Fix by J. Mann (highly illogical behavior .TXT) 📕

Whatever it is, it writhes inside me, and god, it fucking hurts. I replace the coarse moistness of pear with the bitter chalkiness of Roxy. So much better. I start counting the minutes.

I once read that five minutes after the end of a dream, we have forgotten 50 percent of the dream’s content. And ten minutes later, we’ve forgotten 90 percent. I wait… thinking how I wish this natural fizzling out of memory worked in real life, and that when we chose, we could forget our experiences five minutes after they happened.

Although I’m sure some asshole would say that these experiences are the ones that make us stronger or build our character.

Strength. Character. Key words for feeling like shit.

Maybe the people who can “bounce back” are actually just good at forgetting, as if they’d been dreaming and then woke up. Or the opposite: Instead of waking, they choose to sleep.

The minutes add up. I’m forgetting. I’m fine with it. Fine. I like the fading. It’s soft.

And forgiving.

I need my phone.

The harsh light makes me blink. It’s after two in the morning. I text anyway.

I’m sorry.

Dropping the phone onto my bed, I reach for my water. Even the memory of pear is too much.

A text buzzes back, shocking me.

A heart emoji.

It’s amazing how perfect a red heart can be. She follows it with two more texts.

I moved my lecture.

I’ll be home three days early.

I send her back my own heart emoji. And then I have an idea.

Can I stay out of school until then?

I watch the bubbles pulsating.…

Spoke to MF. No.

My mother finally comes around and her first act of motherhood in forever bites me in the ass.

My thumbs hover dangerously over my phone, itching to text her that whether I am ready to attend school should be “my decision,” but… that heart emoji. Instead, I send an angry cat face, toss down my phone, and close my eyes. She hates cats.

“Eve!”

It’s Mary Fay. It can’t possibly be morning.

It can’t.

I don’t move or answer. Because I am far away. Possibly I am gone. Possibly. Hopefully. Probably.

I hear her footsteps approach my bed. Her finger pokes me in the shoulder.

“Eve?”

I am not gone.

Anywhere but Here

I’D RATHER BE ANYWHERE BUT ON MY WAY TO SCHOOL IN Thomas Aquinas’s car. He obviously senses this and asks, “Would you be more comfortable in the back seat?”

“Do you plan on driving erratically?”

He laughs. “I might,” he says. “If you provoke me.”

Facing the passenger-side window where he can’t see, I roll my eyes.

I begged Mary Fay to let me stay home one more day. She wasn’t having it. The woman absolutely knew it wasn’t one day I wanted, but forever, even if she didn’t know why. She also straight out told me that lying in my bedroom all weekend staring at a telescope had not helped my case.

Had I been staring?

So when Thomas Aquinas called Mary Fay this morning volunteering to pick me up, I knew I was doomed.

The sun is weakly shining. Cars and buses surround us. People wait to cross at lights, bags over arms. Others walk speedily past one another up and down sidewalks. A moving, active world. A world I’ll be subjected to all day long in a body that I have no idea how to navigate. I have become the hamburger—forever wrapped inside its giant plastic head. But I’m still in here. Small, sweaty, and sans one salty french fry friend.

Thomas Aquinas takes a sharp right.

I lurch toward him. He quickly sticks out his hand to steady me, then pulls his hand back like I’ve burned him. And maybe I have because the place where he touched my arm stings with heat. He had called at least six more times since MGH. Because of course he would. Because he’s Thomas Aquinas.

I picked up none of them.

He clears his throat, keeping his eyes on the road.

“You good?”

I let go of a big gulp of air.

“Yeah,” I say, peeking over at him.

I should be kinder to Thomas Aquinas.

“Listen, Eve, I read over your crit essay for English Lit. You might want to take a look at your comma usage.”

I glare out the windshield. I hate Thomas Aquinas.

“I like my commas right where they are.”

“Missing?” he asks.

“What?”

“You didn’t use any commas, Eve. And you needed them.”

“According to who?”

“According to the rules of grammar.”

He throws on his blinker as he pulls into the student parking lot and I shiver at the sight of so many cars and people and colors dodging about under the spindly trees that look even spindlier without their leaves. There’s something so sad about parking lot trees.

“Anyway, I put them in for you.”

“What?”

“The commas. I put them in, along with a few other minor adjustments.”

“I don’t need commas. I purposely did not put them in. That essay was exactly how I wanted it to be. It didn’t need to be helped or fixed or changed.”

Why am I getting so upset at him over an essay I can barely remember writing?

“Chill, Eve. It’s just an essay.”

And now, I’m pissed again. Only I can say it’s just an essay.

He gets out of the car and shuts his door. I open my door and there he is, reaching down to help.

“I can do it,” I grumble.

“As you wish, Eve. I shall stand here with the easy ability to aid you in your exit from the vehicle yet will not endeavor to do so.”

I ignore him, struggling to get out of his car, but my body is a log wrapped in hard plastic and his car is too low. I’m stuck.

“Why is your car dragging on the ground?”

He says something about his car and standards although I’m not hearing him because now I’m struggling to reach behind me for my backpack in the back seat. Which—because I am completely fused is completely impossible.

“What the fuck, Eve!” He leans past me and grabs my backpack.

“You have the