Free Two or Three Things I Forgot to Tell You by Joyce Carol Oates Page A

course—Blade Runner was crazy—sick—but smiling calmly and provocatively at the camera, lifting her arms so you could see her underarms, where, too, there were small cryptic wounds—and—
    â€œMerissa? May I come in?”
    Merissa was stunned: Her mother had rapped on the door to her room and was opening it before Merissa could draw breath to reply.
    Asking Merissa, in a bright voice, what she was doing “hidden away” in her room alone so much, with the door closed—“Seems like I scarcely see you anymore.”
    Merissa was sprawled on her bed, in jeans and her long-sleeved GUERRILLA GIRL jersey, which she wore sometimes as a pajama top. Textbooks and papers were spread about her like camouflage, and on her laptop screen was a Quaker Heights Day School webpage, photos of microorganisms Mr. Kessler had posted for an assignment.
    â€œYou rush through dinner and don’t even watch television any longer. I miss you!”
    This was pathetic—Merissa hadn’t watched television with her mother in recent memory. Occasionally she’d watched with her father—the World Series last fall, History Channel documentaries on World War II, special news broadcasts, reruns of The Simpsons . Next to the internet, the newly discovered website blogs of Blade Runner, Black Swan, Death Angel, and others devoted to cutting, piercing, tattooing of the most amazing kinds, TV was mostly just boring .
    â€œI’m working, Mom. I have tons of homework before I even get to calculus—which is really, really hard.”
    â€œBut why are you working all the time ? Does everyone at your school work so—frantically?”
    Merissa shrugged. It was ridiculous, the way her mother was peering at the computer screen—at the highly magnified pictures of unicellular creatures—as if, if she stared hard enough, she would know what on earth they were. (Protozoa?)
    Merissa herself scarcely knew. She’d been neglecting Mr. Kessler’s assignments as she’d been neglecting Mr. Doerr’s calculus assignments. She did other things with her computer and then, near eleven p.m., when she was supposed to go to bed, she became panicked and tried to compensate for wasted time: too late.
    She wasn’t even texting her friends any longer. All that—that total waste of time—she’d eliminated. Yet still, she hadn’t time for homework, studying for tests, planning special projects.
    â€œI can’t believe that everyone at school works as hard as you do, Merissa. I’ve talked with the mothers of some of your friends—like Hannah—and they say—”
    â€œTalked with who? What do you mean—‘talked with’? About me? Are you talking about me ?”
    Merissa was edgy, irritable. She had tried to eat as little as possible that night at dinner, preferring to escape upstairs to her room as quickly as she could.
    (Maybe, after Mom went to bed, Merissa would go downstairs—quietly!—and into the kitchen, to get a smoothie from the refrigerator to bring back upstairs with her.)
    â€œWell—no. Of course not. But I’ve been worried—wondering . . . Where is Hannah? I haven’t seen her here in a while.”
    Merissa’s mother tried to speak lightly and without reproach—she was a very nice woman, Merissa knew, not at all bossy or bitchy like certain of her friends’ mothers, and nothing at all like Tink’s monster-mother, Big Moms—still, Merissa was tired of being spied on.
    â€œHannah is busy, Mom. Just like me.”
    â€œYou used to study together. Has something happened between you?”
    â€œYou’d have to ask Hannah, Mom. Or Hannah’s mother.”
    â€œOh, Merissa! Please don’t be sarcastic; it doesn’t become you.”
    Still, Merissa’s mother was trying to speak casually, even teasingly. When Merissa happened to overhear her on the phone speaking