Life Lost and Found

3: No Words

Monday, June 9

Madeline's hand hovered over her alarm clock before it went off. She'd been awake for hours already, replaying the Party Of Epic Failure over and over in her skull. It was highly masochistic, but she couldn't help it. She couldn't make it stop.

Her bed was by a window, and she tweaked the blinds open for a look at the sky. Groan. Another gray, gloomy Oregon Monday. Normally, she enjoyed days like this; there was something adventurous about clouds and wind, something magical about fog and mist. But today? Today could only suck. School was happening.

Her hand strayed to where her mother's necklace used to be. Prior to the graduation party, it had been missing from her neck for all of a few hours in the past seven years.

She dragged her unwilling body to the bathroom and flicked on the light. In the corner of the mirror were the words Make friends, Madeline! written in her own crappy handwriting with a dry-erase marker. She wiped it off, then drew a simple news ticker at the bottom, putting herself on TV.

"And in other news, recent studies show that objects in mirror are even dumber than they appear. Scientists baffled. More at 11." She threw the marker at the glass.

Half an hour later, she stood on the porch, staring at the weather and munching on her breakfast of two butterscotch chip cookies. They were her favorites. Or... they had been. She frowned at the cookie in her hand. Some distant part of her knew this cookie was a favorite; that it was delicious and amazing. And yet, she couldn't remember the last time she had actually enjoyed eating it. Or anything.

When she was done fulfilling her natural obligation to eat, she locked the empty house behind her. "Bye, Dad," she muttered, even though he had gone to work over an hour ago. It had been days since they'd last spoken to each other. He hadn't even noticed her self-imposed exile to her bedroom all weekend. They had been like this for years.

She grabbed her bike from the porch, and pulling the hood of her poncho as far over her face as she could, she began the soggy, two-mile ride to school. She rode in silence for a while, feeling anxiety grow with every pedal.

"Relax, Madeline," she said to herself. "Think of it this way: you finally get to be a YouTube star. So there's that." Yay?

She arrived at school, locked up her bike, and crept around the building to a seldom-used entrance near the band room, which was usually empty. She was among the lucky few to have lockers back here. This little side hall was her almost-private domain. A place where she could talk to herself and rage and whatever, with only minimal danger of being caught.

But she couldn't stay here forever. She hung up her poncho, closed her locker, and braced herself for the horror of the coming day. She closed her eyes for a moment and imagined she could turn invisible. She would glide silently down the hall to her class, unknown to anyone, appearing in her seat only when necessary, safely anonymous from everyone and everything until she wished otherwise.

Meanwhile, back in the real world, her wet shoes squeaked loudly along the floor with every step, making her less invisible and more exposed than ever. Every step was an announcement to the entire school: Hey guys, Madeline the Misfit's here, and she's ripe for the berating! SQUEAK! SHE IS RIGHT HERE! SQUEAK!

She reached the main hall. People were looking at her. She didn't look back. "Just ignore them, just ignore them, just ignore them," she chanted silently as she passed through them, but it didn't work. It never did.

Minutes later, she was in her homeroom class, sulking quietly in the back, too embarrassed to look at anyone. She doodled in her notebook with hasty, uncontrolled motions, imagining herself invisible again. She was a name on a paper, somehow present but never seen. Madeline Parker: a grade, a number, and nothing else. She could not be singled-out or tormented. Her photo could not be posted online with cruel captions. She couldn't be told everything that was wrong with her. (As if she didn't already know.)