Egoism would mean that everything I do is selfish, for me. Trying to off myself was the most selfish thing I’ve ever done. I’m sure if my parents or Marisol found out I stopped taking my meds they might call that selfish, too, even though it feels like the right decision for me. This is probably why I keep putting off sharing this info with anyone. But then there’s altruism, or its possibility—like my volunteering at the crisis center. Helping people, just because. But what if it feels good to help people and that feeling good is why I do it? What if even being selfless is only something I do to help myself? There’s something so hopelessly depressing about that thought.
Etta sits near me, scribbling notes all thirsty-brained. She bites her nails so close to the quick, betraying some kind of anxiety beneath her gregarious surface. Halfway through the class my pen dies and she whispers to me that she can loan me one. I get a peek at the inside of her backpack, a shockingly disorganized abyss of crumpled papers and travel-sized toiletries. She finds a pen and hands it to me, flashing me a red, red smile.
Since school started, I’ve found myself distracted, just a little. By Etta. I don’t want to call it a crush. That sounds so dire. It’s more like a . . . leaning. I’m leaning into her, the more I get to know her. At first I thought I envied her. Then I thought I wanted to be her friend. Now I wonder if it’s more than that.
After class is done, she lets me share her umbrella and we walk to lunch together. The coconut smell of her mixes with the rain. We hurry across wet cement that reflects the world back up at us, blurry, wet smudges of shadow and color.
She makes a kaboom-like noise. “That class explodes my brain.”
“That class is undoing months of therapy I’ve spent trying to learn how to stop thinking so much,” I say.
She laughs heartily. I get a swell inside, a mix of relief and the high of making her happy. Also gladness that she didn’t skip a beat at the therapy comment.
“Also, Sacks kind of sucks.”
“Don’t be mean to Professor Sacks!” she says, batting my arm.
“He is so boring.”
“He is kind and pensive,” she says.
“And his name is Sacks.”
“Do you know how hard that must be for him?” she asks. “I know, because my last name is Farthing. I’ll let you connect the dots.”
I’m not about to fill her in on the eighteen years of irritating puns about trips and classic rock I’ve had to put up with. “My condolences.”
“Professor Sacks is a darling and a dear. He has a picture of his cat on the home screen of his phone and his cat’s name is Harold.”
Sometimes I truly think Etta’s too nice. She never says anything mean about anyone. Everywhere she looks, she seems to only see the good in people. I wonder what she sees in me.
“Okay, egoist or altruist?” she asks.
I’d like to think I’m a good person. I try. But I tried to kill myself mere months ago. I can’t reconcile that—the most selfish act imaginable—with being a truly good person.
“Probably an egoist who thinks I’m an altruist,” I answer. “Wish there was a word for that.”
Funny. I can tell you words for the way the moonlight can glow like a road on water (mangata, Swedish) and the wet ring a cold glass of water leaves upon a table (culaccino, Italian), but there is no word that I know of for a person who does right for all the wrong reasons.
Past
Today is the day. I’m finally going back to high school after two weeks “sick” with “mono,” dolled up in my favorite dress printed with strawberries and matching lipstick, filled to the brim with fruit-flavored dread. Marisol picks me up and brings me a breakfast sandwich. She has my favorite playlist on her speakers.
“It’s going to be just fine,” she tells me as she drives us there.
I’d argue with her, but what would be the point.
As soon as she parks, Marisol has to rush off to go fix some transcript debacle in the administrative office, so I’m left alone walking back into the bustle of laughter, hand-painted signs for canned food drives, and our principal making unintelligible loudspeaker announcements. Nothing about the place has changed, but somehow it looks different to me now, the way my elementary school appears doll-sized. The light has changed. It’s a movie set. That same feeling nags me, the one I’ve had since the year started—that I’m watching life happen around me instead of participating. I smile and wave, accept hugs and condolences about mono, yes, the rumors are true, Jonah and I broke up. It’s amicable, it was mutual. Lie, lie, lie.
The truth is, I don’t feel that bad besides the gross pit in my stomach whenever I think I see Jonah, but I’m utterly bored by school. I stare out the window at the windy day blowing oak leaves and trash through the empty halls, my class all repeating Spanish conjugations out loud together in chorus. Instead of imagining a hole opening up that I can jump into, I conjure a spaceship landing in the middle of the quad, me getting on it and ascending into the sky. Ta-ta, sayonara, so long, earthlings.
Finally, there Jonah is, in the lunch line, and it takes every ounce of willpower for my face to not break into a thousand pieces. He gives me a nod like I’m some passing bro. Seriously, screw him. I turn around and decide I’m not as hungry as I thought I was, go sit under a tree next to Marisol as she crams for an AP English test. I pen a letter into my composition book.
Dear future self,
I know depression has its treatments. But does unhappiness?
My nerves are calm but my brain burns, my heart screams. I’m sitting at school looking through the glass, life’s lone audience member. Watching food fights and maniacal laughter and skateboarding tricks and make-out sessions on green grass. All these people seem to know where they’re going—to jobs, colleges, families. But when I look forward to spy a future, I don’t see anything. I’m stuck and I don’t know how to move forward. I guess my question, future self, is—who the hell are you?
Marisol peeks over my shoulder and takes her earbud out.
“So dramatic,” she says, pointing to my letter.
I close my book, annoyed. “Maybe life is dramatic. Does that make you uncomfortable?”
“No, but the fact you tried to—” She makes a cutting-off-her-head motion with a wheek sound. “That makes me uncomfortable.”
“I didn’t try to sever my own head.”
“You are like the most frustrating cocktail of drama and then joking so much you can’t have a serious conversation about it.”
And I’m not about to have a serious conversation about it now, in public, when I feel like I’ve been glued back together and am ready to fall apart again. Here is not the place to be a human wreck.
“So you’re saying I’m a dramedy?” I ask.
Marisol puts her earbuds back in. “Goodbye.”
“So dramatic,” I tell her, elbowing her, which I know she despises.
“You asked for it.” She pulls her earbuds out again, puts her books down, cracks her knuckles, and tickles me to the point where I’m writhing on the grass beneath her, begging her to stop.
“ASSAULT!” I scream, and she finally stops.
I sit up, wiping my eyes, which have been cried out from the tickle attack. Marisol looks very satisfied with herself.