Chex Mix

I can’t be in here anymore.

I can’t stand the lights and the people and the voices and how the walls seem to quiver, diving closer and closer towards my desk.

I can’t stand how everything is getting blurry and not and then back again and how my legs are itching to just bolt out so I don’t do something weird. So I don’t heave the tables off the floor and shout and jump and throw things at people I don’t even know. And then the teacher will tell me to go to the principle and I’d scream, ‘why didn’t you let me go to the nurse?! Don’t you see I’m sick?!’

I’m so angry, but I’m not. I don’t even know what the feeling is.

It’s like I’m a little kid who’s lost in the mall again, so helpless and scared and sad and abandoned, and yet something on the inside real deep down is steaming with anger.

So I stand up. And I walk. And I stand in front of Ms. William’s desk. And I stumble over my words like my tongue’s all rolled back in my mouth like a frog’s, but she lets me go. She thinks I have a fever.

And then I’m free and I’m walking and I’m out, but the pressure’s not all gone and it’s still there and I don’t know why. Why is it there? It shouldn’t be there. It’s this lingering dark thing that won’t go, won’t leave, refuses. It’s my unwanted guest, come to stay for too long.

I reach the nurse’s office and they recognize me because I come her a lot and they let me sit on the floor for a while to be with my thoughts about not thinking about humiliation and vulnerability.

I clear my mind and stare at one spot on the floor so I can’t be reminded of anything else but the little dirt spot where someone must have tracked some mud in. At Jefferson High, we have things called malls, which are gaping outdoor spaces surrounding the school and they were donated by alumni and influential characters with the school board or whatever. Anyway, there’s one that’s under construction right now and a lot of kids track in mud when they come into the building.

I did once when—

Stop.

Can’t think about that.

Think of something else, think of something else, think of something else.

“Owen?”

I glance around the room. There are other people. One, two, three, four, five… Dessi.

“…Oh. Hi,” I choke out. I can’t risk saying anything more. I’ll mess up, I’ll say something stupid. But you can talk to her, she’s kind of a friend.

My mouth clamps up on itself and I look back at the dirt spot.

—It was snowing.

Stop thinking, Owen.

And I hadn’t gotten back in my parents' car afterwards.

Owen.

He had said something to me, said that I liked it.

Stop it!

“I don’t like it… It don’t!” I whisper.

Now look what you’ve done. See where talking gets you?

You’re useless.