Losing Control

“Are you sure you’ll be okay?”

I sighed, tugging at one of the black strings hanging off of my hoodie. I was going to be late. “Seriously, Mom- I’ll be fine.”

Her shoulders sagged a little, and she gave me a pleading look. “Alan, honey, you know you don’t have to go if you don’t want to. If it’s...happening again.”

I shifted my weight onto my other foot. Why did she always have to bring it up? Honestly, I was fine. At least, fine enough to go to school.

“I know,” I said, feeding her the words I knew she wanted to hear. “Listen, I’ll call you if it gets bad, okay?”

After wringing her hands for a moment and pushing her tongue against her cheek, Mom finally agreed. She stepped forward, surrounding me in a tight embrace. Over her short frame, I glanced at the clock. “Shit, Mom, I’m gonna miss the bus!”

She untangled herself from me, giving me a light kiss on the forehead. Nothing was said about the swearing. I guess that’s just the special treatment you get when you’re parents think that you’re a basket case.

I readjusted my bag on my shoulder, waving goodbye over my back as I rushed to the door. I yanked on it, but it wouldn’t budge. I cursed under my breath, remembering that you had to pull slowly on the door for it to open. Just another thing I didn’t know about the new house. And that I didn’t like.

The door took its time to creak open, and when I could finally slip through, I nearly tripped over the steps leading down from the stoop. Regaining my balance, I sprinted down the winding driveway, Converse slapping the pavement.

I saw the bus peeking out from around the corner of the street, a flash of yellow in the gray skyline of trees. I forced my legs to go faster- no way I was letting Mom drive me on my first day. I neared the corner that served as the bus stop just as the front wheels screeched to a halt.

Breathing heavily, I skidded to a stop behind the two other kids already waiting there. They both turned to gawk at me, the strange, panting, ginger kid who’d come out of nowhere.

The taller of the two, a brawny guy with a buzz cut, was the first to turn away. He chuckled, no doubt wondering why he’d even wasted his time looking at this scrawny new kid. He climbed all three steps onto the bus in a single stride. His jacket, form-fitting to his muscular bulk, was pulled taught. On his back, letters spelled out ‘Football’ in the putrid orange that is now my school color.

Following him onto the bus was a girl, a ponytail of straight caramel hair sticking out from the back of her head. It whipped around as she flashed me a grin before bounding up the steps, bedazzled shoes thudding on each step. I looked away from her too-tight yoga pants, sure that my face was turning red.
Taking a deep breath of muggy air, I begrudgingly stepped onto the bus. As I walked past the bus driver, the layers of her double-chin folding in on themselves as she smiled at me, the doors behind me swung closed. I’d been sealed in. There was no way out now. I felt the anxiety rising in my stomach and hastily shoved it down.

I stood at the front the aisle, my eyes quickly scanning for a place to sit. In the front few rows, I saw a few kids reading books and scrambling to finish homework. In the back, squinting in the faint light of the way-too-early morning, I could just make out the sea of orange letterman jackets.

I chose a safe middle, dropping into an empty seat and sliding close to the window. The bus lurched, and we were moving. I couldn’t help but notice how few kids were scattered on the bus. Although it was probably just freshmen and sophomores, I worried that the school would be as small as my last one. So small that everybody knew you. Knew everything about you. Everything, everything, everything. Even the lies that you told only to yourself.

As I bounced up and down along with the bumps in the cracking road, I realized how long it had been since I’d felt the dirty fake-leather of the school bus seats being pressed against my ass. How long it had been I’d gone to school, period.

I slipped my backpack off of my shoulder, setting it on the seat next to me. I tugged the zipper open, reaching my arm inside. Fingers groping for the rubbery feeling of my headphones. For the smooth feeling of my iPod. For the calming feeling of security that only music could deliver.

“Hey.”

I turned my head, seeing ponytail girl making her way from the back of the bus to the seat across the aisle from me.

“Um, hey,” I replied, unsure of why she was talking to me.

She didn’t respond, so I returned to rummaging through my bag. The silence was heavy and awkward, so I kept my eyes trained on the dark clutter of school supplies nestled in my bag instead of on her.

“So you’re new here?”

I looked back at her again, then nodded. “How’d you know?”

She grinned again, perfect white teeth shining between glossed lips. “Please,” she said, pronouncing it with two syllables. “I know everyone here. We’ve known each other for, like, ever.”

I forced my mouth to mold itself into a smile, though I would’ve rather done almost anything else. But I was not going to let this turn out like last time. Here was someone willingly talking to me, and I didn’t exactly know my way around.

I let the smile fade, nodding my head to encourage her to keep talking. I still snuck my arm in my backpack, fingers filing through a seemingly endless stack of folders. Where was it?

She didn’t make to keep the conversation going anymore, probably realizing just how lame of a person I was to talk to. I rifled through my backpack, noticing all the folders and the binders and the books, the pencils sharpened to a point. All new, even the bag. Leave everything behind, that’s what the therapist said. A fresh start. Like it could all just disappear that easily.

I heard someone clear their throat, snapping me back to the present. The girl. “So, where’re you from?”
Of course. I pulled at the bottom of my sleeve with my fingers that weren’t stuffed in my backpack.

“Arizona,” I said, trying to keep it simple. Now that I thought about it, all I really wanted was for this conversation to be over.

Her eyes, outlined with a hot pink liner and weighed down with mascara, widened. “Whoa. You’re probably like ‘how the hell did I end up in Ohio’, right?” She giggled at herself. “It’s really pretty there!”

