For a moment, as I stand there in front of the sink, staring at my own palor and trying to convince myself to wash my face, I consider what would happen if I just didn’t go to school at all today.

I could be quite convincing, I think, even without the fever. Just think about upsetting things and adopt a certain myopia -- it’s all about the glassy eyes.

“I think you should at least try to go,” one of them would say. Probably my father.

“No, I feel like I’ll throw up just on the walk to school.”

Then the voice of my mother, more sinister in my mind than in true life: “Well, then turn around if you do.”

“I’d rather not throw up at all.”

“Usually when you throw up, you feel better.”

And I know this conversation is not even worth having, because I know that in the end, I’ll agree to go just to have it stop. I splash some water on my face, comb back my hair with my fingers, brush my teeth in just two motions, then splash some water on my face again.

“One day at a time,” I mutter, because I read somewhere that if you speak positive affirmations aloud, you’re more likely to convince yourself that they’re true, and just for good measure, I add on “Just one at a time,” a little softer at the end.

Before leaving the house, I take what there is to pack -- just a stack of (mostly empty) notebooks and a textbook or two, stuffed in the bag to pack down the pile of crumpled papers at the bottom, a handful of pens thrown on top as garnish -- and despite the heat, I pull on a sweater over my T-shirt, because that’s how I've dress every day for years now, and any less feels too exposed.

Only long sleeves and pants when you're outside, okay?

Sometimes words haunt me, memories of things once said living in me like limbo, and if ever sometimes I forget they’re there, all it takes is a flicker of light, an erred vision, any excuse at all the hauntings will take to find their way back to me.

I don’t go downstairs until I hear the door to my parents’ room close. Coming into the kitchen again is like walking into a graveyard: a chilled light that coasts in through the window like the fog of night, the things in its path at once darkened and illuminated; a drying rack, emptied of dishes now hidden behind cupboard doors; personless chairs, tucked neatly under their tables; and a stranger walking about, the ghost of something, who speaks in my ear with the same voice as my mother, repeating those cursed words she spoke, -- you’re always sleeping -- conjuring up these feelings of anger and consternation, shame and loathing.

Because what have the Morstads ever done to us? What reason could my mother have for hating them so?

They’re like vampires.

Because what could possibly be the harm?

In truth, I say in thought, this behavior shouldn’t be shocking to me anymore. God, she’s a bitch. Once, I remember my mother invited a friend in for a drink (lemonade on a hot day or something or other), only to throw away the glass she drank out of once she had left. “God, she’s a bitch,” she said, over the sounds of it shattering at the bottom of the bin.

On the kitchen table is left a single plate of food, untouched, no doubt meant for me.

Don’t be so dramatic.

I see the plate in front of me, and then it’s picked up, brought directly to the trash can, and then I’m scraping off the bits of meat and egg with the back of my hand. Shatterings in my head, and think of throwing the plate so that it falls violently in the sink. Instead, I place it gently there, mindful of the sounds I’m making -- wouldn’t want to draw attention to myself lest risk an encore of earlier.

My only bane is that the muted steps I take to the front door (although, really, I didn’t mean to slam it) are followed by such a sound that the potted plants on the doorstep shake in response -- couldn’t be avoided. I pause a little in its wake -- an instinct, really -- and standing there with the windless light hitting my face, I notice that it is sunnier that usual today.

Entirely fitting in only the most ironic of ways, I think, as sunny and calm is certainly not how I am feeling today.

Right now, there should be storms: clouds so heavy that rain falls down from them in ropes, the cotton of my sweater soaked straight through and heavy on my skin, black and purple skies that stain like bruises on the heavens; and in the distance, the low rumble of thunder that serves as warning to a lightning attack that is to come.

But I guess the sun could be meant for someone else. Someone whose spirits climb so high that content seeps out from their pores with the sweat and, by way of the very sun it creates, evaporates into the atmosphere until it's indistinguishable from it; such that any grimness I'm contributing to it is entirely negligible to dimming this light.

I take the walk to school under such pretexts: that there exist someone -- a someone at this very moment existing, living in and breathing in and walking in the same atmosphere that I am -- who possesses such content; collecting it, hoarding it, never bothering even to give some of it away, ignorant even of those they choose to deprive of it. The thought feels like fire birthed in my lungs, burnt toast and hot grease clung in the back of my throat, and it grows until I can’t tell if the heat in my face and the heat on my back are from this flame or the one burning brightly from above me.

I pause at the gate of the school for a moment when I arrive. A moment to reflect, tuck away some of things in my head back to their hiding spaces, before the usual straight-line for the toilets where I’ll wait for the first bell curled up in one of the stalls. A moment to marinate under this sun, pretend it’s meant for me, or that somehow this air could absorb through the skin on my face. “It’s okay,” I say aloud, the quietest I can, really just my lips moving and not a lot of air passing between them, and then I mold my mouth into a smile, selfsame one I’ll practice in the mirror when I get home tonight, that I’ve been practicing for years: simple, classic; not too big but not too little, either; not too excited, not too dispassionate; and hopefully more convincing than not.

