Ana - 3. Chapter 3

Chapter Three

“You smell like coconut.”

“Something smells good.”

“Yeah, is that you?”

“You smell good.”

Four girls notice something immediately that no boy here would. I always smell good, but today I used some kind of coconut lotion my mom had in her purse on the way to school. Girls always notice, boys never do.

The stale, antiseptic odor of school assaulted my nose, slicing through coconut and cologne. As the bell rang and my breakfast table loitered, squeezing out the last drop of freedom they could before the first class, I gathered my books and started walking. The routine got old; it seemed like even though I was constantly busy, nothing ever happened. I was stuck in that life-in-death of being a bored teenager.

Math gave my fears of stagnancy room to grow amidst equations and functions. A negative times a negative is a positive is boring is useless is killing me slowly. I wandered, imagining pulling the trigger of a square root sign while pointing it at my head. Plus, minus, multiplication, and division signs would spew out the opposite ear. Anything would be better than the antsy anxiety I was swimming in.

I always felt panicked, trapped, controlled. Nothing was my own doing, my own design, and it was making me stress so much. I wanted to break out of it. Maybe I’m just paranoid. Everyone either secretly disliked me or wanted something from me; I actually believed it.

Alone, disliked… I’d go so far as to use ‘wretched’ to describe it. This motivation less state of paranoia and depression began to get annoying. Someone had managed to suck out all the excitement and fun from life. A dried, dead husk was left for everyone to pick at.

The empty feeling in my stomach brought me out of my thoughts, and I clenched the muscles there tightly. I willed it to go away, leave, let me have at least some control over the life everyone else stole with all their needs and demands. I just pigged out last night. I broke down, defeated, and dashed my promise. I’d let myself down again, and didn’t even have the resolve to fix it. Now I had to take control and get back the reins of my life.

Determination was sapped out of me by distraction, though. Putting up with teachers, people, friends, and schoolwork became a struggle to keep it together. I tried to pay attention to the teacher at the head of the class, but without success. Now that I’d zoned out for five minutes, she was speaking Greek.

The bell rang, and I finally got to my next class. It just went downhill to a dumb teacher and even dumber students. I took a seat next to the two most tolerable people since we never did anything in there anyway and struck up conversation.

“How’s it going, Seth?” Miranda asked. I resisted the urge to promptly reply with a huge explanation of how shitty life had become.

“Fine, you?” was my reply.

“Great, you have to take this exam?”

“Yeah, had a ninety. He wouldn’t up my grade ‘cause I have a zero on a test grade.”

“Really? That’s bullshit, he upped Daniel’s and he had like a seventy-nine.” Anna had chimed in.

“Yeah, but he’s on his little football team,” I recognized the look on Anna’s face and continued quickly, “but I don’t give a shit. I just want to get the fuck out of here.”

The day passed by slowly as usual, but I finally started for the front door of the school. I was met by the group of my friends who happened to be druggies. I smiled and waved; the druggies seemed to misunderstand me the least. Even if nothing else, we always had a common interest to talk about. That way we could always tolerate each other, even when we wanted to shun the rest of the world.

I never thought I’d say it, but marijuana had become my worst enemy. As I tasted the peach flavored cigar I was splitting, I realized how bad of an idea this was. Jordan broke through my silent rolling with a random musing.

“But yeah, I’d go for it. If all I had to do to fuck Connor Oberst was do some ugly-ass fat guy first, then hell yeah.” I laughed at her in the middle of lighting up the blunt and ended up trying not to cough for the next minute.

“So wait, do I get to choose anybody? And do I get time to recharge, or do I have to fuck back to back?” I asked.

“Nah, you get to choose when and who.”

“Then I’d have to say hell yeah,” I replied as I pictured the boy from history class. I wasn’t so sure that I wanted to fuck him so much as I wanted to be him. Either way, though, seeing that bare skin taut over muscle and bone got me hard fast. My pants were starting to get uncomfortable, so I changed the subject.

“Hey, you want some?” Jordan held out a bag of chips to me. I stared at the logo for the hot fries indecisively before I shook my head and lit a cigarette.

“Not hungry,” I said as I exhaled. She laughed, and I looked at her for an explanation.

“Are you anorexic or something? I’ve never seen you eat,” she said. My heart skipped a beat. Was I anorexic? I didn’t look anorexic. I looked like a fat ass.

“You’ve seen me eat before. I’m fat, how can I be anorexic?” She shook her head as she passed the blunt back to me.

“I’ve never seen you eat before, man. You never eat at the lunch table, and you never eat when we hang out.”

“What about that time we went to McDonald’s? I ate then.” I tried to defend myself from looking weird. All of a sudden it seemed so important to keep my diet to myself.

“No, you didn’t. You got a diet drink and me and Anna ate,” she said.

“Oh. Well, I’ll make sure to stuff my face around you sometime. I just don’t eat lunch at school ‘cause it’s fucking gross. I’m too fat to be anorexic.” My heart calmed back down, but I was still on edge.

“You’re not that fat,” she mumbled. I pretended not to hear as I got up and stretched.

“When do you have to go to work?” I asked.

“Now, actually. Let’s go.” We put away the paraphernalia and she dropped me off at my house on the way to her job. I gave her a quick hug, like I do all my friends, before getting out of the car and heading into the house. Nobody was home yet since my parents didn’t get home from work until after six o’clock.

