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Liberate
Chapter One
by lena
It starts with blood. Though water flows from the showerhead, steaming, hot as hell, or hot as penance, the fog that blurs everything else can’t mask the rivulets, the coppery tang. It streams slowly, steadily, from between her legs, down her thighs and calves, and swirls, dispersed by the water, down the drain. The slight, bittersweet pangs in her lower back persist. She smiles, the gesture hidden by sodden hair and swirling mist. Some things do go right, after all.
The shower is spacious, unfamiliar, as is everything else. Forgetting the blood as one forgets all good things that happen by luck, focusing more on the problematic, the present, she centers her attention on the new location of the shampoo amidst the shower accoutrement layout, puzzles the location of the conditioner bottle, and finally settles on scrubbing her skin with washcloth and soap bar until it threatens, non-verbally, of course, to fall off. Though showering has recently lost its intimacy, its status as her own secret purification ritual, a tribute to her human body, she cannot repress the peaceful blankness that blankets her as she towels off, brisk and efficient movements becoming her recipe for this mindless task. The tampon passes into its rightful place with a residual twinge, an old pain, rather like a long-lost friend, and she covers it all with loose, comfortable clothing and it is hidden.
The house creaks with a rhythm she is not used to, but she moves with the current, down the hall, passing by rooms with the same manner a phantasm would adopt in meandering through its territories. Though she has haunted this floor, and the one below it, for almost a month, she spots the occasional moving box, duct tape still intact on most. She ignores them in favor of continuing down the small staircase, padding barefoot down the carpeted incline. The house is quaint, and when she and her mother can find the time to put their house together, it will be as comfortably appointed as their old apartment—though far less crowded.
The downstairs is bathed in light, and shadows are sent to hide in only the loneliest corners. Few boxes remain here. Remnants of her childhood, her mother’s life before and after her birth, and objects of their shared decorating tastes clothe the walls. The furniture is familiar, though the layout isn’t; despite the glow of the overhead light, she still manages to graze her shinbone against the corner of an ill-placed in-table. Very glad that no one is around to see that misstep, she hobbles into the kitchen with barely a sound, pointedly ignoring the sting of the blossoming bruise against the texture of her loose denim.
As any teenager will confide, a simple bowl of cereal will suffice when an adult figure is neither around to fix a nutritious meal, nor to chide the lack of nutrition inherent in any meal-substitute. Cap’n Crunch becomes her dinner companion, then; he is a long-time friend, stolidly brandishing his cartoon sword against any intruders to her meal, watching with chubby cheeks as she finishes, rinses the bowl, places it in the dish drainer to the side of the sink. Though she relegates him to the cereal cupboard, finding it necessary to stand on tip-toe to do so, the good Cap’n takes no offense—he’ll be there next time, too.
Outside, visible through the curtained windows, car lights cut the encroaching darkness of the evening, accompanied by the rumble of a vehicle hard-pressed to gain the slight upward slope that is her new driveway. The noises are comfortable in their new environment, at least; the opening click of the car’s driver-side door, the soft explosion of the subsequent closure of that door, the steady roll of footsteps marching up to the entrance, the house door opening and closing with less force than was used on the car door. Her mother, fresh returned from her new job, must have followed her maternal instincts into the kitchen, for her dark auburn head peeks around the corner. She’s assuredly not middle aged; her figure is trim, though solid, and her face speaks of a charm that is highlighted by her faint laugh lines, the contented crinkle of the skin around her eyes. But she is tired today, and her smile is dimmer than usual.
“Have you eaten already?” are the first words out of her mouth, as she moves fully into the kitchen. She is dressed in hospital scrubs of a fresh green color, her work badge attached to the breast pocket, a pen on a lanyard slung around her neck. Marilyn likes to take care of people, especially her daughter, with an ease that often allows people to forget they are being taken care of, but when she is tired, she slips.
“Cap’n Crunch, Mom,” her daughter replies, maintaining eye contact for a moment before her gaze slips off toward the open window, whose curtains frolic in the breeze. Marilyn might be tired, might be slipping because of that, but her perception is uncanny. One must tread easily around her: where some mothers might employ virulent words and harsh gestures in their arsenal of child management, Marilyn utilizes uncompromising love and forgiveness. Absolutely terrifying.
