“—make verbal contact with another student,” I say. My stomach is so tight with all the water. If I was anywhere else, I would’ve been sick by now. That’s something I can’t do in this room with this man. If I throw up, he’ll probably start over and we’ll be here for another year, me listing out a sadistic monster’s idea of school rules and Mr. Jay looking bored.

My stomach lurches, and I swallow.

Swallow.

Swallow again.

Am I going to throw up or piss myself? I don’t know which he’s after. I don’t know which will get me the worst punishment either.

“I have to throw up,” I tell him, leaning forward and the books slip, my leg cramps.

I’m not sure when he starts to hit me. The blows seem like they’re coming from far away. We go back to the beginning of the list and through the whole thing again. At first, he hits me with an open hand, but that must be boring, too, because he switches to a fist.

Why does he do it? I don’t know. I guess it probably makes some kind of sense to the people who run this place, but it will never make sense to me. There’s just no reason for him to do this. It’s not even worth my time to figure it out.

My head is so fucked, I can barely make sense of the room. It spins and goes fuzzy. Everything does. I’m here but I’m not.

I’m also not sure when I stop…being there.

I’m still in the room. There’s no escape from this place, so my body stays on the chair. I don’t try to get away from Mr. Jay’s fist. I know where I am, just like I know the rules are taped to the wall opposite me. The print is too small for me to read them, but I don’t need the paper to tell me what they are.

My mouth moves, but it belongs to someone else. The longer I talk, the more I feel like someone else is talking for me.

The longer Mr. Jay hits me, the more it feels like he’s hitting someone else.

That’s been happening more often lately, I think. I exist in my body, but I don’t. The school exists around me, but it doesn’t. As I sit in the chair, answering Mr. Jay’s questions, I start to imagine another place.

I don’t imagine much at first. For a while, all I can picture is a sidewalk. It’s a regular sidewalk with some cracks in the concrete and grass on either side. It’s not like the patches of sidewalk in front of the school that don’t lead anywhere. This sidewalk leads to somewhere else—I know it.