I think he hates me.

I know he hates me. It’s a gut feeling. It’s something solid. His hate. It’s alive. I feel it the moment I meet his slate-blue eyes.

The blue is the blue of an ocean storm. The storm of hate. It pushes on me. Tries to drown me under. Tries to catapult me across the room, hurling me into the wall, like a wave crashing into me. I wish it did. I wish it threw me across, shattering my bones, picking apart my skull, oozing my brain as I hit the brick wall.

I should look away, but I don’t really want to. I won’t. I think we are playing a game here and I need to win. I won’t look away from the eyes of Caiden Walters after we had the first eye contact in two years.

“Mr. Walters, I don’t see why you won’t be able to participate in an assignment with Ms. Jamieson.”

Mrs. Dahlia Green, our English teacher’s voice brings me back to myself.

Right. The assignment.

Something you have to do in a pair. I don’t know why Mrs. Green thought it was a good idea to pair up teenagers. Probably because there is an even number of students here. Which means everyone will have a partner.

Except for me, it seems.

“Pair me up with someone else, please,” says Caiden, in his deep voice, his eyes focused on me, his jaw clenched.

He adds a please, but his voice is firm. I stare at his perfect face, the defined jawline, the pink lips, the sharp nose, and the brown hair that reminds me, used to remind me of dark chocolates. Decadent but bitter.

His tone is bitter.

“You have to explain why,” Mrs. Green insists, “Everyone else has a partner and no one complains.”

“Alright then. I’ll find someone else. Will that solve the problem if we swap among ourselves?”

He suggests. He is not looking at me anymore. He won’t meet my eyes again. I know that.

I stare at my blue shirt. It’s aquamarine blue, unlike his eyes.

“Yes, you can do that,” Mrs. Green gives up. “Just make sure to finish the assignment in pairs with discu—”

“Thank you,” He mutters.

He storms out of the classroom. I’m standing in his way. And I think he will bump into me, blowing me across his path.

What he does is even worse. When he is about to walk into me, he swivels to make sure he doesn’t touch me, not even by accident.

He hates me that much.

“Ms. Jamieson?”

Oh, I should leave too.

“I’ll be alright, Ma’am. He didn’t hurt my feelings, at all,” I murmur while I see the door swinging. “He couldn’t even if he tried.”

Then I turn back to Mrs. Green who gives me a confused look.

She probably thinks I’m insane, or I have a few screws loose.

I pick up my backpack from the floor and walk out.  The school’s empty. Everybody left. I am all alone.

I get into the car. It’s Mom’s. Another thing she left behind.  A blue Sedan. Classic. Like everything she loved. Oldies. Things from the 90’s. Said it reminded her of her youth.

She was only forty-one.

I drive home. I open the door. There are two girls screaming in the living room connected to the open kitchen.

“Give my shoe back to me!” Riley says, jumping on Izzy.

I try to walk past them, so as not to be caught in their shenanigans.

“Izzy!” Ophelia cries from the kitchen, “Riley!”

She has the prettiest name. But she didn’t keep the Shakespearean tradition going with her daughters.

I make it past them to the stairs. But I’m not fast enough.

“Thalia?” Ophelia spots me, “Is that you?”

No, my ghost. I want to say.

A stepmother. Two stepsisters. I’m fucking Cinderella.

But I’m really not, because my stepmother asks about my day. She’s not mean. She only wishes I wasn’t here in the first place, from my father’s first marriage. While forgetting she has two daughters of her own from her first marr—wait, this is her first marriage.

She successfully pretends she cares about me. I plan to give her all of my father’s money, keeping only the necessary amount for myself, if that’s what she is after.

“Yes,” I say as I turn around. She is making sandwiches. A blender is whirring behind her. Green juice.

She’s pretty. Red hair. Nice figure. Petite. Young. Only eight years older than me. To think that I’m closer in age to her than to her eldest daughter Riley.

“Make yourself some snacks,” Ophelia suggests.

Her boyfriend died three years ago. Suicide, she had once said.