I wonder if I’m actually fooling anyone. All these faces before me, faces I’ve known so long that I can’t remember a time that I didn’t know them. And yet, sometimes I look at them and see only strangers. Strangers that surround me, all huddled together in these little cliques so airtight they won’t even feel the breeze as I’m walking past, just contributing to the cluster of conversations.

The conversations themselves, like caricatures of real ones: a mediocre joke followed by the communal laughter of what must be twenty students, a girl who greets her friend (who she sees everyday) as if she hasn’t seen her in what must be twenty years, the general exchange of gossip in such vivid, twenty-caliber voices as if it is at all interesting in the slightest. In fact, I think, maybe none of it is real. Are they trying to fool me as much as I am trying to fool them?

“So I hear you’re coming over for dinner.” The words startle me. My shoulders nearly jump out their sockets. When I turn my eyes, there’s Saxa standing there, just beside me with her sun-like eyes staring in my direction, close enough to smell her hints of lilac -- shampoo? perfume? just lilac in her essence which seeps out with the sweat?

Up close, she’s no different than from afar -- no prettier nor less pretty -- but from this distance, I can see her every detail. A silver scar across her temple, so small you might think it’s a lone piece of glitter shining when the light hits it just right. The freckles on her nose which she’s tried to cover up with makeup just slightly too pale for her skin tone, the makeup through which the red in her cheeks still manages to shine. Lipstick, claret in color, slightly wet and already smudged, but only barely, just enough to make you realize she's human. And does this not make her more perfect?

“Is there something wrong with my face?” but how could there be anything wrong with her face?

“No,” I say, and just after realize how pathetic that sounds, just a confession of staring. “I mean, yes, kind of.” But maybe that's worse. “I mean, just a smudge. Your lipstick, I mean.” Worse, still. “Just a bit, though. Hardly noticeable.” How utterly pathetic, to make her think I care so much about a slight smudge of lipstick that I’d stand there paralyzed at the sight. “I’m a little anal, that’s all.” I wish I never woke up today at all.

“Shame. I just applied it,” she says, lacking in any shame. I envy her boldness, her pure, unadulterated confidence, the candor and the way she lets herself flow out of her like water laced in self-assurance arriving at a cliff. “So dinner?” She pauses just for a beat, in case I’d have wanted to speak. “We eat early, so don’t be late.”

“Oh.” I struggle through a row of responses in my head, wishing suddenly that I’d have had more time to prepare for this, a warning shaken off onto me with the ruffling off the plants on my doorstep, to have had the time on the way to school to formulate some sentences in my head to avoid these awkward silences.

How to say “I’m not coming,” with the right tone so that just after, she’ll hear “but I really want to,” but like, not in a pathetic way, a desperate way, a way that says “I’m obsessed with you, and hearing that I could come to dinner tonight was the highlight of my morning, maybe my week, probably my entire year.” Maybe I’ll add “It’s my parents who won’t let me go.” Does that sound like an excuse? No better than the dog eating my homework or the weed in my backpack is being held for a friend. Or, does it sound a little childish? What senior in highschool still cares what their parents think? way that doesn’t sound like an excuse.

“I...” and then I say something completely unexpected, prior thought illuding me like the deftness I sought for before it. “Why the invitation?” The feeling of being so forward making my stomach ache. I avert my eyes, back to the floor like a dog in front of its owner.

Barely a moment later, she responds. “I don’t know,” with the words resonating in an almost resigned way. “It wasn’t my idea.”

And by the time I lift my eyes, I’m only able to catch the look of her as she leaves, walking off at a pace fast enough to put a skip in her step. She flees from me, back to her real life, with her friends who don’t stutter and don’t speak stupid things. She checks her lipstick in a hard mirror, fixes the smudge with her thumb, which she’ll rub on the side of her skirt to clean it off. And when the bell rings just a second later, I’m still standing there, staring at the spot she vacates on her way to class, wishing that I could speak to her in the way that she speaks to me.

I can’t help but want her to turn around. Let me replay this moment, please. I’ll tell her that there's nothing wrong with her face, that I’m just tired is all, that yeah, I’m coming to dinner, I’m looking forward to it even, that I don’t care why she (or whoever else) invited me, that I’m really happy she finally talked to me, after all these years that I’ve known her. And all of this, it won’t make my stomach ache or my face hot or my toes to lose all feeling, and it won’t make her flee.

I stand in the yard, daydreaming of this -- I don't even care -- as the rest of the students hurry to class.

After thirteen years.

If I don’t move, I’ll be late. Nevertheless, there I stand. Static and numb, unable to organize the thoughts that circle freely in my skull. They are parasites in this way, these thoughts. Invading all at once, weeping loudly their tune of deprecation. Effectively saturating the self and paralyzing all other bodily functions.

Before long, I am the only one left in the yard. A second bell rings to confirm my tardiness. A few deep breaths more, and I’ll be able to move my feet again, I think.