Countdown

Six Days Left

I stared at the navy blue, starry ceiling above me, trying to coax myself into getting up and joining my family for breakfast. Come on, Grace, I thought. Just six days. You only have to keep going for six more days. Knowings that any moment, my parents were going to wake me up and bitch at me for lying here so long, I climbed out of bed, feeling my feet hit the cheap carpet of my bedroom floor.

I opened my window. Outside was the bright kind of winter morning- the sort of day where the sunlight bounces off the sparkling snow and right into your eyes, willing you to be joyful and pure. It looked like the background for a teen clothing store's winter ad, the ones where pretty girls with rose-colored cheeks in pink mittens cup their hands around hot mugs of cocoa. Fucking bitches.

People say winter is a gloomy season, but this year everyone except me seemed happy. Even after the calendar flipped to January and our holiday highs sobered up, there seemed to be a glittering aura of positivity hitting everyone but me. New year, new beginnings! The recession is over! Halfway through the decade! I just wished they would shut the hell up.

It was Saturday, and I was pretty ambivalent about it being the weekend. Which was worse, having to pretend you're okay amidst a barrage of slammed lockers and stale pizza, or being alone with your own thoughts? I wasn't sure. Climbing back into bed and turning off the light, I wondered what exactly I'd do today. Normally on slow January weekends, somebody was a call away for a movie or lunch. God, I missed my old friends.  There was Kaci, who left her soul in 2006 and was the most emo girl I'd ever met, and Ariana- perfect, overachiveing, blonde Ariana who I'd stay up with all night, assuring her that a B- wasn't the end of the world. I should give Ari a call, I thought, but quickly decided against it.

As I lay in bed, I idly wondered if I should try that again- calling someone, one of my friends at Dixon. But who was there? I had slept over with Izzie last weekend, Conrad was pissed at me, and Brendan...well, I wasn't ready to deal with him yet. Him and Sofia seemed like the epitome of everything I wanted to avoid. Closeness, intimacy and trust. Friendship.

Actually, I was ready to talk to Brendan. The more I thought about it, the more I realized what I had to say. It would be hard, but it was a necessary step. It sounded so stupidly melodramatic and wrist-slitting, but I didn't want him to think there was any hope left for me. I steeled myself, then picked up my phone and dialed his number.

"Grace? Hey, what's up?"

He sounded tiredly disoriented, and I finally checked the time. It was about seven, and the last thing he needed was to be woken up by some stupid angsty girl at the virtual crack of dawn. Stupid. What was I thinking?

"Hi, I just wanted to tell you that..."

My mouth went dry, like it had been stuffed with cotton and I couldn't speak. The words had gotten lost somewhere between my brain and my mouth, and it took me a good six or seven seconds to find them again.

"I just...we can't do this anymore."

"Do what? Go out for coffee? I understand if you need some space to deal with all your shit, but..."

"It's just that...yeah, I need space. That's it."

Sure, we'll go with that.

"I feel really bad," I offered weakly

"Look, I'm sorry about all the bullying and stuff you've been going through. But you can't go around treating people like shit because you want to be special or whatever. You called me, woke me up, just to tell me that you didn't want to talk to me anymore because...well, I don't understand anything you do, but my point is, I used to think you were really cool, you know?"

He paused, unsure of what to say. I didn't know how to feel about the direction the conversation was taking, so I just waited.

"I don't even know anymore. But I'm really tired of your weird attention complex."

And with that, he hung up as tears welled in my eyes.