I wake up in the middle of the night and reach for my spiral and pen. They're under the pillow where I left them before falling asleep last night. I was working on a new list titled Ten Ways Things Could Be Worse.
1. Zombie apocalypse occurs
2. Asteroid hits the planet
I stop there, remembering that I used to have a totally different list. I flip to the front of the spiral until I find it.
1. Being buried alive
2. My parents getting a divorce
3. Developing amnesia like in that movie 50 First Dates
4. A tampon falling out of my purse in class
5. Being homeless
6. Having a growling stomach in class
7. Sweating through my clothes in gym class
Most of that seems so trivial now. Everybody sweats, and everyone's stomach growls. What planet was I on to even think of being buried alive? Does that even happen much outside of movies? And what is the likelihood of being homeless? God, what was I thinking? Who was I?
I try to reconcile the old list, scratching through the words with angry lines, but the words won't go away. So I rip it out of the spiral and tear it into tiny confetti pieces. I've never, ever, everripped a page out of a spiral before. Who am I?
I like an odd-numbered list but can't seem to come up with numbers three through seven for the revised list. It's just zombies and asteroids.
Maybe that's all that's left for us here.
YOU ARE READING
The Trouble Is
Teen FictionAnnie has a list for everything. At two notebooks a year since kindergarten, she has thousands of lists stored in her perfectly aligned closet. There's List #27: How to Go Unnoticed in Class. And List # 93: What I Want in a Boyfriend. But let's not...
