One Lonely Degree

THI
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LW
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change with a bang. Sometimes they change so gradually that you can’t clearly pinpoint the last moment they were truly the same. That’s the way it was with my parents. I know they were happy—but I couldn’t tell you exactly when.

Audrey says they could just be going through a bad patch and that things could start changing back when I least expect it.
Anything is possible
. That’s almost the truth, but it doesn’t fill me with hope.
Anything is possible
makes me feel like someone’s scraping at the inside of my rib cage with dull scissors. If you kept that idea in your head, you’d never leave the house for fear you’d be crushed by a runaway bus or gunned down in the mall parking lot.

Anything is possible
is something I prefer not to think about, but I don’t always have a choice. Some nights are just like that. The sick feelings creep up on me until I want to shout so loud that it would make my parents come running. I never do, of course. It
wouldn’t help, and my parents would cart me off to some highly recommended shrink that would want to know everything.

And there are things I could say, but not anything that I actually want anyone to hear. There are thoughts in my head that I can’t get out, but I have my own trick for dealing with them, which is to let other things
in
, as loud and furious as I can. Tonight, for instance, I have to keep pulling off my earphones to listen for my dad’s key in the front door. Raine Maida screams “Naveed” in my ears.
Listen
. Then it’s “Where Are You,” “Innocent,” and “Yellow Brick Road.”
Listen
. The pounding in my ears, the sound of Raine’s voice like burning gold, and the blanket pulled all the way up to my chin is the nearest thing I know to an antidote, but if Dad hears the music he’ll open the door and ask why I’m still awake. It’s happened before. I used to keep the bedside lamp on, and a couple months ago, around two in the morning, he tapped at my door and asked if I was sick.

“No,” I told him. “Just a little insomnia.” My face felt like a bleached white sheet, and I was scared that he’d sense my bad feelings and try to put them into words.

“You could try turning down the volume,” he said, smiling.

A guitar riff was screeching out of the earphones around my neck, and I furrowed my eyebrows, puffed out my cheeks, and said, “Ha. Ha.” Everyone is so sarcastic these days that it’s practically boring, but I need all the crutches I can get.

“And turning off the light,” he added, still hovering in the doorway in his plaid pajamas and slippers, looking like a sitcom TV father that can solve any problem within thirty minutes.

“You’re funny, Dad.” I pulled an impatient face. “Anyone ever tell you you’re a funny guy?”

“Not my teenage daughter,” he said, smile as wide as ever. “Don’t go deaf tonight, Finn. You have school in the morning.”

I nodded and watched him shut the door, the sickness stretching tight across my face the moment he was gone. My skin feels that same way now. Like a mask that doesn’t fit anymore. Like I’m not the person anyone thinks I am—not even Audrey. But if I’m not
that
person, just who am I instead? I’m not the girl who slinks soundlessly through the school hall pretending nothing can touch her. That much I do know.

Listen
, I tell myself.
Just listen. Listen
. Everything will be all right, as long as you stop your mind and listen.

And this is the way it goes for a while. Me listening to Raine’s voice in my ear. Me waiting for Dad’s key in the door. My heels are itchy dry in my socks. My lips are cracking and my fingertips will be next. The air in my room is colder than anywhere else in the house except the basement. My mother says she doesn’t know how I can stand it, but I like the contrast. This is me in bed in the middle of winter.

Everything will be all right.

My mother stands at the kitchen counter, eyeing me wearily over her shoulder. She’s making Daniel’s lunch—or more accurately, packaging it. In fact, it’s more of a lunch
kit
than an actual meal. My brother is ten years old and has yet to accept the value of real food. “Are you still taking those vitamins?” Mom asks, pointing to the bottle in front of me. “Your color is terrible.”

“I don’t have a color,” I tell her. “I am the very absence of color.” It’s true, I’m terminally pale. Much ashier than Daniel, who will look like a Mexican come July. Lately I have problems focusing and forget things too. Sometimes I feel like I don’t even know how to breathe anymore and that my brain isn’t getting enough oxygen. Mom likes to tell me I don’t have enough iron in my diet.

“Where’s Dad?” I ask. Normally the four of us eat breakfast together. It’s one of those things my parents think prove we’re a family.

“Running late,” Mom says shrilly, her gaze shooting back to the plastic lunch bag. “You’ll be late too if you don’t hurry.”