“That’s not very nutritious, is it,” Marilyn chides gently as she sets her tote bag in a chair at the dinner table, moving around the kitchen with hesitant familiarity. Soon enough, she is engaged in creating a meal on the spot, soup and salad, something fortifying and nutritious but not heavy, something that will not leech the rest of her strength with too long a preparation. In silence, her daughter begins to set the table, thinking that Marilyn has no idea how to simply stop. The older woman’s determination, if not always her energy, knows no bounds.
“Marit, I do wish you’d eat better,” Marilyn remarks to her daughter, over her shoulder, as she’s stirring the soup that burbles happily on the stove. “I don’t know if it’s moving to a new place, or if it’s something you just don’t want to tell me, but…” Her eyes move to her daughter’s jeans, barely held up by a belt, and the slightly oversized t-shirt that covers her torso. The but and the trailing off indicate her worry, but the still-silent girl knows she won’t pry. She’s just not that kind of mother, just too kind. She simply wants her concern, her support, to be known.
Marit only nods, emphasized by the clatter of a soup spoon on the table, and she glares at her clumsy hand before helping her mother to relocate the soup and salad to the table. She glances up to the cabinet where the good Cap’n hides, and shrugs, seating herself and helping herself to a little portion of the salad. Drenching it in French dressing, she finally finds her voice. “I like the house.”
Marilyn waits until she swallows a bite of the salad, and then replies, “So do I. I’m glad we have more room to clutter up, don’t you?” Her eyes are mischievous, and Marit smiles back, a quiet smile. “Maybe next weekend we can take the time to finish putting everything else away? I have Saturday off, and we can make a day of it—a girls’ day, with pajamas, and decorating, and all the ice cream we can eat.”
Marit looks away again; her mother’s eyes are so full of hope, so full of guilt, that they are hard to look at. She could never find it in her to blame her mother for the move, as it has relocated her to a worksite with better pay, or for the hours she puts in, which has allowed her to afford this nice house in a neighborhood with a good school. Instead, she shifts the topic to something lighter, injecting good humor into her voice. “It’s always girls’ day, Mom.”
It works like a charm; Marilyn’s eyes neither light up nor dance with suppressed laughter, but instead, she smiles in that easy way of hers, which is even better. If she feels any residual guilt for the lack of a father figure, or any residual loneliness for the lack of a husband figure, then it is well-hidden, nearly forgotten, by the ease and quiet happiness she has worked to create for her daughter. Her worry for Marit, which has persisted since their move, eases just a little more.
“It’s settled, then.” Marilyn tucks into her salad and soup, and Marit follows suit, pushing a tiny tomato around the bowl before deciding to bury it beneath a pile of French dressing. She tops that with a lettuce leaf, then impales it on her fork and shoves it into her mouth as soon as she sees Marilyn watching her from the corner of her eye. Marilyn clears her throat.
“Are you excited for school? I got your schedule in the mail, and I put it on your desk this morning before I left for work.”
Marit chews mechanically, and then swallows, the sound audible in the brief silence that follows. Excited is, well, perhaps too enthusiastic a word. “My schedule looks good,” she hedges. “I’ve got—” she wracks her brain, and then continues, “—an honors English class, History, Algebra 2, a lunch break, Physical Education, Drama, and Art.”
Marilyn nods in the process of taking a sip of soup, which she nearly unseats from its spoon. She cracks a smile. “I know you like English and Art. It all sounds good, except for the math bit. I know you don’t like that.”
Marit nods noncommittally, glancing down at her assorted dishes. The soup and salad are both half-gone, and she sets her fork in her salad bowl, finished already. “I have to have it,” she says finally, glancing up through her damp hair to her mother, who eyes her but says nothing. Soon, the dishes are washed and dried, tucked into their proper places in the kitchen. Marilyn proposes they follow their dinner up with popcorn and a marathon of Law and Order: Special Victims Unit, a post-dinner tradition in its own right. Marit declines, growing suddenly even quieter, and announces that she should probably go to bed early, as she has to be awake impossibly early for the first day of school. September’s commencement, and along with it the start of the school year, always heralds such regretful announcements, but Marilyn nonetheless watches, puzzled, as Marit retreats up the stairs, into the sanctity and privacy of her bedroom.
