crumpled napkin at my head. “Shut up,” she says playfully, and continues on to her room.
Twenty-Nine
He’s never going to call.
I can’t eat.
I’m always on the verge of tears.
He never said it for certain. Michael never came out and said, “We’re finished.”
Is it because he didn’t want to completely leave me?
I’m beginning to think that limbo is worse than heaven or hell.
The in-between.
I’m somewhere in between being in love and having my heart destroyed. I’m trapped in a waiting room, not permitted to feel bliss or misery. It’s like knowing you won the lottery but not having the ticket in your hand. Or being given a death sentence by a doctor but forgetting to ask just how long you have left.
I lie on my bed and smoke joint after joint after joint. My mom is in the living room, but she doesn’t mind me smoking ganja anymore, as long as I do it at home where she knows I’m safe. My mind drifts, soars, wafts, and squeezes through dark, pulsing tunnels, until I find myself in my no man’s land, where every day I pace the muddied grass like a prisoner, back and forth. Caging me in are two rusty wire fences on either side. There are no trees. The sky is grey. It’s chilly but not uncomfortable.
I stand still for a while, in the middle, waiting. I hear birds.
Then I walk over to one of the side fences. This is the side where Michael loves me still. When I’m here, I feel our love so strongly. I feel like I know what he’s doing. He’s giving us time, because if he stayed with me, we wouldn’t last. He’s waiting for me to grow up, and then he’ll come back for me.
Next I wander over to the other side, where the grass is less worn. This is the side where misery lives. I can feel Michael’s ghost here. He’s gone. Beyond this fence is winter: hard, icy, windswept snow that blends into an indistinguishable white sky. I can bear it only for a few seconds before I panic, my chest constricts, and I can’t breathe. I feel I’ll collapse. I’d rather kill myself than disappear into that hopelessness.
Fuck you, Michael.
I need to know if I should wait for you or if you broke up with me.
I need an answer.
Now.
Thirty
The thought isn’t in my mind when I enter Dr. Williams’s office. At least, I don’t think it is. But while I’m here looking for some gauze, the file cabinet catches my eye. I know from being in the office before that our employee records are kept in there. I had to fill out an employee information sheet when I was hired. On the sheet, I had to write down emergency contact information. It occurs to me that if Michael wrote down his parents’ number, I could call them to get his new number and put an end to this waiting game.
The cabinet is locked, but a guy from school once showed me how to pick them, so I get a sharp knife from the kitchen and start jamming it in. It works.
Michael’s file is near the front. I simply write his mom Mavis Butler’s phone number down on a sticky note. But then I see the other stuff: his address, his resumé, his allergies. I want it all. Just to have it. So I take all the papers, fold them up, and put the whole bunch in my pocket. He isn’t there anymore, so no one would be looking for any of it.
Everything is good until I try to lock the file cabinet back up and it won’t go. A rush of panic spreads over me. I try to ram and jam the drawer in, wiggle and push the lock, but it still doesn’t catch. I go back to the hallway to see if anyone is around, and then I give the drawer a few hard kicks.
“Hey!” A voice startles me. “What are you doing?” Rachel asks, appearing in the doorway.
I am relieved it’s only her. “Here, help me. The lock is jammed.”
She walks in, taking note of the knife on top of the cabinet. “What did you do, break it open?” She moves in, pushes my hand away, and tries to jimmy the lock.
“I already did that.”
She starts ramming the drawer the way I was when she walked in.
I push her out of the way. Useless girl. I should never have asked her in the first place. “Shut up! Move!” I