When will you be back? I ask him after he’s texted me that he’s going to spend the next week in Toronto "partying" with models.
I get home Sunday he responds.
Sigh. That’s kewl. I never spell “cool” like this.
Mhmm. I bought a science magazine for the bus ride. Instead of responding with
Anything interesting? or
Which one? to keep the conversation going, I purse my lips and my fingers move to type in:
I’m super glad! He doesn’t respond. I didn’t expect him to, but my hands continue to flip open my phone just to check, in case I was too busy focusing on the twisted feeling in the pit of my stomach to notice the mild vibration. No, he doesn’t respond.
There is a collection of pennies on the shelf next to my thin army cot of a bed. I have counted them three times today and each time there is the same number, eighty six. They are different shades of orange and brown, in various states of corrosion. I didn’t mean to put them all together; they just appear in my purse and I don’t like the way that they weigh it down, so I set them one by one on the wooden panel until I decide what to do with them. I can’t even stick them into a vending machine and get myself a bag of salty yellow potato chips. It doesn’t seem worth it to take them to a change machine and get a few quarters, a dime, and a penny. The cycle will just start over again. I want to throw them all on the floor and look at them like they’re wet fall leaves, but I don’t want to lose any of them.
I am on my laptop and my headphones are plugged into my ears, pumping music at full volume. I keep switching songs to distract myself and chase my thoughts out of my brain. I want to be dancing naked and in front of a mirror, looking at the way details of my body ripple when I bend like an amateur. I want to evaluate myself and how I look in every position that I’m capable of.
I unplug the headphones from their jack and pull them from my ears. The music is dulled by the poor speakers; I remember what I’m thinking. I’m thinking about girls with long legs and thick brown hair, whose cuticles haven’t been ripped up by their alabaster teeth. I’m thinking about his fucking science magazine, and how I wish I had asked what was in it, even though I wouldn’t have understood. I’m thinking about how I’m turning from mysterious and intriguing into his stupid little sister with ratty Barbie doll hair from too many bad dye jobs. Regardless, I step in front of the mirror, the music sounding distant, and pull at my face, trying to make my lips pout into a pleasing size. I pull my hair back, but I just look bald. I admit defeat and return to my desk, my eyes sucking back into the screen where he often appeared to me in conversation. The headphones return to their home in my ears, and The Soviettes scream at me about multiplication and division, and I can’t hear myself again.
I spend four minutes of my first day inside the mental iron maiden by stacking my pennies into a single column, but I don’t get to use all of them before the column gives up and collapses into a stream of copper, trickling onto my bed. It stood nearly four inches tall before it gave up on itself. Suddenly I am four inches tall, swinging my miniscule legs off of the edge of my bed. I try to pick up one end of my oversized headphones with both hands and it is like I am lifting a plastic boulder. The music starts and I am nearly knocked off of my feet. I walk away from the massive speakers to play hopscotch on my keyboard. I remember why I never played hopscotch as a little girl—it’s just boring. Instead I lie on the keys, shiny from the grease of repeated taps from my fingers when I was big. The A key is my favorite, it is so worn down that it doesn’t even have an A on it anymore.
I am startled by a rumble, a thunderous vibration through my stomach, and run to my phone, which has illuminated itself, proudly displaying that it has a new text message to show me. I spend the better part of an hour trying to leverage it open; I want to hear about crystalline boron, ionic compounds, and the space between electrons. Finally, on my back, using my legs to lift the immense screen of the phone, I am greeted by a text from my friend:
Omg, youll never guess who just came into the café Im at.
I am not happy. I don’t want to guess who just came into the café. There is only one person I want to hear about right now. I want his fingers to be clicking down on tiny buttons with me in mind. I give up on my glowing phone and sit next to my headphones again. The noise emanating from them rattles the pennies. I pick one up and Abe Lincoln’s brown face avoids eye contact with me. He is much too important to care about my boy problems. I bet if his love interest was spending the week fucking other people, he’d want someone to talk to too. I would at least listen and drool cliches through the spaces in my teeth; everything happens for a reason, he met them for a reason, they’re breaking his heart for a reason, there are other fish in the sea, he’s not dead yet, there’s still plenty of time to find someone else. Someone better, someone who isn’t being clawed at by beautiful monsters with perfect fingernails and titanium hearts. I cup my hand underneath my eye and a salty puddle tells me that I’m thinking too hard again.
I am dreaming of gorgons, their blank eyes and vicious smiles laughing at me without motive. One points a long, pristine, venomous finger at me and I wish I could bite it but my teeth look like overcooked kernels of yellow corn. I want to swear at her but I don’t want to open my mouth and show her that I’m ugly, so I send her a message on my phone.
I want to fucking hate you, but you’re beautiful.
She pulls a phone from a pocket that didn’t exist before, and reads the message. She doesn’t smile, she doesn’t press any buttons in response, but she hands me an especially green penny and slithers gracefully out of my window. The other gorgons struggle out after her, but not before scarring my ribcage with their claws.
I’m back to normal size by the time I wake up from the nightmare, but there is an outstandingly corroded penny in my collection that I never noticed before, and upon counting them, I realize I miscounted and there are eighty seven of them. I roll out of bed and look in the mirror again, my tied-back hair still making my head look flat and emptied out, though it's still dense with memory. I take a shower, scrubbing every fragment of dead skin off, and I clip my fingernails into little rounded nubs. I slick them in metallic gold polish, and I clip toy snakes into my still wet hair. I want to be a gorgon too. Putting my headphones back into my head, tucking the tendrils of wire beneath the smell of cheap rubber fangs, I text him and ask
Will you come back if I’m a gorgon too?
He doesn’t respond, because he doesn’t understand the question. That’s why he doesn’t respond.
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