"I mean--I just mean, I wanted to make sure. Is that, like, okay?'
"Yeah, of course, Sam. I had just assumed you were coming over."
As I neared Waitsfield, I took long breaths. Passing Tremblay Road, a spot with a reputation for underage drinking and tripling as the spot I parked my car and cried last January, and where Toby took us running during the first week of my senior year, I sort of laughed, as I do every time I pass it. My simple act of driving brought in a raging wave of memories and upon passing North Fayston Road, the only thought occupying my mind was how, after softball, I never wanted to go back to school. Instead of taking the slight left onto Moulton Road, I'd keep driving, up, up, up Bragg Hill, to see if I could make it to the top in third gear; I'd follow the road all the way around to the Sugarbush access road, looping back up Bragg Hill again and taking Glen View Road to school. Sometimes after this, I would just pull into the parking lot and go to my room to find a stressed out Christine and my bed, but I other times, I couldn't make myself. I would drive around in circles, exploring dirt roads past when the descending darkness forced me to turn on my headlights.
Turing left onto Main Street in Warren, brought in a different roll of memories, which I quickly boxed and stored because the left of Fuller Hill quickly approached and the post-graduation mirage of Sammi and Lexi with "oh shit" faces and one wheel of my car stuck in the trough adjacent the road flashed and faded. My car delivered me to Katy's house and after the ceremonious yellings of "You stupid bitch" and "Goddammit ho," Katy emerged from the house in her pajamas and slippers to help carry in my stuff. A sense of normalcy settled over me again and I wondered exactly how long it would last. The answer to my question came when Katy asked if we should take two cars to the hill the next day because of she had afternoon classes and I didn't.
The drive to Sugarbush in the morning felt normal, but pulling into the parking lot, I was sure I belonged anywhere but there. Walking to the club felt like freshman year at GMVS when walking across campus seemed to attract every pair of eyes. You know no one is actually watching you, but on our ascent to the ski club, the air and trees around us judgingly told me to go home. The snow under my feet squelched and slipped banishingly and the wind blew me back down the hill.
My senior year at GMVS was filled with my mantra at the time: "I don't care. I'm a senior, Lexi. Who even gives a shit? They can fuck off." But the races last Thursday and Friday felt like a return to freshman year of high school. It brought on the same terrors: Where am I? Am I supposed to be doing this? Where should I put my stuff? Fuck, you're so behind, Sammi. What do these people think of me? What am I doing wrong? Is there something wrong with me?
And I know I'm overreacting. But my friends are leaving soon, spreading themselves away from somewhere I couldn't seem to leave. GMVS harbors lacking emotional ties and dwindling personal ones; (how long until it's just Kerry?).
To be explicit: I don't want a return to high school; I don't wish I was a senior this year. I've just spent a lot of time asking for re-dos, (from whom I honestly couldn't tell you); bartering time, swearing to relive all of high school for the chance to not be such a fuck up. As much as Liezl and I say, "Fuck high school. Fuck GMVS," I don't like feeling horribly out of place when I'm used to having a room, a bed, and a good reputation.
Throughout my senior year and before graduation, I felt larger than GMVS, like I outgrew it and needed to stop wearing such a shrunken, moth-eaten t-shirt. Now every time I return to campus to see Christine or sit with my friends in the club, I feel so small, like how, as a kid, I would use my father's cotton t-shirts as nightgowns and they would swallow me entirely.
Driving with Katy to and from the hill and then to breakfast at the Big Picture on Saturday morning, she kept asking if I was okay. "Yes," I would answer. "Just tired." I don't know how to explain how exhausting it is to feel infinitesimal and pretend to fill up the entire space inside you.
***
(I wrote a poem in 3rd person????)
Moving the curtain aside,
she steps
over the side of the tub,
out of the shower,
onto the towel.
She curls her toes around
the faded towel under her feet.
Looking up,
the steam of her shower
inundates the space around her,
forcing a gasp from her chest.
The light behind the fog
illuminates
individual
iotas.
Even as she moves
beneath the light,
she feels the
particles making
their own independent
decision to
disperse: an en masse migration made from freedom.
Her attempts to
breathe in
the motes of water
scatter them
farther and further.
Reaching and grasping:
wet fingers
for
water droplets.
Every swipe,
groping with child-like
curiosity and pursuit,
a feudal attempt to
mitigate their migration.
The last speckles
of water
gather under the light.
Despite the certainty of
the inexorable outcome,
she snatches and grasps
once more: the steam
forms like tendrils through her
fingers and
dissipates.":
ruined.
***
"Tell her that I just can't go on
tell her that there's just something wrong
Tell her that I just can't go on"
"Everything is doomed
and nothing will be spared
but I love you, honeybear"
