ve already imagined). As always, there is no justice to be had in the world, and she drives off with indignant grace and the purr of her car engine.
The tree cradles me as I stare at Pine’s darkened window, hoping to see some signs of relief or pleasure at her departure, but the light remains absent. Disappointed but unsurprised, I turn my head skyward and watch the stars. If I hadn’t been held back by some celestial failing grade, would I be up there? Or would I be somewhere else, much farther beyond my imagining?
I was wrong before. I’m scared to die.
“So do you stay out here every night?”
So let’s just say that if my head could whip around this fast while I was alive, I’d have died of a broken neck. In front of the house is the druggie from earlier, still looking sleepy, but now standing and looking into my tree.
Somehow I don’t think there’s a clock behind me this time.
♠ ♠ ♠
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