I sit across the table from you, diagonally, so I can’t look you straight in the eye. My book is open to the same page I was on thirty minutes ago, and I’ve forgotten what it’s about. My face is hot, but I curl my fingers inside of my thick sweatshirt. I repeat the same words over again in my head, just like I’ve been reading the same sentence since I sat down- but the words on the page are dull and meaningless, and trying to understand them is like swallowing sand: gritty and tasteless. The words in my head beat out their own rhythm, send a deep vibration through the floor, up the pillars to the cavernous ceiling and back down the frames of the two-story windows; the potted plants quiver like shaggy wet dogs. Cold droplets spray on the back of my neck. You scrape up your papers into a stack and start shoving them into your bag. The dogs yip and yowl and paw at the insides of my head. I tolerate the noise and the sharp claws for the thirty seconds it takes you to stand up and turn to leave. I say your name. You keep walking. The dogs skitter off, toenails clicking, but I feel as if someone had pulled the string of a bass as far as it would go and let it
—
The light in the bathroom is pale green, and the air smells faintly of bleach. My fingers are pale purple and cold against my palms. Beneath the hum of the radiator, the deep bass note has stretched out to a high, thin mosquito whine, floating on the periphery of my consciousness, just close enough to drive me insane but too far away for me to swat at it. It’s within an arm’s reach, however, of the girl in the mirror. I clutch my fist tighter and stare at her until her eyes flicker.
A harsh, discordant note strikes the air.
A long pause.
Then another, clunky and off key.
A third note, almost a screech.
Then silence.
—
The silence continues at track practice two hours later, broken only by the faint rustle of a paper towel stuffed under the band of my sports bra. The chatter of my teammates feels distant and surreal. The sky has the dull opacity of an old blanket, the sidewalk crackles with ice and dirty snow, and my fingers are already numb inside my gloves. The bright green of the football field pushes aggressively against the gray, pressing it flat. The track looks like the sentence from my book that I don’t remember, tracing circles around the turf, each time emphatically the same, crisply defining itself without saying anything that matters. I stand on the white line, the capital letter.
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