I wished now more than ever I hadn’t smoked that pot. I was so hungry that it hurt; my stomach felt like someone had ironed it flat while it was full of glass. The contents of my refrigerator leapt to mind. Food would taste so good right now. That voice taunted me now, obscured by cakes, cookies, pizza, pasta. I knew it was telling me what an idiot I’d been and I knew I deserved it. I really was such an idiot.

Like something out of a nightmare, I felt like I was watching myself from a distance as I headed into the kitchen. The fridge lit up like an amusement park as I opened the door. I caught sight of spaghetti, already cooked. All I had to do was microwave it. Two minutes later, there was a huge plate of it staring at me. The voice in my head kept on screaming until that first bite forced it into stony silence. It was better than anything else I’d eaten in my entire life. I barely chewed the pasta as I swallowed down the meal.

There was no way any more than a minute had passed before it was all gone and I was left staring speechless. I’d pay for that minute of heaven with two days of hell. I felt hot tears drip from my face as I let loose a growl which became a scream, then a whimper. I’d ruined days of work, tarnished my record again. I felt filthy and stupid. I’d given up my goal for a plate of fucking spaghetti.

Something had to change. The caffeine didn’t kill my appetite anymore. All it did was make me nervous and edgy. I lamented over the tight shirt I was going to wear to a party the next day. That was dashed now. My stomach bulged out obscenely as I looked in the mirror. I hated myself and my life, and more than once I’d thought to myself “Well, I can’t eat if I’m fucking dead.”

***

I got up and shrugged on wrinkled clothes. I didn’t deserve to spend any time on my looks after yesterday. I met up with my mom beside the coffee pot.

“Write me a note to ride the bus home with Anna today, please.” It came out as a mumble, but she understood.

“You can’t ride your own bus home, but you can ride with somebody else?” Instead of defending my stand on not riding my own bus, I just nodded. I didn’t need an argument right now. She grabbed pen and paper, scribbled, and handed me a note. My mother’s handwriting always seemed to me to be the exact way a mom’s handwriting should be. Cursive, neat, stylishly looped and pointed. Mine was shit.

I downed a cup of coffee, and then headed for my room to smoke a cigarette quickly before it was time to head out. Today would feel like a big waste of time, as usual. I’d gotten used to my life feeling that way.

***

School came and went. After wasting a day, I was finally on the bus with Anna on the way to her house. Her dad would be at work all night, which meant we had the perfect opportunity to party like crazy.

“Seth! We’re gonna have fun!” she whisper-screamed at me as her dad headed out the door. Within thirty minutes, we’d acquired two fifths of liquor and a half ounce. Smoke clouded the rooms, and the sharp smell of alcohol stabbed my nose as Anna thrust another shot my way. I slammed it down and chased it with some cola. It tasted like whiskey, but alcohol was alcohol.

I wandered around, drunk, having a good time. It’s amazing how much less inhibited you can be once you have a nice blood alcohol level going. All that anxiety was melting away, and I felt so good for once. I knew I’d pay for it somehow later, but I didn’t care. Later on, Anna grabbed my arm we headed to her room. She giggled and pulled something out of her shirt, taking care not to let me see it.

“Guess what I got!” Anna danced around with her hands on my shoulders.

“Um, laid?”

“NO, not yet anyway! I got some powder!” She did some funny thing with her eyes as she said it, making me laugh. I knew just what she was talking about, but I didn’t know she did it. I ducked into her bathroom to use it, and came back to find four lines cut out and ready. She smiled again as she held a cut piece of a straw to her nose and zipped across the notebook paper, leaving it two lines lighter.

“Mmmm, delicious!” she said. Anna passed the straw to me, and I bent over and did the same thing. My head thrummed pleasantly as I felt the alcohol and coke mix to give me that feeling of invulnerability that I loved so much. I felt weightless as I hopped back to my feet and hugged Anna.

“Where’d you get it?” I asked her.

“Oh, this guy I know, his name’s Andy. You’d like him, he’s hot. Plus he’s…” She gave me the most exaggeratedly obvious wink I’ve ever seen. It seemed a thousand times funnier than it should’ve, and we were rolling with laughter as we headed out of her room. Of course, we both did another line first.

The whole night was a mix of people, partying, drugs, and insanity. The goal was the same as every party teens have; get fucked up and have fun. Sometime during the night I lay down on Anna’s bed and cuddled up with her giant teddy bear for a pillow. I kicked off my shoes and got comfortable, but didn’t pass out immediately. Oh no, I was far too drunk to just pass out. Instead, I socialized with whoever passed through the room as much as I could in my slurry state. Eventually, my memory failed to record what happened and I didn’t remember falling asleep.

I woke up the next morning still holding the teddy bear. I nuzzled my face against its warm, white fur and noticed something odd. Why would a teddy bear be warm? And why wasn’t it as furry feeling as it was the other night? I snuggled my body closer to it, and tried to pull it closer to me. It was a lot heavier than it was last night, too. My eyes popped open as I realized that the teddy bear would definitely not be laughing like this one was.

A tall guy with ruffled brown hair looked down at me with a smile. I immediately backed away from his body and noticed my pants straining. I was beyond embarrassed, especially since I didn’t even remember meeting this guy last night.

“Well, hello there, happypants. I’m Andy, in case you don’t remember me.”