Fifteen

A hole had formed in the ceiling and water was dripping through, forming a puddle about a foot next to my head. Initially it hadn't bothered me, but now it was starting to splash, to leave little drops flecking my face.

Maybe I ought to have picked someplace dryer to go. Maybe I should have gone someplace warmer. And I definitely should have remembered to put some jeans in my car. My dress was starting to get a little ratty.

But even though I was doubtlessly starting to smell a small bit, I wasn't ready to go back. I liked it here, even though it was drippy, and a little chilly, and I could frequently hear some sort of moderately large animal shuffling around. But the animal(s) didn't bother me, and I didn't bother it, and I had some food, and I had some blankets and everything was good.



And, by God, I could think here. That was the real problem with home: I couldn't think. Even at school, where I was supposed to be getting a freaking education, I couldn't think. I mean, sure, I could think about the freaking derivative of a rational function (quotient rule) or I could think about who did the gold foil experiment (Rutherford or Thompson?) but none of it meant anything. And that drove me insane.

I had been slowly becoming one of those pissy emo kids who were oh-so-troubled and oh-so-sad because their lives were oh-so-terrible even though they were living in a beautiful house and were going to college. And I hated those pissy emo kids.

But one day, in the few moments before I woke up, I wondered if maybe I was dead. Sure, it was a crazy, irrational thought, but I was really certain, for a moment or two, that I was dead.

I liked that idea.

I'm not going to lie--that kind of freaked me out. And all that day I thought about it. And then I realized that those few seconds, the ones where I thought I was dead, were the best of my day.

Which was stupid, because I don't want to kill myself. I've never been suicidal. I have too damn many things to do to be suicidal. But if I had just died? Then it'd be out of my hands. There was no regretting something that just happened--it wouldn't have been my choice. I would have just had to accept it.

That was the day that I came up with the plan. It was a sick representation of Walden Pond, sure (another thing I was allowed to think about there--the transcendentalists, the literature, what other people had been thinking about), but it worked. There was nothing for me to do there but think.

I liked things like this. And that was probably why I couldn't fathom going home. Staying here was, for now, the best thing I could do. An early Christmas present, if you will. Something a little self-indulgent.

This was the world's present to me: oblivion.