Yes, I’m moving in slow motion. I don’t operate well on less than eight hours’ sleep. My frizzy red hair keeps falling into my face, impeding the flow of cereal from bowl to mouth. I take a swig of orange juice and glance at Daniel in his brown cords, his thick blond hair behaving itself in a way mine never does. Sometimes I wonder what it’s like to be him. What happens to him when he leaves this house? Whatever it is, it’s probably easier than being me.

For one thing, I don’t blend. I’m taller than other fifteen-year-old girls but not skinny or pretty enough for that to be a good thing. For the longest time I didn’t even have any boobs. I was like an elongated Pippi Longstocking. Believe it or not, that’s not a popular look in ninth grade. Tenth grade either.

Mom is always telling me to “Stand up straight. Own your height.” She was an actress for, like, five minutes. Now she’s just a woman with extremely good posture. Mom was nothing like me in tenth grade. She was a cheerleader, a regular high school “It” girl. She can’t understand why I won’t color myself in with lipstick and foundation and do “something” with my hair.

When the three of us assemble at the front door later, Mom’s frosted blond hair is swept back into a perfect bun, her lips shimmering mauve. Samsam, our resident furball, crowds into our midst for the daily goodbye ritual. Mom’s French-manicured nails dip carefully into her purse for her keys as I press my nose to Samsam’s head and inhale. He smells like a damp old blanket, even when he’s dry. Some people don’t like the way dogs smell, but I’m
not one of them. I scratch behind his ears and smooth my hands over his scraggly sandy coat. Fur clings to the arms of my school uniform sweater. Samsam doesn’t realize that his hybrid breed isn’t supposed to shed much.

Upstairs my parents’ closet slides open, evidence that my dad is awake and indeed running late. The rest of our family files out the front door and into the outside world. Or in my case, St. Mark’s High School. I’d like to think St. Mark’s is nothing like the outside world, but I haven’t seen enough of it to know. London or New York. That’s where I want to head when I graduate—have regular coffee dates with struggling playwrights and painters, people too cool to even calculate their own cool quotient.

All of that is a long way off, but the last thing I want to think about is where I am: Portable G, its windows facing the frozen football field on one side and Portable F on the other. Homeroom happens to be my favorite class—not only for its brevity but because it’s the only class Audrey and I have in common this semester—but it’s still St. Mark’s.

I slip into the back row, populated mainly by stoners, and slump into the desk next to Audrey’s. We’re not stoners ourselves, but we’re not brainiacs or beautiful people either. It’s an interesting geographic problem—everyone has to sit somewhere.

“My dad was out late again last night,” I tell her, leaning into the space between us. “I was up for ages and he was still out when I fell asleep.”

Audrey tilts her head and looks at me fixedly. “Were you waiting up for him or were you having trouble sleeping again?”

My hands disappear into my sleeves. “I couldn’t sleep.” The room is rapidly filling up with assorted students, all of them Pack Animals, and I drop my voice. “But it’s okay, you know, it’s getting better. It wasn’t all night or anything.”

Audrey nods. Her eyes register concern but she doesn’t push it. “Did your mom say anything about him being out?”

I shake my head. “She was in a shitty mood this morning. He didn’t even come downstairs.” My dad is nonconfrontational at the core. He doesn’t raise his voice unless it’s absolutely necessary. If you listened to my parents fight, you’d only hear my mother’s voice; he makes his point by getting incrementally quieter. What could be quieter than being absent in the first place?

“You know what we should do?” Audrey says, her gold-brown pupils suddenly as wide as Oreos. “We should go to the mall and see Record Store Guy. Screw this. No one will even miss us.” Her head cranes towards mine in the aisle, waiting for my reply.

“You don’t like Record Store Guy,” I remind her. “And it’s freezing out there.”

Audrey’s eyes sharp-focus on mine. “No, I don’t like Record Store Guy—you do. Anyway, it’s not like a pathological hate or something. Personally, I just can’t get into guys in eyeliner and nail polish.”

She’s trying to help and I’m blocking her. I see that. But I don’t know that a trip to the mall will help. I’m not even sure how I feel about Record Store Guy
(Ryan, his name is Ryan)
anymore. Nothing to do with the eyeliner and nail polish. He’s still a Beautiful Boy (and they’re a definite rarity), but it’s complicated. Sometimes I feel like I want to forget about the opposite sex entirely.

“Not today, okay, Aud? I have civics homework due.” That’s the truth, but it’s also true that I don’t want her hovering around me in HMV, looking for proof that I’m okay.