I’d just read Girl, Interrupted and thought if only Kaysen hadn’t been stupid enough to walk up the street to the butcher shop, it might’ve worked. That was her mistake: witnesses. I wouldn’t have that problem. There was nobody to check on me. I wouldn’t leave the apartment. A bottle of aspirin and a bottle of whiskey: foolproof escape.

But it didn’t fucking work.

Less than half the bottle went down before I wrapped my limbs around my toilet and heaved. I chugged more whiskey, praying it would numb my searing esophagus, then sloshed down another handful of pills. I really didn’t want to fail.

Time fractured. My head cracked on ceramic tile.

Hundreds of roaches marched down the walls. I tried to swat at the ones approaching my face and feet, but my arms wouldn’t obey. Translucent amber wings and spiny legs swarmed the top of the toilet then filled the bowl, mandibles snapping and desperate for a drink. A drink. A drink.

Pressure accumulated in my skull. Clawed toes prickled every inch of skin. My mouth and throat burned. A dull, rusted knife punctured my lower abdomen. I looked down. There was no stab wound. My stomach was shiny, auburn, scaled—a thorax. My arms barbed and pointy. I thought about hidden wings, about floating through trees, and then: nothing.

I woke ears ringing in such excruciating pain that I knew I wasn’t dead or dying.

But I couldn’t live like that.

I bawled, then crawled on throbbing human arms and legs to my bedroom, found my phone, and dialed 911. They pumped my stomach, monitored my kidneys for some time, then performed a psych eval and sentenced me to a month in-patient.

**

I’m not sure why life has always been so difficult for me—so much more difficult than it seems to be for others. In High School, it was easier to accept not being popular by disdaining the popular crowd. I wondered how people could be susceptible to peer pressure. Why do something because another is doing it? I wouldn’t even join the magnet program—not because I wasn’t smart enough but because the popular kids in the program were insufferable. I was never invited to anyone’s house parties, but the one time I was dragged there by a tenuous romantic flame, I watched them pass a bong and felt my eyebrows draw together to form a Grand Canyon of scorn.

It was never worse, though, than becoming Rowan’s friend.

Rowan is perpetually surrounded by devotees. She’s tiny, tan, pretty, Guamanian, feisty, magnetic: the quintessential party girl. I should’ve recognized her as the adult version of “the popular girl” from high school. But I was enamored.

She moved into apartment 5A, next door to me, a month after my 25th birthday. She’d been hired as a speech/language pathologist at Annandale High. I was teaching Composition and Developmental English at Northern Virginia Community College. She appeared at my door the day after she moved in, muffins on a platter in a reverse neighborly welcome, and I fell for her assertiveness, her energy, her interest in me.

She invited me to Yoga and spin classes. We ran together, though she never had a plan for distance, pace, route. A few times, we went barhopping where I was almost comfortable, with her by myside. Despite our differences, she was my best friend. And because people flocked to her, I had a sense that by association I was finally popular too.

But there were moments when this friendship befuddled me. Rowan seemed to operate from some unwritten rule book, a rule book everyone had read—everyone but me.

A year into our friendship, Rowan corralled her closest friends for a color run 5k. On the day of the race, some twenty women parked and flocked to Rowan’s car, where she handed out scissors.

“Cut your tee to make it cute,” she told me. “Then it’ll be sort-of tie-dyed when we’re done—and you can wear it again later, if you want!”

She beamed at me, at her brilliant idea.

Without watching anyone else, without much thought or concern, I lopped off the tee’s square sleeves, leaving giant holes around my arms, and put it on over my sports bra.

As we walked toward the starting line, I noticed the other girls had different alterations: their tees were cropped to display cleavage, midriffs. Their sleeves were not removed but shortened into flattering shoulder caps. I tried not to think of it, to insist to myself that my alterations also fulfilled the expectation of “cute.”

Rowan ran the 5k with her digital Canon SLR in hand. While race volunteers on either side of the course squeezed water bottles with multicolored powder (harmless corn starch, they insisted) at us runners, Rowan skittered behind them to protect her camera from the powder and snap photos of us.

At the end of the race, after we’d collected our finisher medals, Rowan gathered everyone.

“Here!” she yelled over our chatter, waving her lean arms. “Stand in front of the race billboard for a group photo.”

We lined up before the sign.

