I’ve been seriously contemplating using toothpicks to prop my eyelids open. The splinters would hurt terribly, true, but at least I’d be awake for math class. Bobby’s got a better mind for this stuff, but he’s in middle school, and the stuff I’m working on is bit over his head.
Bobby’s my baby brother. Half-brother, actually. Same dad, different mom. Dad doesn’t talk much about any of his past “conquests” in front of us, but Grandma made a comment about Bobby’s mother once. We were sitting in the kitchen, and I was barely three days past fourteen. Bobby was on her knee, bouncing him around. She covered his ears before she said it. It went something along the lines of “Oh Rusty, we all know that she was just a piece of tail.”
Apparently Bobby’s mom was a water nymph, and when dad has all of his warlock friends over for beers and football, and he thinks I’m asleep in my room, he often uses the phrase “furious copulation” when his buddies ask about her. Cue the drunken laughter.
I want to cover my ears when he talks about her, to press the sides of my head so hard that I could push that memory out, but I don’t. I keep hoping, and keep waiting, that maybe one night, one of his buddies will ask about my mom, and Dad’ll at least say her name.
Today, though, is remedial math and trying to chart parabolas. As it stands now, I’ll have to take summer school to catch up to junior year. I’m alright at astronomy, but I do much better at biology. It just… makes sense. I was grateful that the school system didn’t have enough funds to make us dissect anything this year. I can’t stand the thought of hurting any of those poor things. Can you imagine your entire life’s purpose is to be bred so that you could be suffocated and drowned in your own lungs, and then cut open for bored and slightly nauseas sixteen-year olds to see?
I take my glasses off and try to rub the tears of boredom out of my eyes. I watch as the teacher punches in random numbers into an elaborate string of numbers, parenthesis, and letters, before settling on swirling a miniature dot on the makeshift graph she drew on the board. I dutifully copy the location of her orange dot on my graph paper. I silently pray that I’ll be able to figure it out when I get home.
Grandma gave me these glasses. Around the time I hit my first period, anything made out of metal or plastic gave me an allergic reaction. That includes plastic or metal frames. When I woke up the next morning, I put my glasses on as usual and within minutes I had a rash around my face exactly where the frames pressed.
I tried to convince Dad that I couldn’t show up to school like that. He listened to me patiently, but at the end of my stormy tirade he handed me my backpack, and told me that if I’m embarrassed now, showing up to the bus looking like I had just cried would be worse. The next three days I sat in the front rows of my classes and squinted at the boards and projectors.
Grandma finally showed up, and she asked our birch tree in the front yard to weave a set of wooden frames for me. Dad popped the lenses out of my old frames, and the birch encircled some of herself around them, and gave me flexible, willowy frames. Or should I say birchy? She’s a nice tree. I try to keep her pruned and clear out the undergrowth for her.
“Stephanie?” says the teacher.
I close my eyes. Please mean Stephanie Hill. Please mean Stephanie Hill.
“Stephanie Winter?”
Craaaaaap.
“Yes?”
“Could you please demonstrate on the board where we should chart the next point?”
My chair legs scrap against the tiled floor as I stand up and approach the board. Just another boring day.
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