This time, she runs the shower cold, cold enough that the spray will leave chills in its wake, cold enough to ensure that she will not dally, will not attempt putting off the process of getting it over with. Perfunctorily she rinses and repeats, plugs her bleeding wound, and steps out into the embrace of a towel, rubbing herself with it as fiercely as she had with the washcloth; her skin glows pink with the friction. Every movement is precise, goal-oriented. She casts her cosmetics bag a glance of dismissal, instead choosing a simple face-washing product, scrubbing enthusiastically with it. If one foregoes the ritual slathering-on of make-up, then one must take the utmost care to at least have clear skin. She can’t bring herself to doll up for the day. Blow-drying her hair takes longer than she would have liked, but at the end of it she is rewarded with long reddish locks that don’t threaten to frizz up, don’t do anything except blanket her shoulders, fall down her back. Anything is a weapon if you know how to exploit it, and hair is no different, except it is a defensive weapon. It is a shield.
Back in her bedroom, she rifles through her clothes, selecting underwear, a worn pair of jeans that hangs off her hipbones and slouches over her sock-clad feet. She tops it with a dark blue t-shirt, and then slips on a pair of well-used black sneakers. She runs her hands through her hair and glances back to the mirror. Her face is pale and faint freckles stand out against her pallor. Her lips look unusually red.
Her backpack, newly stocked with all the things she’ll need to make it through the day, rests on her desk chair, along with the envelope that contains her school schedule. She sweeps all of these into her grasp as she hurries down the stairs, just as Marilyn sets the glass of orange juice on the table. Its companion is a plate heaped with bacon and eggs, hardy food, made for fortifying one against a day that will prove to be trying at best, utterly exhausting at worst. Marit murmurs her thanks and slides into her seat, setting her backpack down with a thump.
“You’ll need a good breakfast,” Marilyn echoes her thoughts as she grabs her own bag, her heavy tote, from another table seat. She hefts it onto her shoulder and bends to kiss Marit’s head in one fell swoop. “I hope you have a good day, sweetie.” She pulls up, beaming.
Marit resists a wince, instead offering an anemic smile. “I’ll do my best,” she says, knowing that it is hardly up to her. She picks up her fork and commences piling it with scrambled egg, pushing it into her mouth—chew, swallow, repeat, until Marilyn leaves and Marit hears the car start in the driveway. Soon, the sound of the engine fades in the distance, and Marit is alone.
She takes a few more bites of the eggs and stares balefully at the bacon, as if she could punch a hole in the invisible odor it gives off. After a time, the eggs are mostly gone, and half a piece of bacon has been consumed. She rakes the remains in the trash can and rinses the dishes, her movements growing slower as the moments pass. Knowing that putting off the inevitable is useless, she grabs her house key and evacuates, pulling the front door closed and locking it snugly against invaders. She double-checks it, and straps her backpack on, setting off. The walk to school is too short; it lies mere blocks from her house, easy enough to travel to until winter sets in and the cold becomes unendurable. On the walkway to the double doors at the front, Marit pauses and takes it in, takes a deep breath to steady herself.
Lockheed High School is big. Impressively so, dauntingly so. Its sheer size intimidates her, and a moment of panic seizes her before she closes her eyes and breathes deeply through her mouth. The moment passes and she endures, continuing up the walk and pushing her way through to the inside. The halls are crowded, assailing her senses with noise, smell, flashing colors of tall, confident teenagers drunk with their own egos, drunk with their various identities. A girl calls to her, a girl wearing a too-large letterman jacket and too much make-up, and Marit continues on, pretending she does not hear, ducking behind a tall kid wearing all black until she is far away enough to release the breath she had held. It leaves her in a heart-pounding rush.
The auditorium entrance is a short distance from the front doors, and that is where she goes, in anticipation of the start-of-the-year address given by the principal and all her cohorts. The auditorium becomes a womb holding the masses of children within its pale purple walls that seem to pulse with unseen bloodbeats. She finds a seat near the back, fingering her schedule, which has become worn in her grasp. Eventually teenagers of all sizes and types begin to filter into the auditorium, and the seats fill up, until the principal moves to the podium.
Dr. Warley seems to own the podium space, the entire room, and not a buzz dares to erupt as she begins the welcome speech that she has no doubt come to memorize over her years as principal of Lockheed High School. Her manner is no-nonsense, and it shows, but her voice is sincere enough. Marit cannot say anything about her words, as they pass through her hearing like so much empty noise. What she does hear is the first bell warning students to get to their homeroom class, which seems to meet only on important dates throughout the year, and she melds easily into the crowd, finding the room on the second floor without difficulty.