“Y’all are too wide,” she said. “Come in closer. Some of you kneel in front.”

I crouched on one knee in the front row.

Rowan snapped the pic.

Later, she sent out the digital images. In the photo, other girls’ cleavage, shoulders, arms, stomachs glistened polychromatic in the sun. I looked at myself crouching in the front with my pasty skin and unflattering squat, shapeless, potato sack of a tee. My cheeks and ears burned with shame. Per usual, I was an alien, an outlier. A fool. Why hadn’t Rowan explained to me what “cute” meant—or how to create it? Intellectually, I didn’t know whether to blame Rowan or myself. But my heart blamed Rowan: she was supposed to be my friend. She might have attempted to protect me from myself.

When she married Robert two years later, I watched via Facebook as her life became more and more enviable. A Husband—US Ambassador to Andorra. Two boys. Living in Europe, traveling the globe. Elegant photos with other ambassadors, congressmen, generals, etc. Eventually, I hit “snooze” on her account. From that same apartment in Annandale, which I was terrified to leave, I could no longer witness her social success.

What if Rowan was how life is supposed to be? Not my terror of change. Not my incapacity to foster friendships. Not my constant frustration to understand unspoken rules and what people expect of me. Not my same job for decades. Not my two cats and Gilmore Girls on Netflix repeat. Not that, but travel, adventure, parties, people, attention?

Once a year over the next fifteen years, as though she set herself a reminder, Rowan checked in on me. If I replied to her, she ignored my reply and forgot about me again for another year. But for some reason, this year, she insisted on sharing her bounty in this mini-novella:

Wrapping up our first year in Madrid. Only three more years and Robert will retire! Long overdue but wanted to get Gavin through high school abroad. It’s the hectic spring of his junior year. He has settled in and seems to be happy here. I am thankful. Nick comes home Saturday!!! So excited! I have missed him so much.

My vision blurred and the top of my head grew hot. How come I was incapable of fulfilling this expectation of a life well-lived?

Hence, aspirin.

**

There I sat in the same tan scrubs, no zipper or tie closures, in a square, cobalt retro chic velvet chair—twice a day for two months. Sometimes the sun entered the room through south- facing windows from the east, sometimes from the west. Perhaps my ankles crossed at the floor; or my standard issue white crocs laid akimbo by the chair’s feet, and I hugged my knees like a giant squatting hobgoblin. My position changed, but only that. Same person. Same facial expression (ennui). Same chair. Same place: a room made saccharine with two silk orchids, a monstera plant with waxy leaves, a mahogany desk topped by a bronze lamp with translucent green glass shade, what appeared to be Monet’s Water Lilies in an ornate gold frame, and floor-to-ceiling bookcases populated with leather-bound Philosophy of Psychiatry encyclopedias that would bore me less than my doctor’s repetitive, “…and how does that make you feel?” My attention was often commandeered by the dusty floor beneath the monstera: like the girl at the ball in her best gown, layered skirts concealing tattered, holey stockings. One couldn’t possibly see it unless they sat in this very chair, but deep in, just past the pot’s base, a dead roach lay on its back, six legs in the air.

Cassandra, the attending psychiatrist, talked at me. Sincere suicide attempts, like me, skipped past residents, skipped fellows; we were led straight to the head attending.

She wasn’t old or unattractive, but the barrier between us (manifest in wooden desk) prohibited connection. I watched her mouth move, the bobble of her mandible, the tension and release of her masseter, the compression, flexion of her lips. Sometimes, I spied the pink tip of her tongue, soft and vulnerable. I looked away.

I suspected I was still part roach, but I tried to listen and nod so she wouldn’t suspect. My fingers sought a clump of hair. They twisted it into a little rope then looped it into a knot. My pointer finger pressed into the center of the knot to release it, and the process began again. I was half-aware of the habit, that it caused fraying, but it kept me calm, so I didn’t stop.

Twice a week, Cassandra attempted to affix a new label, a new acronym, to my lapel: MDD, GAD, PTSD, C-PTSD, NPD, OCD, BP, BPD, even SPD. But they fell off each time, their adhesive spent and worthless. For each, I fell two or three symptoms short of diagnostic criteria. I failed at diagnosis the way I failed at life. Nobody knew why I was there, and this somehow made it all worse: how was it possible I didn’t fit in even there?

