No Matter What

I Hate Mondays, I Hate Everything

I tried to calm myself to the rhythm of Lunar Pipes, my favorite fringe instrumental band that no one knew about at school. The sweet, low trumpet tune blasted through my earbuds. I couldn't hear what my dad was saying to me from the driver's seat.

I focused on my music and my little fidget toy. This one was my pop-it-rocket, one of my favorites. My friend Dani called it my pocket rocket. I don't know if she knew what an actual pocket rocket was. I didn't have the heart to tell her.

"Ayla! Ayla!" I took out one of my earbuds and looked at my dad. "Do you want me to pull up in the front or in the parking lot?"

"Parking lot," I said.

"Of course," he said, pulling off into the senior lot.

On the days I felt anxious, I liked him to drop me off all the way back here so I could have time to walk in the fresh air and decompress before entering this...place.

"Do you have everything?" he asked as I got out of the car with my bag and my magenta void.

"Yeah," I said.

"Okay. Have a good day. I have an emergency extraction at the end of the day, so Annie will pick you up."

"That's fine," I said, closing the door.

I wanted to say more but I felt like my anxiety was strangling me, like a monster that had me in a bear hug, squeezing me so tight that I couldn't breathe. I wanted to be anywhere but here.

My phone buzzed in my pocket as I stepped onto the curb. I pulled it out of my jeans and saw a text from Connor.

You got this! Love you!

I smiled and replied back with a few heart and smiley emojis, then put it back into my pocket and changed the song I was listening to. I brushed my hair in front of my face to the hall monitors wouldn't notice my earbuds, then went over to my locker.

After that, I swapped out my books for the day, then found myself sitting in Miss Shen's room. I knew Dani would be there. She looked up from her coloring book when she saw me.

"Hello stranger! Fancy seeing you here," she said as I sat down and took out my earbuds. "Where is your prince charming? You never come here to Miss Shen's room in the morning."

"He's not coming to school today. I don't know when he's coming back."

"Oh. Did he get sick?"

"No. He fell off the roof. They think he's paralyzed from the waist down."

Miss Shen looked out from behind her computer, shock written all over her face. I don't know how I said that so easily. I think in a way, I was still numb from all the disbelief. This whole thing had to be a dream, didn't it? Connor wouldn't really be bound to a wheelchair for the rest of his life, would he?

"What roof?" Dani asked.

"The one where the gym is. We went up there during prom and he fell off."

"Well, I guess that is what you get when you go up onto a roof like that. That's no place for someone to be without proper equipment," she said, very matter-of-factly as she went back to her coloring book. "Tell Connor to be more careful. He needs to be playing football, not playing on the roof!"

I smiled for the first time in two days, letting out a deep, belly laugh. Some of the things Dani said just...got to me. I heard Miss Shen laughing, too.

"I should probably get to homeroom. I'll see you after lunch, 'kay?" I said to her.

"Yes, I do plan on seeing you at that time. I see you every day after lunch for reading time with Miss Shen."

I wanted to put my earbuds back in when I left Miss Shen's room. It seemed like all the eyes of all the students were on me. With social media, everyone knew. Connor was mister popular, and as mister popular's long term girlfriend, everyone knew who I was as well.

"I heard that she pushed him," someone whispered as I sat down at my desk in my homeroom.

"He cheated on her and she wanted revenge," someone else whispered.

"She's a serial killer."

"She's insane."

"She's always been jealous of him."

I tried to hug myself with my arms. The LED lights of this room were way, way too bright. There were too many whispers. I grabbed my pocket pop-it-rocket and tried to calm down before the morning announcements came on.

"Good morning, and happy Monday, Vipers!" said Chelsea Morris on the screen in the front of the room.

Chelsea was part of Connor's posse. She was a cheerleader and she did the morning announcements: two things that were my worst nightmare. I always wondered if she was nice to me because I was Connor's girlfriend, or if she genuinely liked talking about my favorite show, Castle of Shadows with me.

She texted me a lot to check on me yesterday. I didn't know how to reply. My boyfriend was paralyzed. How well do you think I'm really doing?

The announcements wrapped up. There was no mention of Connor. I was glad. I knew that a big bake sale to raise money for his hospital stay was going to get set up. Chris texted me about that one. He wanted me to make my lemon bars. He said everyone loved my lemon bars and we'd raise a lot of money, but I didn't want lemon bars or money. I wanted to go back in time and stop Connor from falling off the roof so we wouldn't have to do that bake sale and the lemon bars.

I left homeroom to go to my Spanish class, and a group of guys had their phones out. They were freshmen, I was sure.

"Ayla! Ayla Green! Why did you try to kill your boyfriend?" they said, still holding up their phones.

Other kids were starting to stare. This was awful. Normally I hated Mondays, but now I literally hated everything.