Page 1 of Letters From A Stalker

1

Julia

The worst part about losing your mind slowly is how nobody notices until you stop pretending to smile.

And I have always been so fucking good at pretending to smile when all I really wanted to do was scream.

Good enough that Tessa keeps scrolling through the pictures she took of us this weekend, laughing at the ones where we had facial masks on, looking like melted versions of Jason Voorhees. She nudges my shoulder for the umpteenth time, the irritation in me boiling over but I keep smiling. She’s pushing her phone in my face, a picture of me on her screen where my hair looks like I lost a fight with a chicken. Only I was the one left plucked.

The woman across the aisle glances at me once, then at Tessa, frowning at her for loud laughs and squeals. I give her a small apologetic smile, and she goes back to picking at the corner of a paperback with a half-naked cowboy on the cover.

I move a little to the right, trying to save my shoulder from bruising at Tessa’s insistent nudging, but she follows me like a magnet. My irritation spikes when the sound of a person chewing gum loudly behind me starts grating on my ears. All of a sudden, my senses become overwhelmed. The scent of wet coats and stale coffee that spread through the bus, the rain dragging itself down the windows in crooked lines, the occasional smear of headlights moving from the opposite direction.

My knees are angled toward Tessa’s, hand wrapped around a paper cup that turned into ice coffee somewhere between the last gas station and a souvenir shop everyone nagged the bus driver to stop at. She’s still flipping through the pics, tucking one leg under herself, even though the seat is too narrow. I just know she’s going to complain about her leg going numb in approximately ten minutes but I say nothing. It’s a thing she always does. Makes herself as uncomfortable as possible but then acts personally offended by her own body for objecting.

“This one is the birthday post. 10/10,” she says, turning her screen toward me.

I look at the picture. I knew refusing would make it a thing, but I really don’t like my pictures being put online. Hell, I don’t even like people taking pictures of me.

It was me, standing in front of a dusty shop window, in my oversized sweatpants and matching shirt, looking bigger than I do in real life. Or that’s at least what I kept telling myself to feel better about the few excess pounds I accumulated eating Nutella straight out of the jar. With a big spoon. Like it was ice cream. My hair was loose from the clip that was probably hanging to the back of my head for dear life, and my hands were wrapped around a cider cup, obviously for emotional support.

“No,” I say.

“Yes.”

“No.”

“You look cute.”

“I look like I just escaped from a mental institution because they decided to put me on a weight loss program as well.”

Tessa snorts. “Exactly. Relatable content.”

“Tessa…”

“Julia.”

“Please don’t make me block you.”

“You still haven’t blocked that former colleague who keeps commenting ‘so pretty’ on your plants.”

“She’s nice.” I shrug.

“Bitch, your plants are dead.”

“My house is their final resting place. It’s nice.”

“It’s torture, but whatever.”

I smile, turning my head toward the window. For one stupid second it feels real. Honest.

But that’s the thing that always gets me. Not the bad moments, those are always there and I know what to do with them. That’s functional depression for you. You know how to brace, how to keep your voice even while something inside you is quietly bleeding all over the carpet. You learn how to go through the motions of appearing as a functional human being. It’s the good moments that catch me off guard. The weekend we just spent together that was actually nice. Tessa’s laugh and how easy and familiar our friendship is. The owner’s dog I spent a concerning amount of time petting, and talking to like it understood every word beside “chimken” and “cookie”.

All these dangerous little illusions that I allow myself to think that maybe, just maybe… I’m not that broken after all.

But then my ears skip from that annoying sound of someone chewing gum like a starved cow, and zone in on the music coming from the front of the bus.

“In the air tonight” by Phil Collins.