After a month, Cassandra’s lost monologue manifested halfway through a sentence: “…go back to work.”

“What?” I started, my heels dropping to the bleached linoleum, my palms on the chair arms.

“Well I don’t see why not,” she said. “You fit no diagnostic criteria. You had an acute crisis, but that seems to have passed. You exhibit no indications of further self-harm. You are polite and, although quiet and solitary, engage without conflict.”

It made no sense to me. I was still part roach. I stared at her hands.

“Honestly, I think this was an isolated event, Emily,” she told me. “What I really think you need is a return to your routines, your life. You love your students, don’t you?”

“I mean, yes…”

“When you talk about your job, it’s the only time I see you animate,” she gathered papers, tapped their bottom edge on the desk. She laid them down and closed a manila folder over them. “I think your job gives you purpose, and I think that’s what you need right now. Not medication. Not isolation. Not a break. People and purpose.”

“How do you know I won’t just try to off myself again?” I asked.

Cassandra looked at me. I dropped my eyes to the floor.

“I don’t,” she admitted. “But I suspect…” She narrowed her eyes at me and tilted her head to the side. “So this sort of absence from work makes it difficult, administratively, to return. But it happens that the Dean of English and I were undergrad roommates at Mason. I’ve asked Sylvia to help remove any red tape for you. We agreed—just one class this semester. You don’t need to overwhelm yourself. Pour your energy into those twenty students, then we’ll assess. She’ll keep tabs on you, maybe sit in on two of your classes within the first month, and you’ll meet with me to discuss how it’s going.”

“So…that’s it?” I asked.

“That’s it for now, Emily. It’s been a pleasure having you here with us,” she lied.

**

Cassandra was right. In the classroom, my authority over students generally required them to listen to me. It was the only place in life where I was seen or heard. Moreover, alien and misfit myself, I grew a deep affinity for any students I suspected shared these experiences—and at a community college, those were many. A handful admitted to me that they had ADHD or dyslexia. Their brains operated differently. My brain operated differently somehow too. I didn’t understand them, necessarily, but I could empathize. So I bent over backwards, extending deadlines or offering additional office hours, to ensure their success. It was for students like these, in whom I recognized something of myself, that I returned to the classroom each semester. Despite its stressors, I loved my job.

Upon my return from mandated absence, Jacob threw atypical learner flags from our first day of class. As a literacy narrative, my students read Superman and Me by Sherman Alexie. I mentioned in passing that although Alexie was in some social hot water, I still found this reading insightful, moving, valuable. Jacob sat in the back row of the classroom and clacked on his laptop, then his hand shot into the air while I was mid-sentence.

“Yes, Jacob,” I nodded at him.

“Do you want to know why he’s controversial?” he asked.

In truth, I wasn’t sure why Alexie was controversial, and was unprepared to talk about it in front of twenty students. For this reason, students like Jacob are my own personal catastrophes. I never knew what they would say and how that would shape discussion. I put in a penny and rolled the lever expecting a pressed image but then received from them, to my horror, a balloon animal dragon spewing actual fire. I could never be sure I’d regain control over the situation. Moreover, if my mouth ran too far and long on unprepared tangents, it might run itself into territory that could get me fired. To protect myself, I shut Jacob down.

“Ah…” I held out a palm toward him. “Not at this moment. Let’s chat about it after class,” I offered.

Jacob face flashed irritation, but he nodded, and I carried on with homework instructions.

After class, Jacob waited stiffly until other students were done chatting with me, then stood before my podium.

Jacob stood about my height or an inch or two taller, maybe five eight. His blonde hair was a contrived sort of messy, like Jack Frost from The Guardians. It must’ve required texture clay to hold that shape. He had a sharp, clean-shaven jawline and stripping blue eyes that missed nothing yet never connected with mine. On steady rotation, beneath his ever-present zipper hoodie, he sported vintage graphic tees with classic videogames, cartoons, or bands from 90s over tidy khaki cargos and white sneakers. Despite his distance, his aftershave overwhelmed, and my body longed to flee. Sometimes I wish I could turn my senses, my perceptions off. Or at least down. Hopefully, none of this registered on my face.

“Yes, Jacob. What did you find?”

He pulled out his phone to read to me: “So it looks like as few as three and as many as ten women have accused Alexie of sexual harassment,” he said, scrolling.

