Apparently, there is a layer below rock bottom.
I thought losing my full scholarship for senior year was rock bottom, but as it turns out, spending an entire week researching more than one hundred scholarship opportunities, only to find out I qualify for just ten of them, is either rock bottom or whatever comes after it.
Is it hell? Does hell come after rock bottom?
I rub my eyes. They’re dry and achy after all the extra screen time this week. I roll my shoulders, sitting up straight for the first time in hours, and wince as something in my back spasms. Maybe I should stop by the student center this week. They do free ten-minute massages for students, which I take advantage of at least once a month.
I drag myself out of my seat to start making some food, but every movement is a gargantuan effort. My limbs are heavy, my chest perpetually caved in from the weight of my financial situation. I was just barely treading water with my classes before this, and now I’m struggling to come up for air.
Jade waltzes into our dorm suite, startling me, and drops her tote bag on the floor. She flings herself onto the couch, draping an arm over her eyes. My stomach growls, prompting me to eat. So for the first time in hours, I leave the table in search of food in my freezer.
“Long day?” I ask and grab a frozen chicken tikka masala microwave meal. I pop it in the microwave and lean against the counter while it cooks.
“Just exhausted from this weekend. I barely slept,” she says.
“How’s your mom?”
Jade’s grandmother called Friday afternoon saying Jade’s mom had been left by her most recent boyfriend and Jade went home immediately. She got back late on Sunday, and for the rest of the week we’ve been like ships in the night. Even when we’ve seen each other, we haven’t had much time to catch up.
Jade only drops everything to go home when things are bad with her mom. I don’t know all the details. Jade doesn’t like to talk about it. I do know her mom drinks a lot when she’s been dumped, and there’s been more than one incident with her drinking getting out of control.
“Same as always after a breakup. Reckless. Dramatic.” Jade’s tone is clipped and distant. Seeing her mom do this to her breaks my heart and makes me grateful for my relationship with my mom. We’re close. We have the kind of bond most parents probably wish they had with their kid. I trust my mom, and she trusts me. I don’t take it for granted.
I can tell Jade doesn’t want to talk about her mom right now, so I won’t push. My instinct is to fix it, to make Jade smile, but it’s not what she needs. I hate seeing her like this, a muted version of herself, like someone turned down the volume on her personality.
I stir up my dinner and take the microwave tray to our two-person dining table, of which every square inch is covered in books, notebooks, index cards, and various writing utensils. Gingerly I rearrange everything to make room for my meager meal.
What Jade needs right now is a distraction, and since I can’t fix it, I’ll distract.
“By the way…” I say, blowing on a forkful of rice and chicken before shoveling it into my mouth. “If you think you’re going to escape giving me every juicy detail about last Thursday night, you’re dead wrong.”
Jade sits up halfway. “You do need to get laid.”
I scowl at her. “No, I’m just too vanilla to have a threesome, so obviously I want all the sordid details.”
“Or you could just…try it yourself and stop being so vanilla,” Jade says with a wink and a smirk.
There she is.
“Or…you could just tell me and let me be vanilla.”
“Wait, are we not going to talk about your financial aid meeting?”
I texted Jade the details after the meeting. She promised we could talk about it later that night but then ended up going home, and since we haven’t talked much this week I hoped she’d forgotten, because talking about it means reliving it. And reliving it means all the heaviness will come back.
“Do we have to?”
“Yes, we have to, because your brooding is polluting the energy in our apartment.”
“Hey! You were brooding too!”
“Ugh, you’re so right. I’m going to have to sage the fuck out of this place.” Jade launches herself off the couch, disappears into her room, and returns with a bundle of sage and a lighter.
“Spill,” she says, lighting the bundle, gently blowing out the small flame, and waving the sage around. Jade wafts the smoke toward the single window and the door.
The smoke swirls, dissipating into the air. My shoulders droop a bit from my ears, the musky, earthy scent relaxing me.
As Jade makes a loop around the room with the sage, I tell her everything, repeating the conversation with Cheri, explaining the list of scholarships, and showing her the ones I circled, how I only qualify for ten. I tell her about the Walden Senior Scholarship, that Mac is applying too, among other students. I only cry a little, and when I do Jade stands next to me and rubs my back.
