Quad Squad by R. Barri Flowers

  Sabrina

  I stayed home for four days until my mom noticed and made me go. I tried not to think about anything all that time, but I kept thinking about things anyway. I kept seeing myself stuck at the party and wishing I could have done something, anything, I don’t know what, like walked out, or said something. Anything but freak out. And I tried even harder not to think about puking in the street. After that I don’t actually remember much of what happened so I wasn’t trying to forget that.

  I thought about ending it all a few times. My mom has Xanax and I’m pretty sure if I took about ten of those I’d never wake up. This one night when she was out I went and looked in her medicine cabinet and they were sitting there and I took them down and laid them out. There were 21 of them and I laid them out in three rows of seven on the counter. They’re kind of pretty. She has 2 mg. bars and they have the word Xanax written across them, each one exactly the same, there must be a machine somewhere that carves the word in there and I thought how weird it was that people had evolved to the point where they could perfectly put a word on a happy pill that could kill you, and I also thought wouldn’t it be interesting if that was the last word you ever read.

  Then I put them back.

  I kept checking Instagram obsessively but I wasn’t liking anything or posting anything so basically I was just stalking other people’s lives. There were a lot of memes and Pokémon Go jokes, none of which were at all funny, and videos of guys playing football or skating and girls in their new bikinis, look everybody this is my hot new body. I stalked Seth but honestly that just made me feel worse because if he had stayed maybe I wouldn’t have ended up like this.

  At first people did hit me up to kind of check in and I guess I appreciated it but I didn’t know what to say. What do you say to “r u ok” exactly when you feel the next morning like you’ve been run over by a truck and your clothes still smell like puke even though you washed everything, and your room smells of too much weed?

  So I said to Rachel “All good just sick” and to Maya “sick chillin at home” and to Jerry who was sweet to bother I said, “sorry dont worry not your fault i was just sick” and to Tim who actually wrote a pretty long text I wrote back a longish text just saying “It was just a hard night kind of and thx for checking hope to see u at school.”

  Then finally my mom was like, you’re not that sick, and I said that I was, and actually I think I was, just generic sick, but she didn’t care she made me go. I don’t think she knows how much I hate her sometimes. I mean she’s my mom and I love her and everything, but I really wish sometimes that I never had to hear her voice again. Like literally if she just lived there and wrote me texts that would be so much better because I can’t stand her voice, it makes my skin crawl. I don’t even know why.

  But I went.

  Something weird had gone down in English so by first period I was already way distracted. I wore just leggings and a sweater because I didn’t feel like being all out there, and I think also I’ve been wearing too much makeup, but when I wore less no one seemed to notice. Honestly nobody seemed to notice that much that I was back. Maya said, “Hey, what’s up?” And I guess she wanted to say more but Jerry distracted her. Andrea said, “Thought you were dead,” as a joke but it wasn’t funny. The announcements were finishing up and we were supposed to be getting quiet so Rachel kind of whispered what had been going on, which was not much. Eric is going out with Talia and I know I’m supposed to care but honestly I was just trying to get through a day at school -- you have no idea how hard that is sometimes, just to sit there and not get up and run out.

  Ms. Rodale started checking in on something called the Walk a Mile program, or assignment or something. I had totally forgotten about this and I didn’t even remember to check the class site when I was out, I mean I remembered but I didn’t do it, and this assignment was some kind of big deal and everybody had partners except me. Maya was partners with Jerry and Rachel and Andrea were partners and Karen and Naeli were obviously partners and if you were doing a journal you had to have a partner. Tim texted “wanna be parters” and at first I thought he wrote “wanna be partiers” and was making fun of me and I felt almost sick to my stomach but then I thought no he’s not like that, so I looked back and he was sitting in the back corner alone and I then I got it that it was partners so I said “ok” even though I didn’t have a clue what it was about but at least somebody wanted to talk to me, or whatever it was about.