She is assigned a locker; she is given many so-called important papers to deliver to her mother for consideration; she is noted as a new student, and welcomed accordingly. The only twinge of excitement that occurs in that half-hour interval is when she receives a paper about graduation, and she tucks it carefully into the confines of her backpack. Afterward, she cannot recall her homeroom teacher’s name, or what she looks like, or her manner of dress. There is no one she recognizes from her short summer introduction to Lockheed High School society, and for that she is grateful. The bell rings; she moves accordingly.
Her Honors English teacher begins with a soliloquy detailing the ecstasy to be found within the literary world, extolling the virtues of writers from the Western canon, and hands out a syllabus whose introduction is nearly word-for-word what the teacher just said, and a literature textbook whose worn cover and pages would not look unusual in a fifth-hand book sale. Her name is Mrs. Cecilia Hunter, she is a mother of three, and she gushes far, far too much. Marit seeks solace in the reading list for the class, finding such delights as Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar, Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, and certain works by Shakespeare that she, and every other American literature student, has been force-fed since first learning to read. The Shakespeare is a bit much, perhaps, but she has read and loved Macbeth, and feels the slightest twinge of excitement when Mrs. Hunter mentions that their Honors English class will be performing Macbeth to the entire school during the Renaissance festival hosted every year by every department in the school. This Renaissance festival is a new concept to her, one that will occur much later in the year, but she begins to anticipate it nonetheless.
The teacher takes a moment from her own enthusiasm to ask the class to introduce themselves. This takes a relatively short amount of time, as the Honors English group consists of sober, thoughtful teenagers—for once—who seem, if not as excited as Mrs. Hunter to be there, then at least dedicated. Marit finds herself developing a slow, grudging appreciation for this quality. There is no one she recognizes in this class, either, though a girl toward the front, with long, dark hair and winking gray eyes, nods appreciatively at Marit as she sinks further into her chair when introducing herself. She spends the rest of the class period in this position, drawing absently in the margins of her notebook, and toward the end of the class she scribbles down the reading assignment beside a sketch of a kitten chewing on a ball of yarn that more resembles a football.
History comes next, and with it a droning male teacher named Mr. Washington—the snickering football player types in the back find this hilarious—who looks as if someone has killed him late in his life, microwaved him back into the land of the living, and then placed him behind a desk that is irritatingly pin-neat. In other words, he looks incredibly tired, though his speech on the importance of American history, and what he can teach his students in regard to this subject, is not only convincing; he makes it sound as if American history is the history, the end-all of histories, and toward the end he plies his students with a dreary syllabus, an annoyingly patriotic textbook, and a reading assignment that goes into the double digits. “This is to be completed,” he intones, “before Wednesday. We shall cover the subjects addressed within through Friday.” If nothing else, Mr. Washington is not lacking in the dignity department.
Algebra 2 is a necessary torture that she endures with silence, only because the grandmotherly figure, Mrs. Matthews, makes it seem so gosh-darned possible to pass. There are, thankfully, no assignments for this day, and the first test seems set for a reasonable time in the future. Marit finds herself missing her old friends, who always seemed available when she needed help with any math assignment—a regular occurrence. Marit and numbers have never gotten along, and her classmates appear to be just as mentally dissociated from Mrs. Matthews’ lecture as she, judging from the nodding heads and vacant stares that surround her. Ticking down the minutes till the dismissal bell for lunch becomes her task, and she scribbles down the time in the margins as she fills her page, slowly but steadily, with notes on linear equations.
The bell catches her off-guard, and she gives a start, thankfully unseen by her peers, as she has ensconced herself in a seat toward the back, and Mrs. Matthews, who is preoccupied with scribbling last-minute details on the blackboard. “Have a great lunch, everyone!” she calls, and gets a couple of mumbled responses, but otherwise everyone streams around the desks and out the door, into the hallway and into a one-hour period of freedom.
Marit is one of the last to leave, and she merges with the overflowing river of bodies in the hallway, finding herself carried along by the crowd. She hugs her Algebra book tight to her chest, an unorthodox barrier, wincing when it is almost liberated from her grasp by horseplaying boys who obviously have no common courtesy. Extricating herself from the crowd when she reaches her locker, she quickly spins the proper combination and gains entrance, shoving her Algebra book within and hefting her backpack higher onto her shoulders. Behind her, the crowd thins out, doubtlessly heading toward the cafeteria downstairs, from which disturbing odors waft.
This is, by far, the most awkward hour of the day. She figures this out when she is tapped expectantly on the shoulder, and nearly bangs her head on her locker, just barely resisting the urge to whirl around and sink her fist into the offender’s face. Shaking, she turns, and is greeted by a familiar figure, covered in make-up and haloed by blonde hair, positively melting into the letterman jacket she wears despite the summer like temperatures without and within.
