I clamp my eyes shut and clench and release my hands until eventually the pinball gets smaller. It’s the size of a punctuation mark when I can open my eyes and look at myself: frizzy hair, two asymmetrical eyebrows, a nose that’s never been pierced. I take a deep breath and fill my lungs with air the quality of the bathroom. Somehow the anger has passed, as if the universe is holding it for me.

I sink against the wall and slide to the floor. This is the exhaustion that always sets in after the anger. Everything has been sucked out of me to feed the fury. I’m just so tired. Like so so so so so tired. How is everyone else not fucking exhausted? How are we not all exploding all the time, Mentos-in-Pepsi style? How does everyone just walk around being a person, while I’m so confused?

A girl comes into the bathroom and takes a pair of scissors out of her bag. She starts trimming her bangs. I watch from the floor, liking the sound hair makes when it’s cut and how the clumps of hair scatter and fall at their own pace. Maybe all I need is a good haircut. A haircut that means business, one that says I am a boss child who will pass English class. “Can you do that to me too?” I ask. “Not bangs, just like all of it.”

“Um, you should go to a hairdresser for that. Besides, like head lice.”

Asshole, I mumble to myself, but I walk out of the bathroom secretly relieved that I didn’t accidentally end up with a mullet. Of all the things I need right now, a popular haircut for guys in the seventies isn’t one of them.

Dear Universe,

Wanted: A fuck

Just kidding. Keep your fucks. I have too many: how Hilary and Abigail are gonna forget about me, what people think about my dad, whether or not my boobs really exist at all, what I could’ve done differently to keep Gene from falling for someone else. Could all the fucks get lost, please? Like take a sick day, a holiday, a vacation. Just once I’d like to get through school not feeling like a chicken in the world where the egg came first. The good thing is, I’m getting so strong hauling around all these fucks every day. The bad thing is, I feel weaker.

15

Days ’til graduation: 31

WEEKEND SCHEDULE OF A HIGH SCHOOL SOCIALITE:

1. Start English essay.

2. Finish English essay.

3. Find a brilliant excuse to get out of the Brain Degeneration Walk without also going to the Breast Cancer Polar Plunge.

4. Procrastinate doing all these things by doing something of greater importance, i.e., spending time with my ailing father before he kicks the bucket and I forever regret being the worst daughter ever.

5. Yeah. Let’s start there.

“Hi, Dad, coming in!” I call, rapping on his door and uncapping the protein shake. I’m not a doctor, but since my dad is having a hard time eating, maybe we should be giving him real milkshakes, not these impostor shakes that come in plastic bottles stamped with FortifY-um!