“Oh. Well that’s horrible to hear and a major disappointment. Still, I think his story is valuable for you to read for homework.”

Jacob’s eyes widened, and I registered an almost imperceptible head shake. His fingers fumbled with the zipper on his hoodie, dragging it a few inches up and down. Up and down.

“You don’t agree that someone who has done bad things is still worth reading?” I asked.

“No, I think it changes everything,” he said. “It undermines his credibility completely.”

I tilted my head. It had been on my mind for a while, and I was excavating my own convictions on the matter. But I disagreed with Jacob.

“What about other artists who have created masterpieces?” I asked. “Should we still listen to Michael Jackson’s music? Or appreciate Picasso’s paintings?”

“Oh absolutely not!” he said without hesitation. “Michael Jackson, no.”

Not even Michael Jackson. My stomach twisted. Was this the sort of kid who’d obliterate my RateMyProfessor and trash my instructor evaluations over a misalignment of worldviews?

“Many people disagree with you. For example, Picasso’s Guernica makes a powerful political statement about the atrocities of war.”

He continued shaking his head and sliding his zipper, his perspective immovable.

“So I just bought a book,” I told him, “called Monsters: A Fan’s Dilemma. I haven’t read it yet, but it unpacks this issue. Would you like me to send you the Amazon link when I get home so you can check it out?”

Jacob’s fingers paused. His head shake evolved into a nod. He made fleeting eye contact.

“Okay,” he said.

As Jacob walked out of class and I packed my laptop into my messenger bag, I processed that argument might never persuade Jacob away from some of his hard-held beliefs. He clung fast to some moral compass and had a clear idea of what he believed to be right and wrong; his just wasn’t the same moral compass as mine. And while I wanted to guide him to open his mind, I feared the potential power he had over me given my situation: I didn’t want to lose my job— especially since Cassandra believed it would help my mental health. Indeed, during the exchange with Jacob, my thoughts were distracted from self-annihilation. I needed to not fail.

**

A week later, I introduced our first essay prompt. Jacob walked in and moved toward the back right corner, as usual, until something caught his eye: a row ahead of him was an unused office desk chair. The other chairs in the classroom were standard plastic four-leg chairs. One could not control their height. They had no bells or whistles. They did not swivel. This other chair, five feet in front of his nose, was never occupied. It was adjustable in all ways: it could raise and lower, its back could recline, it swiveled, and it had castors that locked.

Jacob walked around to the chair and spun it with his hand.

“Um…Emily?” he looked at me. “Can I use this chair?”

At that moment, I realized it was the second chair of this sort in the room. The other was mine, behind the podium, off which I frequently tumbled, to my everlasting embarrassment. Would permitting him the use of the chair be contrived as favoritism? How could I know? Social norms are lost on me. Still, I couldn’t see how…considering any student could’ve commandeered the use of it prior to Jacob. Yet they did not. If his classmates complained, I’d point out, First come, first served.

“Sure, I guess?” It was really a question.

I continued with class and introduced our essay, a memoir of about three or four pages. I explained to the class that a creative nonfiction essay of this length could not be an autobiography.

“Not your whole life story,” I told them, “but rather a moment in your life that shaped you into the person you are today. If you have trouble coming up with a topic, consider the moments of your life characterized by the greatest tension or conflict.”

Jacob sat broody in his seat at the back of the class, swiveling right and left. At moments, I registered his head shake, but dismissed it. If Jacob had something to say, he’d say it, confound the consequences.

The rest of the session was unremarkable; Jacob contributed little.

After class, Jacob waited patiently once more as three of my dual-credit students, high school freshman, chittered away in my presence (including me or not including me, I couldn’t be quite sure) about memoir topic ideas. Once they left, Jacob approached the podium, where I remained to pack my things.

“So, Ms. Foster – er – Emily, I have a concern.”

“Sure, what is it, Jacob?”

“Well, I don’t really think the thing that was the greatest conflict in my life is something I should write for this class.”

It is not my place to pry. Student privacy matters to me. We all have stories we choose not to share. We all have moments that bring us shame. I had no intent to ask about Jacob’s story.

“Well of course, if you’re not comfortable sharing it with your classmates, then you should choose something else. Was there another story that comes to mind that might also work?”

