a mixture of so many things that it would take me ages to pull it all apart. But at the very top of it, the core, the one I could see most clearly, was concern.
This was confirmed seconds later when he asked me how I was feeling. I spun around and faced him in the small, white bathroom. I shook my head. That was all I could do. I don’t think I was able to put words to the feelings I was experiencing right now. How could I have been so wrong about something like this? Something so fundamental, like who I really was. I’d been convinced that in the last few days I’d managed to piece parts of myself together, but it was clear from this place that I’d been sorely mistaken. The picture I’d had of myself had been utterly incorrect. Fundamentally wrong.
The feeling in my belly twisted and thrashed as if it were alive . . .
I pushed past Noah and rushed back into my bedroom. I put my hands on my hips and glared at the bed, glared at the walls, empty and dead, glared at the bottles of germ killer. I raced back into the lounge and did the same thing, scanning everything around me angrily. As if it all offended me. Which it did. I scanned the corners of all the rooms again to make sure I hadn’t missed anything—a pot plant, some greenery, something alive to tell me that a zombie didn’t live here. But there was nothing. A crushing feeling in my throat as the monster in my belly rose up into it, forcing tears into my eyes as well. I collapsed onto the couch, utterly defeated. Everything that had made me feel alive and buoyant only a short while ago had been sucked out of me by this place and the realization that I was nothing like the person I thought I was. My head fell forward and I put my elbows on my knees, unable to hold up the weight of this realization on my own. I felt Noah sit on the couch next to me.
“This is who I am,” I said, hanging my head even lower, as the invisible weight pushed down on me. “I’m not the person on my list.”
There was a pause, as if Noah was gathering his thoughts. I could almost feel him pulling them towards him, as if they had been scattered across the room itself.
“This is not who you are.” He reached over and wrapped his big hand over my tightly clasped ones.
“It is. Look around, Noah.” I raised my head and started pointing at things. “I’m not pink. Or purple, or sequined and bright.” I shook my head. “I am beige and brown and dry, spiceless chicken breasts in little frozen containers.” As I said this, I could feel all the previous ideas about myself being painfully ripped away from me, dissolving into the bland, muted tones of my surroundings. The once-bright colors swallowed up by the insipid.
“You are pink!” he said firmly, squeezing my hand. “And you’re not spiceless chicken breasts. You’re chilis that are too hot for mere mortals to eat and that get you a photo on a wall of fame!”
I shook my head. “I’m not. Can’t you see, nothing about this place is even vaguely pink and chili-ish.” I pushed Noah’s hand away and stood up. I walked into the middle of the room, and threw my hands in the air. The feeling in my belly had grown so big that it had pushed itself out into the world and into this room, and I wasn’t able to control it or swallow it back down.
“Look! There are no plants here. There is not a single sign of life in this place. Not even a fresh bloody head of lettuce, or a real vegetable in the fridge. Even those are dead and frozen and boxed and packaged. And this room! Look at it. It’s as if someone—me, apparently—went out of their way to find the most boring, muted tones to paint the walls. And these surfaces, de-cluttered, de-contaminated, de-germed, de-everything! Like a hospital. This place is a bloody hospital. And I hate hospitals. So why would I live here?”
I rushed into my bedroom again, Noah followed and I took up a position in the middle of the room. I repeated my action, throwing my arms into the air. “And look at this. A bedroom is meant to be a person’s