Smile On His Lips and Cuts On His Hips (Jalex)

Four - Don't Hurt Yourself

I stuck a pencil in my mouth, mindlessly chewing on the eraser as I flipped to the back of my math textbook. Section 5-6, answer key, question 27… not there. Evens only, of course.

I sighed, rubbing my palm against my forehead and squinting at the page, trying to figure how the fuck to solve the problem. Second homework assignment of the year, and I was already clueless.

I was in the second highest math line of our grade, though it had never been my strongpoint. Always a solid B student in the subject, I figured it was good enough. It wasn’t like I wanted to be a mathematician or chemist, or, God forbid, teacher. And what else is math even useful for?

I stretched over to my laptop, jumping past the playing song and smiling when All the Small Things started blasting through the speakers. One of my favorites, though I hated the video with a passion. It always sent an irritated outcry of ‘no’s ringing through my head whenever I saw it.

“You’ll be at my show, watching, waiting, commiserating,” I hummed along, tapping my pencil against the page to the beat. The lucky song switch seemed to be one of the rare things going my way that day.

It was an all around shitty Sunday, and not for even any particular reason. Zack and Rian were too busy fucking each other to hang out, I was practically starving to death after finding nothing to eat in the house except for lunchmeat sandwich ingredients – after eating turkey sandwiches for a solid four years of elementary school, any sliced and processed meat literally made me gag – and the shopping trip from hell earlier had sent me into a piss poor mood.

I’d made a list of all the supplies I needed for each of my classes, our mom taking May and I to some office store that I could never remember the name of a couple hours ago. They had no rulers that would fit in my pencil case, zero graph paper notebooks for math, only packs of four tab dividers when I needed five, and all the mini staplers worthy of being brought to school were hot pink. Needless to say, it was a less than successful trip.

Then, of course, May was driving on the ride home, having been old for her grade and just getting her permit. The sophomore girl was constantly picking petty fights with mom about whether or not she was ready to try going on the freeway, how she was not going too fast, and hypocritically yelling at her to stop yelling directions.

I’d just shrunk into my seat, turning up Green Day and hoping that nobody was trying to talk to me.

So there I was, frowning at a textbook for my least favorite subject with a loudly protesting stomach and inadequate supplies when someone knocked on my door.

I groaned, clicking Blink to a pause and climbing off of my bed, trying not to knock the binders and pens scattered around me to the floor. I stumbled to the door on shaky legs that had apparently fallen asleep while I had them crossed, putting one hand on my doorframe for support while the other turned the handle, lock automatically clicking open. I tugged on the door, yanking it open and revealing my frowning father.

He grimaced at the sight of my room, throwing an empty cartoon of ice cream in before demanding, “Put that towel in the bathroom, get rid of that bag of chips, and clean up those papers,” spinning on his heel, and walking off down the hallway.

I stood there as he left, staring blankly at the stark white hallway across from me, trying to resist the urge to kick a wall or rip someone’s head off. My free hand curled into a fist, nails scraping the back of my thumb.

I let out a jagged breath, slamming the door closed softly enough to make it sound like a product of the wind and prevent someone from screaming at me, punching the lock into place. Walking haltingly back to my bed, I curled my fingers in and out of clawed fists, trying to relieve the tension that had built up in my body.