Lola is Just Like Me

Chapter 09

I wandered into the school’s halls with a dull pain pressing into the walls of my lungs, laboring each breath. Trevor’s urging curiosity had left marks on my mind, remnants of things Lola had said and done over the years, some of them sweet and others bitter. All of them suddenly carried a sting. And when I recalled how detached from this dreariness I had been earlier that morning, it only made me feel farther away from my destination. My classes made me more and more lethargic; days without solid sleep and good food were catching up with me. I sort of nodded in and out of lectures, barely caught instructions as they were being given. My mind lacked the ambition to kickstart its own attitude. There was a constant breeze on some bare area; I felt vulnerable and deprived.

The end of the school day shambled to its rightful place to relieve me of my obligations. I welcomed it with open arms. The minutes to hours, and the last forty-five minutes of the day melted into an impassable stretch of wasteland. Nothing had been offered up to me, and if it had been, I couldn’t have taken it. I was of no use to anyone, especially myself. And so I let sleep creep in at the tail end of the day, when it really didn’t matter that I did so. Not once did it occur to me that I was disrespecting Mrs. Simmons. I just let go of the struggle to make it through the day without humiliating myself by passing out in public. And when the bell rang, I drifted back and gathered my things with the rest of the horde, tailing the group out of the room. But my name chiseled into my consciousness and drove me to turn back. Mrs. Simmons no doubt had something to say about my lack of attentiveness. I didn’t even have the sense to look ashamed.

“Tylar, is everything okay?” Mrs. Simmons leaned forward on her desk, one arm below the cluttered surface. I weaved back and forth for a moment, working at top speed to understand the question and manufacture a response.

“Um, sure.”

“You look sleep-deprived,” Mrs. Simmons continued, unconvinced. I said nothing, waiting to be excused. “Are things at home okay?”

“I suppose.”

“Well…” She stood and held a fist by her side, coming over to me. Closer up, I could see that she didn’t look so well herself. This shocked my system a bit and forced me into being more observant for an instant. Her desolate state was painfully obvious to anybody in a better one. “I found this.” Her hand extended to me, blossomed out around a tattered, once-colorful thread bracelet. “It honestly took me a while to remember it’s actually yours.” I stared at the thing, thinking only that she must have made some sort of honest mistake. I never touched much jewelry at all. It couldn’t be mine. But recognition soon dug its spines into my neck, spreading its dreadful news throughout my entire body. “Go on, you can take it. I can’t keep it.” Frantically I looked back up to Mrs. Simmons. A melancholy smile touched her tired face. The left side of my face twisted in a fit of discomfort. I could think of no other thing than getting out, fast. I snatched up the band and started for the door.

“Thanks, Mrs. Simmons.”

I couldn’t keep my eyes off the bracelet the entire way home. How could it be… material? How could anyone else find it? Why was it so… filthy? Numerous times I admired it as it was tied around Lola’s wrist. It had been so colorful and radiant. It stood out when she was tying back my flat, lifeless hair. It wasn’t frayed and spotty and worn. If it had all been some horrible coincidence or sick joke, well… That was far too unlikely. I just knew it was Lola’s bracelet. But I had never worn it in all my years. It had always stuck with her. If it somehow managed to make its way off of Lola’s wrist and into Mrs. Simmons’ hands, then had something terrible happened to Lola? I could make no logical conclusions about the bracelet and resolved not to think about it. I absently slipped it around my left wrist and wandered away from my perception of the world.