“I can’t think of anything,” he said flatly, his eyes trained on the floor by my shoe. My legs were exhausted from standing all class, but perhaps we could both be more comfortable, both physically and psychically, if we sat together.

“Join me, let’s sit.”

Jacob sat on one side of the long desk at the front of the classroom, and I sat across from him, my back to the board.

“You see, I think it might make my classmates uncomfortable,” he continued. He wanted to tell me the story. This happened often: students shared with me hidden pregnancies, nonbinary discoveries, divorces, failures, dropouts. I was not prepared to handle any of these confidences, but I wouldn’t trade them for the world. These were the students for whom I taught. So, I prepared myself to listen.

“I was arrested by the FBI for threatening mass violence at a public high school,” Jacob said.

His eyes played across my face briefly for a reaction, but I couldn’t react. I was too busy processing the seven million different directions this conversation might take, and I was too focused on juggling this information without dropping it.

I looked at him as he sat in front of me: as always, clean, in his socially acceptable clothes and what I suspected was a popular hairstyle. His leg jittered and trembled the desk. He wasn’t angry or threatening. Just human.

“Well that would be scary for our students to read,” I said, considering my high school dual-credit students whose parents must’ve signed a waiver for them to attend my class, since they were all minors. Surely those parents never entertained their kids’ physical safety while signing that form.

“How did you get caught up in that?” I asked, not really expecting an answer.

“There are online forums. Reddit. Tumblr. People idolize guys like Eric Harris.”

“Do you mean they are simply fascinated by him, or they want to emulate him?”

“Well,” he paused, “both.”

His eyes connected with mine, then I looked down at a doodle on the desk before me. I couldn’t think clearly while looking at him. It scrambled my brain.

“You wanted to emulate.”

“Yes,” he admitted simply.

Yet he was sitting in my classroom at this moment, not behind bars. The irony didn’t elude me that I was also sitting in this classroom at this moment. I was not six feet belowground. Moreover, I had a modicum of trust in the FBI. Whatever happened, I thought, must be in the past.

“And now?” I asked. “Do you still want to emulate him now?”

“No!” Jacob said. “Not anymore. I was young. Stupid. I felt alone and angry, I guess. My teachers were all idiots. None of them really knew anything they were teaching, and they hated when I knew more than they did. They always shut me down.”

My thoughts raced: had I ever treated him that way?

Then, in floated images of Rowan’s wide espresso eyes and ivory teeth. Her perfect marriage, her perfect children, her perfect life—a life the world perceived as “normal” and “right,” a life from which I would forever be excluded. I looked down at my hands quickly to be sure they were still hands, not clawed forelegs. There they were. Human fingers folded over human fingers, skin to skin.

“I see,” I said. And I did see. “And you were impressionable.”

“Yes. Totally,” he waved his open palm over the desk as though to set this apart from himself.

“Well, I can understand your disillusionment with society and especially our education system,” I said, almost more to myself than to him. “No, I agree with you that this is not a good option for your memoir essay. If your peers read it, they may become scared of you. Besides, being incarcerated is a big deal. Don’t waive your right to privacy.”

As soon as it escaped my lips, I thought, Does he deserve privacy? Immediately, I felt the pressure of three different parties’ answers to that question: the parents of my high school dual credit students, the law, and Jacob himself. Running beneath all that was something else. I had an answer to that question on my own behalf too, and my answer was unexpected. I was interested in Jacob. I was fascinated by him. In him I saw something I recognized in myself: a rejection of social norms—and for what I agreed was valid reason.

We discussed a new story topic for the memoir essay assignment. I asked whether he has a relationship with his parents, and whether he might inquire with them for ideas. He said yes, he does—and he would. He mentioned he could also ask his therapist.

He seemed relieved. Relieved not to be forced to write this thing? Relieved not to be ostracized by me for the information he shared? Both? I couldn’t tell.

We walked out of the classroom. It was dark, nearly 8pm in January. We bid one another good night, and he descended the main stairs to the parking lot, while I ascended to the building’s fifth floor and my faculty office.

**

I sat before my sleeping monitor for a moment, then woke it up and hammered in my credentials. Then I sat some more. Then I googled Jacob, only to be horrified by the results. Everything he told me was true. He’d been arrested by the FBI, incarcerated during trial, and expelled from Springfield High School—two years before crossing the threshold into my class.

Numb and uncertain, I texted a coworker to ask what she would do.