The Sea of Tranquility(12)
Author: Katja Millay

“Call me!” Drew yells over his shoulder to her, laughing as if this is some sort of joke.

“You know her?” I ask, laying my books and my level on the hood of his car. Most of the parking lot has emptied out by this point. For as slow as the traffic moves into this place in the morning, the afternoon exodus takes no time at all.

“I plan to,” Drew responds, not looking at me. He’s still watching the girl walk away. I ignore the innuendo. If I had to acknowledge every thinly-veiled sexual suggestion that comes from his mouth, we’d talk of nothing else, which would probably make him happy.

“Who is she?”

“Some Russian chick. Nastya something I haven’t learned to pronounce. I was starting to worry that I was losing my appeal because she’d never talk to me, but apparently, she doesn’t talk to anybody.”

“Are you surprised? She kind of screams antisocial.” I pick the level up off the car and turn it over in my hands watching the water shift from one side to the other.

“Yeah, but it’s not that. She doesn’t talk, period.”

“At all?” I look at him skeptically.

“At all.” He shakes his head, smiling with warped satisfaction.

“Why not?”

“Don’t know. Maybe she doesn’t speak English. But then I guess she could still say yes and no and shit.” He shrugs as if it’s of no consequence.

“How do you even know?”

“Because she’s in my Speech & Debate class.” He smirks at the irony of that fact. I don’t respond. I’m trying to process the information, and Drew can keep this conversation going on his own. “I’m not complaining. Gives me a chance to work on her every day.”

“Not a very good sign if you have to work on her. Maybe you are losing your appeal,” I reply dryly.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” he says in all seriousness, looking down at his watch. His smile returns. “It’s 3:00. Better get your ass home.” And with that, he hops in his car and drives off, leaving me standing in the parking lot, thinking of pissed off Russian girls and black dresses.

CHAPTER 7

Nastya

I feel like I’m waiting here. Waiting for something that hasn’t happened yet. Something that isn’t yet. But that’s all I feel and nothing else. I don’t know if I even exist. And then someone flips a switch and the light is gone, the room is gone, the weightlessness is gone. I want to ask to wait, because I wasn’t finished yet, but I don’t have a chance. There is no gentle pulling. No coaxing. No choice. I’m wrenched out. Yanked, as if my head is being snapped back. I’m in the dark and everything is pain. There are too many sensations at once. Every nerve ending is on fire. Like the shock of being born. And then, there are flashes of everything. Color, voices, machines, harsh words. The pain doesn’t flash. The pain is constant, steady, never-ending. It’s the only thing I know. I don’t want to be awake anymore.

***

I made it through my second Monday at school. You’d think I’d be drained just from the constant suck of it all, but apparently not, because I still can’t sleep. I’ve been in bed for two hours now; I know it’s after midnight but I can’t see the clock from here so I’m not sure exactly what time it is. I think about the composition book tucked under the mattress beneath me. I reach down and shove my hand under to touch it. My three and a half pages are done, every word accounted for, but still no sleep. Maybe writing them again would help, but it won’t bring me the soul-sucking exhaustion my body is begging for, so I pull my hand back and rest it on my stomach, opening and closing it to the rhythm of my breathing.

I can hear that the hard rain has stopped, so I peel off the covers and look out the window. My window faces into the backyard and it’s too dark to see if it’s still pissing rain, so I head to the front of the house and peer into the beam cast by the streetlamp. There’s no rain visible in the yellow glow reflecting off of the wet sidewalk below and I’m stripping out of my makeshift pajamas before I even get back to my bedroom, giddy with the thought of running out the past few days, pounding my aggression into the sidewalk and leaving it behind me as I go. It takes no time to slip on a pair of running shorts and a t-shirt and throw on my shoes. My feet love me again. I glance at the clock. 12:30. I hook a canister of pepper spray onto my hip and grip the kubotan that holds my keys in my right hand, even though it’s annoying as all hell to run with. It’s my security blanket. Clutched in my fingers, offering me the illusion of a security that doesn’t exist.

I lock the door behind me and force myself to ease into a jog, down the driveway and into the rain-drenched streets, but it’s not easy. I want to tear down the road until I can’t breathe, until there is not enough oxygen left in the world to keep me from suffocating. The humidity is brutal, especially paired with the late summer temperatures, but I can’t care. It’ll only mean more sweat and I can handle that. Every drop is the stress leaching out of me, taking with it all of my anxiety and energy so I can collapse into sleep tonight or this morning or whenever the hell I crawl into bed. Maybe I’ll stay out until it’s time to go to school and then sleepwalk through the day. All the better. My feet disobey me and break into a full-throttle run only seconds after I hit the road. My legs will hate me later, but it will be worth it. I run fast and far the way I’ve become accustomed to running. I wish I was on one, long, straight expanse of highway so I could just keep going without having to turn or think or make decisions of any kind. Instead, I head right and follow my feet without thinking. I don’t pay any attention to the houses or the cars. My body and my mind have missed this over the past couple of weeks; first through the drama of the move to Margot’s house, and then with the constant nightly rain that traps me indoors. If this is what I have to do every night‌—‌wait until it stops, even in the dregs of night‌—‌then I will. I won’t go this long without it again.

The first night I ever ran, I ended up throwing up all over my shoes. It was one of the best nights of my life. It didn’t start out that way. It started out with me fighting with my parents. Followed by me listening to my parents fight about me. I sat in that room and sat in that room and sat in that room on the comforter that looks exactly like the one I sleep on here. I sat in that room until I couldn’t sit there anymore. I couldn’t be in that house, listening to another fight that I caused. My father would ask my mother why she kept blaming herself and my mother would ask my father why it didn’t bother him and my father would tell my mother that it killed him inside but that he didn’t see the point in drowning in it and my mother would tell my father that as long as I was drowning in it, she would be, too. It was always the same fight on an endless loop.