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Yes.
But… I’m not allowed. Until we make it, I have to eat the proverbial shit sandwich that I’ve been given.
So I just clock the asshole with my eyes and walk past everyone. I walk past the whispers and the weird stares and before I know it, I’m jogging toward the door. I push against it and pace down the hall, not paying attention to where I’m going. Everything smells like cleaner, the desks are all in perfect alignment, the chairs, the lockers, everything looks so fucking perfect and I want to ruin it all.
Because that’s not my reality.
It’s not any of our reality and yet we smile, we go through graduation, we pay for lessons, we fight for our dreams, but what do we ever have to show for it?
Math?
Screw math.
I pull my phone out of my pocket then put it right back. I’ll text Rae later otherwise he’ll worry since he’s like a big brother to me. I just need a minute.
One minute for me.
Not for school.
Worrying.
The group.
Just me.
I need to breathe. I need to stop my mind from racing. And I need to do it without people watching me and making all the assumptions they do… He’s this innocent young thing. He can’t cuss.
He’s sofragile…
That kills me more than anything. It destroys my ego. My manhood. Everything that I am on the inside. I’m the furthest thing from fragile, but I could never show it—which brings me to my almost constant state of being.
Frustrated.
I’m literally, not figuratively,alwaysfrustrated.
Maybe it’s a control thing.
Maybe it’s because I know I’m helpless in my situation and I hate that feeling.
Or maybe that’s just what happens when people try to follow their dreams only to find out—they don’t actually exist. Not in the way you think, at least. It’s a smokescreen, there is always, and I do mean always—a cost.
I turn the corner and collide hard with a girl, because of course that’s how my day’s going. She tumbles to the ground, one of her heels flies off of her foot and her hair goes directly into her lipstick.
“I’m sorry!” I help her to her feet and grab her heel, then her leg and try to shove her foot back into it.
“Ya!” She grabs me by the hair and pulls my head back. She has tears in her eyes, smudging her makeup, tears stream down her cheeks. She’s beautiful. Maybe in college? I can’t tell, but at least a few years older than me. “What are you doing?”
“Helping?” I offer in a frustrated voice that sounds weaker than I actually feel. God, can I do anything right? “I’m sorry I wasn’t looking where I was going and—“
She jerks her foot away so fast I nearly fall as she puts the shoe on herself, then really looks down at me. “Get away from me.”
“Sorry.” This is not my day. Obviously. I get to my feet and dust off my pants again, how many times can someone fall in ten minutes? “Are you sure you’re okay?”
Her lower lip wobbles, it’s pretty and pink, full and enticing. She looks away.
I don’t know why I do it, but I pull her away from the hall and into one of the classrooms for privacy. There’s tissue on one of the desks, I jerk it out of the box and hand it to her.
She takes it abruptly, tearing part of the edges off, and they fall to the ground. She’s still not making eye contact with me. “I wish I could tell you it gets better, it doesn’t.”