They bonded over the trauma. My father and her. Lost partner. What can you do? Offer each other your hand in marriage, apparently.

“I will,” I nod. Then I turn to the stairs, once again. One of her girls pulls me by my backpack.

It’s Izzy. The younger one.

“Will you go see Skittles again?” She has red hair like her mom. Only four years old. But she has mastered the puppy eyes. Better than Skittles.

“I don’t know,” I mumble.

The vets kept Skittles for another night. She was safe, for now. I, on the other hand, already know where I will put her. Right next to Mom.

Skittles. Dog and companion. Forever abandoned? Forever sick? Not sure. Still working on it.

“Please take me with you,” Izzy’s eyes are hazel. “Please take me when you go to see her.”

Don’t bond with a dying dog, I want to tell her.

I should have known when I picked Skittles off the street. Whoever abandoned her knew. The medicine is expensive. She’s been on it for two years now. Her condition titillates every other week.

I want to tell Izzy I won’t take her. But it might teach her something. Kids need lessons. Kids need to know what death can be like. Just because they are kids doesn’t mean they should only know happy things. They deserved to know the bad news, as well as the good news, not to be told at the last minute.

“Fine,” I say.

My room’s a mess. My books lay abandoned on the floor, on the desk, in the bed. My clothes take up every empty surface. The old pizza box and the drinks I kept on the desk near my laptop, stink. I stumble into a lone sock as I walk in.

Rosalia Jamieson would have killed me if she walked into this room. A clean freak. Always cleaning and organizing. She used to say it helps with her anxiety. Seeing all clean surfaces. Everything in its place. Unlike the thoughts in her head.

Good thing she died already. No more anxiety. No more clean surfaces. No more putting things into their proper places.

I used to think in ‘average age’. Average everything. Someday in the past, I had thought about death. I thought both my parents would probably die at eighty. The average age of life. That way we had so much time.

In reality, I only had sixteen years.

They put me through a checkup. Prodded my breast for lumps. It could be genetic. Most times, that is the case. Dad was terrified.

When the woman prodded me, I thought how weird it was that the first time someone touched my breasts it was to check whether I had deadly masses of tissues hiding in it. Then I thought, I shouldn’t have that thought.

I was hopeful. They might find one. Matching my mother’s.

I was healthy, they said, when it came to breasts or cancerous tissues. Then they sent me to a therapist.

Clinical depression, she said. Oftentimes that happens. It would change. The depression would go away. Time would heal things. I would forget all my grief. It would get easier. I would return to normal life.

It sure did. Dad recovered. Group therapy gave him a new life. A lovely wife as well.

My therapist gave me Prozac. I took it and then I spit it out in the bathroom and flushed it away. Then I returned to my bed and stared at the ceiling.

My brain needs to stay intact. Can’t lose any memories. Can’t forget this grief.

So I do a little exercise. I revisit all my memories of her. I write them down. I have forty entries so far. That’s one less than every year of her life.

It’s pathetic.

I get a text. It’s Gina from English.

Gina
Hey, I’m your English
partner. Would you like to
discuss our assignment?
I’m free this evening.

Gina will be the valedictorian. She doesn’t need me for her English assignment discussion.
Caiden found me a good partner.

I won’t need to work at all.

Thalia
I’m not free this evening

I’ll go to the vet. I’ll find new plasters on my ceiling. I will stumble over another sock on the carpet. I will flush another antidepressant.

Gina
okay then. When you have
time let me know. I have
some ideas I wa—

She will do it herself. I know that. She is one of the over-enthusiastic ones. My opinion doesn’t matter to her. Discussing with me won’t make a difference. Also, I had no fucking idea what to discuss.

I don’t read her texts. Instead, I reply ‘I’m fine with any ideas.’

On my computer, Google Docs shows some ideas I used to have. Screenwriting. Jokes. Scripts for sitcoms.

I close all the tabs and lie down on my bed.

I used to be so sure of myself. Now I’m not even sure of my own memories.

***