“Mhmm,” I mumbled. So pretty. Maybe it was too pretty. Maybe that’s why we’d had to leave. Maybe it was because beautiful things always hid the darkest secrets.

My fingers snaked into pockets of my bag that I hadn’t even known existed. Please, please be there. Then my hand brushed up against the rubbery coating of the cord. I pulled it out, my iPod dangling below it.

“Well, I’m Maddie, by the way.”

I unwrapped my headphones, pushing them into my ears. “Alan,” I replied, already scrolling through my music. When I’d settled on a song, I looked back across the aisle to see that the seat was empty. Maddie was gone.

I bit my lip, turning to rest my forehead against the window. I watched the road blur below me, white dashed lines chasing after each other. The clouds blocking the sun in a barricade of gray. The muddy grass and the endless, endless trees. I tried to convince myself that this was my home now.

My body still ached to return back out west, to the desert and the sun. No clouds there. Go back to where I truly lived. But I knew that I could never return. Not after what happened. At least here I could pretend that I was farther from falling apart.

I closed my eyes, iPod blasting into my ears, already wishing that the day would just end.

Saying that I was wrong about the size of the school would’ve been an understatement. It was huge, towering like a castle over the student body, which I would’ve guessed neared two thousand. Panic clenched like a fist in my stomach, but I wouldn’t allow it to spread. Not today.

Everybody in the school already seemed to know one another. Kids were shouting out their friends’ names, waving them over with excited arms.They were like magnets, pulling the people they knew close and repelling everyone else far, far away.

I was an island in a dizzying sea of unfamiliar faces. They moved as a mass into the building. I tried to follow, allowing myself to get swept up into the crowd. Better than being noticed. Unlike me, they all knew where they were going, dispersing to their lockers. To their classrooms. To the bathrooms to fix their hair for the fifth time. To the hangouts where they met their friends every morning before the first bell.

I felt as though they all knew something that I didn’t. They twisted and turned their way through the hallways with ease, while I couldn’t even figure out which wing of the building my locker was at. They chatted and laughed with each other, while I couldn’t even hold a conversation with someone on the bus for five minutes.

After consulting various maps on the wall, no doubt looking like an idiot, I was able to pick out the locker that was mine. It was positioned under a hideous orange banner, which would at least make it easier to find again later.

The crowd in the hallway was thinning, only freshmen now remaining. My face flushed when a group of flustered boys looked at me strangely, wondering why a sophomore was so stupid that they’d forgotten their way around the school in the two months they were on break. I quickly spun the dial, checking and rechecking each number with the slip of paper clutched in my hand.

When the metal door swung open, I shoved in the excess books and binders. Momentarily, I saw my old school flash before my eyes. The locker next to mine being emptied of books that would never be read again. Papers fluttering to the floor, ‘Dean’ scrawled on the top of them. The door clanging shut for the last time...I slapped my hand against the corner of the locker, returning to reality. I pushed myself away from the locker and slammed the door shut.

First period chemistry was just down the hall, but I feared that I might already be late. The door was still open, but I stopped to make sure that the numbers on the plaque above the door matched the ones printed on the schedule I was carrying. When they did, I slipped inside, hoping nobody would notice me.
It was a nice thought, but the teacher was already at the front of the room taking attendance. A middle-aged man with staticky blonde hair, the letters on the whiteboard behind him spelling out ‘Mr. Day’ underneath the clutter of various science posters. He peered up at me from above his reading glasses after calling out the last few names on the list. “You must be Mr. Ashby.”

I nodded. Sighing, he said, “Take a seat.”

I scanned over the class, looking for an empty seat. Since it was chemistry, there were tables meant for lab partners instead of desks. Even though the class had around thirty students, every one of them was already buddied up. I looked to Mr. Day for help.

He cleared his throat. “Who does not have a lab partner yet?”

A hand was lazily raised in the back of the classroom, its wrist encircled in an array of colorful bracelets. Mr. Day turned to me with...was that pity in his eyes? “Mr. Ashby, you will be partners with Mr. Howell.”

An annoyed voice piped up from the body attached to the raised hand. “It’s Dan, thank you very much.”

I hurried to the back of the classroom where I now sat as a scowl deepened on Mr. Day’s face. He was clenching and unclenching his fist, no doubt wishing that it was wrapped around Dan’s neck.

Regaining slight composure, Mr. Day barked some threats at Dan about what he would do about any behavior of this kind in his class. I slid into my chair, trying to make as little noise as possible. Dan simply rolled his eyes, thrumming his fingers on the table that we now shared.

He looked over at me, shaking his head, amusement in his brown eyes. “So, Mr. Ashby,” he said, making air quotes with his fingers when he said my name. “What’s your real name?”

“Alan,” I replied, after first checking to see that the teacher was still angrily gesticulating at the front of the room and paying no mind to me.

Dan nodded, flicking a jagged black bang out of his eyes. “Nerdy and a ginger. Please darling, just take me now.”

He bounced his eyebrows, and a grin spread over my face. It felt weird, alien. I hadn’t truly smiled in so long. Not since Dean...since a few days before...before he... Images flashed through my head. Memories I tried so hard to suppress. I closed my eyes, willing them to go away.

Pressure on my shoulder. I opened my eyes to see Dan shaking me. Dan, not Dean. Concern was written all over his face. “You okay?” he asked.

I rolled my shoulders. “Yeah. Yeah, I’m fine.”

The same conversation, over and over again. I tried to sear the image of the classroom into my mind, the goggles and beakers lined up under the window. Of Dan, his gray v-neck and black skinny jeans. Of Ohio. Of now. Of everything that was not the past. Of everything that was not Dean.