SOME GIRLS ARE*
*(COURTNEY’S VERSION)
MONDAY
fit check
ready?
where are you?
bitch where are you??? seriously?
wherteh fuckare you???>?
ejrtr str upi
woke up threw up
Regina drags her finger up and down her phone’s screen, rolling the messages Friday to Saturday and back again. Eyes open ahead of her alarm, her entire body sounding one. Wrists yellowed and purpled with recently acquired bruises, rug burns on her knees, that needling feeling both sides of her skin locking her in. In event of shame, her therapist once told her, break glass. Body scan. Close eyes, deep breath, find the person buried beneath. Thing is, she’s got so many layers of it now and the latest isn’t so easy to shift. It has a different kind of weight to it she doesn’t know what to do about and she doesn’t go to therapy anymore because her therapist is dead.
woke up, threw up. None of them have texted since Saturday, but then again, neither has she. She considers her closet. She considers the oppressive September heat that leaves everyone sticky and limp by day’s end. She considers the bruises on her wrists, and the rug burns on her knees.
sorry I bailed, she finally texts Anna. She has chosen long sleeves, jeans. think I got what Kara had. Vomit emoji. Heart.
“That’s what you’re wearing?” Her mother sets a rubbery egg scramble in front of her father, who glances at her and says, “Nothin’ wrong it.” Her mother says, “She’s going to give herself heat stroke.” And he says, “It’s fine, Mel,” because he’s been afraid of Regina ever since a young woman’s body carved itself out of his little girl. The less he sees of it, the better. “It’s fine, Mel,” Regina repeats. Her mother grimaces and says, “Breakfast?” And the question echoes in Regina’s head as she leaves the house, its weak birdsong ending in an upward, hopeful lilt.
Breakfast? Breakfast? Breakfast?
Halfway to school, she’s so sick with sun. Every covered part of her is suffocating, but she’s committed to the bit: she will filter her absurd OOTD through the lens of disordered eating and Anna will accept it because Anna will always and forever unconditionally accept the part of Regina that hates herself.
Three-quarters of the way to school, her boyfriend occurs to her. Where is Josh on this brutally hot morning to offer up wheels and AC in exchange for ‘mouth stuff’ the block before Hallowell High? She checks and the last message he sent was to ask her how much it was he owed her again for the condoms she picked up last week but also like, wouldn’t the fair thing be for her to pay half.
🤮 💖
Hallowell High has a heart, and it sits directly in the center of Anna Morrison’s chest. Today, its pulse is a bright staccato, her classmates falling effortlessly into its rhythm—but not her. Every time Regina thinks she’s got it, she falls out again. Hallowell High has eyes and they’re planted directly in the center of Anna Morrison’s face. Regina feels the intensity of its gaze travel over her sweat-soaked armpits, her flushed cheeks. She swipes her palm across her forehead. Where is Anna, anyway? She scopes out the parking lot just in time to see a familiar black convertible pull in. Break glass, she thinks. Close eyes, breathe deep, find the person buried beneath. She’s mentally shifting through the shards, bloodying her imagined hands good in the process. They come up empty.
A flash of blond catches her eye. She snaps to, navigates the unceasing cacophony of classmate-bullshit to get inside. The cold bite of the air-conditioning returns her to her body, and now that she is back in her body, she needs armor.
“Kara. Kara.”
Kara is one of its weakest plates, but still—better to have something between you and the world than directly absorb its blows, and besides, they had a moment last weekend, didn’t they?
They meet in the middle of the hall. The immediate relief of their two-of-fiveness washes over her.
“Anna?” she asks.
“What about her?”
“You see her?”
“Yeah.”
“Where?”
Kara smiles and turns down the hall. Regina processes it, then follows. It’s not the first of the morning’s misgivings, but it’s the first she’s willing to recognize as such because following Kara is not the given order of things.
She freezes when she arrives. Witnesses the simple opening sequence of a much darker dance: Jeannette and Marta stand at Marta’s locker and usher Kara between them, like they never do, because that is Regina’s space, which Regina holds for Anna, like she always does. And when Anna arrives, she shifts left into the space beside her.
Kara stands in it now.
She needs to talk to Anna, but Anna is nowhere. Yet Anna is everywhere. Anna Morrison is Hallowell High. She’s its heartbeat, its sight, its, soul, body, mind. Regina detours into the washroom, not because she thinks her best friend will be waiting for her there, but to stand in front of the mirrors to get one last look at herself alive.
Anna? Anna? Anna?