“J-Jenny,” she stammers, and mentally winces. This is a girl whose number has appeared on her missed calls list for days, the very same girl she sought to avoid earlier this morning. Jenny Silverton, as pale and pretty as her last name implies, beams back at her.
“Marit,” she says, in her bubbly manner, the sort of manner one finds both annoying and vaguely endearing, as if her parade has always been rain free, and always will be, and one couldn’t possibly blame her for her good fortune, “I haven’t seen you in forever! Where’ve you been? I haven’t seen you since the party; I’ve called you like a hundred times! I hope we didn’t scare you off. I know our parties get a little too rowdy. What have you been into?” There is nothing accusatory in her sweet blue eyes, only curiosity, and hurt, indistinct from one another.
Marit shrugs and resists the urge to play with her hair, or ear, sure signs that she is lying, saving face. “Mom and I have been really busy, y’know, cleaning up the house,” she mumbles. “I’m really sorry.” That much is true, at least.
Jenny’s expression immediately clears of its consternation, and she smiles, a beatific blessing, a nonverbal forgiving. “Oh, I understand completely,” she says. “Anyway, me an’ the girls, you remember them? We’re sitting outside under the trees for lunch, it’s our thing, well, except for when it gets too cold, and I was wondering if maybe you’d like to join us?”
Not on your life, Marit thinks, or mine, either. She demurs, “Ahh…I was just going to go to the library, actually, take a look around…um. Maybe some other t—?”
The hurt look is back, just for a moment, as if her feelings change like the wind, and Jenny finishes Marit’s sentence for her. “Some other time,” she nods again, hair haloing her face. She nods and gives a little wave, the kind that only requires wriggling one’s fingers, and turns to leave. Her bouncing steps halt a little way down the hall, and she turns, giving Marit a clearly puzzled look—as if this is the first time she’s ever seen her. Marit pretends to have already turned back to her locker, engrossing herself in the contents until Jenny’s flip-flops and their accompanying noises fade into the distance.
Lunch passes in an oblivious haze, and later all Marit can recall of it is the light slanting through the windows in the library, the dust motes riding on the empty spaces in the air, the musty, comfortable smell of books—unsurprisingly, she finds peace there, and makes a sort of resolution to spend her free time there. Anything is better than the trees outside, the peacocks beneath, curious gazes, or knowing ones, if they are already aware. Are they?
Physical Education comes with discovering muscles that she didn’t know she had, and subsequently feeling their newfound awakening in the ache that comes after learning how to properly stretch oneself out before physical exercise. The class is co-ed, but split into sex-specific groups, the boys under the instruction of Mr. Willis and the girls under Ms. Parr. The boys, for the most part, are football players who use the class to get ahead in physical conditioning, on top of their two-a-day practice times. The girls mostly stand on the sidelines, in their Lockheed-issued uniforms, giggling and twirling their hair and narrowly missing having their heads knocked off by errant basketballs. She makes it a point of self-preservation to avoid any human contact during this period; for her, the danger is not in the flying basketballs and the rough-housing that goes on, knocking less cautious girls to the ground and doubtless causing them a world of embarrassment. The twenty minutes of class time that remain is spent in the showers, which look sanitized, much to Marit’s relief, and she slips out of the gymnasium complex a few seconds early, leaving her comrades to fuss over reapplying their make-up in the mirrors of the girls’ locker room.
Drama class is, surprisingly, headed by Dr. Warley, Lockheed’s dignified principal; it turns out to be one of two classes that she teaches, the other one being Forensics. Even in class, she is just as compelling as she had been during the morning assembly, speaking in even, knowledgeable tones. She reiterates what Marit already knows; that she will be assisting Mrs. Hunter, the English teacher, in helping to produce the Honors English 12’s performance of Macbeth—along with that, she assigns a textbook and syllabus, and a reading assignment that goes over the basics of stage production. As the day wears on, and her list of reading assignments for this first week grows larger, Marit’s head starts to pound, a slow rhythm that settles right between her eyes. The faces in the classroom blur in front of her eyes, until all human forms are unrecognizable. As charismatic and terrifying as Dr. Warley is, Marit tunes her words out toward the end of class, and when the bell rings she makes her way to the Art classroom on full autopilot control.
