There's that girl. Jesus I worry about her.Imagine this:
You walk into the main office of a campus highschool located in the middle of a cornfield. East of nowhere. And there she is. You don't even notice her until you go to sit down. Because you almost sit on her. Because she's like a ghost.
You step back startled, shaking. Her skin is grey. Anemic. Black hair covers her face. Arms dangling at her sides. Fingers barely brushing the floor, collecting dust under her fingernails.
You go to see if she's dead.
You touch her forehead. Brush the hair away from her face. She's like a bad winter afternoon. She doesn't move. You lift her arm up against your chest. It's limp. It needs the support. She doesn't move, she's not disturbed. But she has a pulse. You lift your fingers from her wrist, examine the slight impression they've made. She's just crashed out in some drug-induced sleep. Again. You wonder if you'll ever see her alive after this. You wonder if you ever have at all.
You might lift up her limp body and hold her... just hug her. But you're afraid you might die, too. It's just a little too close.
She's not waiting for a ride to come and get her. She doesn't go to school. Because of this. Her mother just works here. Her father skipped out on them and left her mother with nothing but her and her brother. Her brother got put in jail. And evicted. So I guess it was her turn to fuck things up. So here she is, dangling lifelessly over a hard, wooden desk. Ash-colored skin washed out by the buzzing flourescent light. She won't go to school. She's too sick. Of herself. Of everything. What's a mother to do?
Well, she invested in get-rich-quick propaganda, got sucked into pyramid schemes. Blew all of her cash trying to help her children, but all she did was give a couple of junkies their fix.
And she went insane, too. We got one of her tapes in the mail the other day. And I genuinely feel sorry for her, but there's nothing I can do.
She kicked her son out, but he keeps coming back, and she sent her daughter off to what used to be a school for truly smart people but has since started to resemble a mental institute. It's the only way she'll go to class, though. I don't even know that it makes a difference.
The movies are too violent.
The music is too sexist.
The TV is too racist.
And you can say that life is like any of these, but it's not as big-budget, pretty, or theatrical.And I keep wondering if maybe they catch on from her sunken eyes and her disappearing act that she's decomposing right in front of their eyes. I keep wondering if it hasn't already happened.