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

boyfriend dropped this at PD. I guess he didn’t realize you’d be too chickenshit to show up.”

Her first words to me in exactly two months. All those Roxy moments… imagined. But I knew this. I always knew.

“That class was your idea,” I say, not taking my eyes off my backpack. “Everything was always your idea.”

I know the comment will piss her off… but my brain is spinning, my body is spinning. And I have no control. I can’t look at her. I can’t see her. All I see is my Roxy.

I snatch for the bag.

She takes an easy step back. Out of my reach. Physically graceful, as always. Unlike me. Even now. Fixed. Ha. I am so far from fixed… especially because I don’t even know what was broken. Just that something was. And it was never my spine.

She is looking at me now. Really looking at me. “What is wrong with you?” she asks, seething with disgust.

“Give me my fucking backpack.”

“Why did you do it?” she accuses.

The box. Her hand. I shut down. Totally shut down.

“Tell me!” she demands.

I stumble backward, my thighs hitting the cot. “I don’t know. I don’t know.”

Her mouth writhes in anger and she stares daggers through me. I feel them, every single one of them. And I deserve them. I deserve them.

“Lid… I didn’t know. He’d… they’d… you know.” The sound of my voice seems only to feed her anger. “I thought we would stay home. If it didn’t come. You know. We wouldn’t go. And it would be like always.”

“That was my hand!”

“I know.”

“My fucking hand!”

I drop my head. “I know.”

I want her to hate me like this. I want it to hurt. Hurt like someone is severing me in half.

“Lidia.” It’s all I can say. So I say it again and again. “Lidia. Lidia. Lidia.”

“God, Eve,” she snaps, whipping my backpack onto the cot and turning toward the door. She is leaving. Again.

“I should have texted you when it came,” I shout.

She stops.

“No, I should have called you… screaming at the top of my lungs that it had arrived. It was here. And then I should have met you at the curb out front holding the box. Ready to be there for you, for anything that happened next.”

She turns around. Her eyes stare into mine. “Why didn’t you?”

“You know why.”

“Why.”

“Lid—Lid,” I stammer.

“Why!” she demands.

“You didn’t need two hands,” I whisper.

She takes a step toward me, throbbing with so much anger that her voice is thick and heavy. “Who the fuck are you to tell me what I need.”

“I know, I know that, Lid. I was wrong.”

“You know what I know, Eve? They can shove a thousand steel rods up your ass and you’ll still be a spineless piece of shit.”

I step back in shock… not at her words, but by how long I feel she has been waiting to say them. And worse, knowing what she wanted to hear.

“Oh, I have a spine,” I spit. “A straight one, now.”

We are tearing our world into little pieces. Tiny, tiny pieces. Pieces we both know we’ll never be able to glue back together.

“Too bad you’ll always be twisted on the inside, Eve,” she says, turning and leaving.

This time, I let her go.

Ms. Kisner breezes into the office. “Well, Ms. Banks was sure in a hurry,” she says.

“I don’t feel well. I’m going to call paratransit.”

“Okay, missy,” she says. “Let me do it.”

I let her do it.

Food Fight

MY PHONE IS RINGING. THE WORLD IS DARK. THE HOUSE IS QUIET. I have no idea what time it is.

It’s Mary Fay. And it’s six.

I don’t pick up. Instead, I slide back into the silence, protected by the thickly collaged walls of my bedroom.

It rings again.

Again, it’s Mary Fay. And I see it’s the fourth time she’s called me. She leaves a message. I’m sure it’s something about food. It’s always about food. Before I can slip away again, I hear the front door close with a thud.

“Hello!”

It’s Thomas.

I pull the covers tighter around me. If I just keep quiet, he’ll leave.

“Eve?”

I can hear him clomping through the house. I pull the covers all the way up over my ears and smoosh my face into my pillow to become one with my bed. While

three Roxy

pulsate,

pulsate,

pulsate through my body.

“I know you’re here,” he calls. “Since you left the front door wide open.”

Oh, for god’s fucking sake. Did I have to fall in love with the most annoying person ever?

Love? Shit.

“Mary Fay called me.” He’s basically shouting now. “She asked me to pick up a pizza. Because she won’t be home until late.”

Does he remember that he kissed me under the portico? Did he kiss me under the portico? Or did I dream it? I hope I’m dreaming this.

“I have pizza, Eve!”

I whip back my covers, wipe the drool from my mouth, and Nancy myself out of bed.

A pizza sits on the dining room table… next to a stack of homework. Great. It’s not a dream, it’s a nightmare.

Thomas walks out of the kitchen holding plates and napkins. The sight of him erases my anger. Mostly because… god, he’s cute, and I think this even though I know I should be thinking, god, he’s kind, because he is setting the dining room table for two. Napkins, plates. Both Mary Fay and Thomas are better at parenting than my own mother. Strangely, this makes me miss her even more.

The smell of pizza is strong. My stomach growls. Maybe I am hungry?

“So,” he says, setting down the plates. “School killing your vibe, Eve?”

He’s exactly the Thomas I know so well. And I roll my eyes while I stumble into the seat across the table from him.

He starts eating. Or inhaling. I watch him finish off his first slice and reach for a second. At least Mary Fay won’t be suspicious about me not eating tonight when she comes home to an empty pizza box.

Noticing I don’t have any