She is greeted with a surprise there: no textbooks, no syllabus, nothing of the sort of regularity she has come to suspect with Lockheed’s rigorous regiment of organization. Instead, she finds herself sitting before a large drawing sketchbook, with her name penned neatly in the top, right-hand corner. The teacher is Ms. Ainsley, possibly the youngest teacher she has had all day, who possesses a kind smile and kind eyes and quick-moving hands that illustrate her points. “I don’t want to teach you about art,” she says,” I want to teach you art. There is a difference. We won’t be learning about the symbolism of Monet’s rapid brushstroke, or Rembrandt’s chiaroscuro, or—well, you get the point.” She delivers a well-timed smile and moves to perch on the edge of her desk. “We’re going to be tapping your own emotions, your own styles, and we’re going to bring out the artistic souls in each other.”
She glances around the classroom, and Marit sits up, recognizing that this classroom experience might just turn out to be different than the rest. “Some of you I know,” Ms. Ainsley says, directing a twinkle-eyed gaze toward some students; Merit recognizes one, the dark-haired girl from her English class, who may or may not have been present in her other classes, up until this one. “Why don’t we introduce ourselves, and by introduce I don’t mean give me just your names, and that way we’ll all become better acquainted. I’d like to develop a sense of camaraderie between us all, since we’ll all be examining every facet of our emotional and creative selves in this class—and I think we’d be more comfortable with that if we all knew one another, don’t you?”
The class is friendly, at least—not solemn like English, not brain-dead like History and Algebra and Phys Ed, not crackling with electricity like Drama. The dark-haired girl is the only one she faintly recognizes; they all seem to comprise that ubiquitous but invisible group known for not belonging to the athletic types, or the popular types, or the loser types, or even the drug-induced comatose types. Some of them seem middle-of-the-road, ordinary; some of them seem like utter art snobs; still others seem intellectual, calm, and surprisingly down-to-earth. Marit offers only the tiniest bit of autobiographical knowledge of herself—“Umm…I’m Marit, I’m new…I’m a senior…”—and she flushes in consternation when Ms. Ainsley turns a raised eyebrow toward her. She glances down, flushing from the skin-crawling feeling of all the eyes on her, and the next student seems to rush to her defense, announcing his name with all the fanfare of a royal herald from the Middle Ages.
When the introductions are over, Ms. Ainsley continues, “You’ll keep your sketchbooks with you from Monday to Thursday, and you’ll give them to me every Friday so I can take them home to look at. Don’t think that the only mediums we’ll use are pencil, charcoal, and pastel, though—some of your other projects will make use of other mediums, but for now, just so I can get a sense of each of your styles, we’ll be focusing on the three mediums I specifically named.” Just before the bell rings for dismissal, the teacher proclaims their first assignment, to be completed by Wednesday: “I want each of you to draw a self-portrait. You can use any medium that you think appropriate, provided that it will reasonably engage with the paper material of your sketchbook. Pencil, charcoal, crayon, pen, pastel—this excludes paints! Along with this, I want a short paragraph detailing your artist statement—what the piece is significant to you, why you chose the medium you chose, what the piece explains about you—it doesn’t have to be word processed, it can be legibly handwritten. Have a great day. I’m very glad to have met all of you!”
She stands, driven by that almost unnamable hunger to venture downstairs in search of sustenance, unable to resist it any longer. But a flash of red catches at, and snags, the corner of her eye, and she turns unbidden toward her mirror. It’s her hair, swathing her in its long locks, a cape flowing down her back, and suddenly her hunger is forgotten as she walks hesitantly toward the mirror, her mind on the only homework she has yet to complete—a self-portrait.
She stares at the mirror and it seems to stare back, returning no insight except for that which she is already aware: what she looks like when she is tired, when she feels run down and restless all at once. But of what significance are these facts? What does a heart-shaped face, faint freckles, and sad brown eyes say about her? Should she draw herself with a location in mind, perhaps reading, should she not even draw herself—perhaps draw representations of herself? A book, a paint set, her mother’s smile? Pencil strokes for nostalgia, charcoal for character? Pastel for a certain quaint quality? The impossibility of the assignment overwhelms her for a moment, before she breaks her trance and turns back toward her bed, meticulously neatening her stack of books and gingerly placing the sketchbook on top. Her hunger has lessened suddenly, and she is filled with a disgust that overwhelms her. What is unbearable now is the not-knowing, the inability to envision herself, and it is more than just a simple representation of herself on a piece of paper to be turned in for a meaningless assignment. Is there anything there, at all?