Free Gravity Brings Me Down by Natale Ghent Page A

Miss Smith?”
    I don’t even answer. I turn around and walk past her, into the classroom, taking my seat.
    The next hour and twenty-three minutes is the longest hour and twenty-three minutes of my life. I’m not just falling toward a black hole; I’m being crushed in the middle of it. The underwear has me so freaked I can barely breathe, let alone plot my own demise.
    Overtop of my torment, Miss B. lectures us about how badly written our last essays were. She says she’s disappointed in us, we’re capable of better things, blah, blah, blah. By the time the bell rings for class changeI’m completely derailed. To make things worse, Miss B. calls me to her desk.
    “Do you have a topic for your term project, Sue?”
    “Yes.”
    She smiles at me and waits for me to explain.
    “Oh… uh … I’m doing suicide … you know… why people do it and … the differences between men and women … etc.”
    Miss B. furrows her brow. “Oh.” She looks intently up at me. “What reference material are you going to use?”
    “Well… lots of personal research … and the Internet and stuff.”
    “… personal research …?”
    “You don’t have to worry or anything.”
    Miss B. continues to study my face. “Okay, well, I’ll be interested to see what you come up with,” she says, then hands me my essay. There’s a big “B-”written in red ink at the top.
    B-minus?! I’ve never gotten anything below an A before, ever. This is definitely the
worst
day of my life.
    I’m so flipped out, I don’t even bother going to my locker. I don’t bother to look for Sharon. I just hit the bar on the door of the school and leave, never to return.
    I can’t go home, and I don’t want to go to the Tip, so I wander downtown and sit on one of the benches near the naked family. I just sit there, with all the other bench-sitters, staring into space. I can say one thing for sure: I’ll never say bad things about people who sit on benches again. Now I understand how people come to this. Maybe dirty underwear crawled out of their pantsin high school. Maybe they got a crappy mark on a term paper, or had to deal with miscreants like Chocko and Biff, and the building blocks of despair got stacked so high, their only recourse was to sit on a bench until they die.

    I put a Gauloise to my lips but I’m too depressed to bring myself to light it. I wonder, if I sit on this bench long enough, will I succumb to exposure? I hope so, because I don’t think I can go on any more with anything. I really mean it this time. I run endlessly through my litany of choices, over and over and over.
    I don’t know how long I’ve been sitting when I hear a familiar voice.
    “Hello.”
    It’s Mabel. There’s no escaping anyone in this stultifying town. Instinctively, I remove the Gauloise from my lips and hide it behind my back.
    “Marie, darling, I’ve been looking all over for you.”
    Our eyes meet and she frowns with concern.
    “Why, Marie, whatever is the matter, dear? You look as though you’ve lost your best friend.”
    She touches my face and I actually start to cry.
    “Oh, no, no, no, no, no … don’t cry, dear. No, no. Come home, darling, I’ll make you something to eat and you can tell me all about it.”
    Mabel takes me by the hand, gently raising me up. I’m so far gone, I let her escort me down the street toward her apartment. I don’t care who sees us. We stop in the foyer. She has her keys on the little bungee cord around her wrist and opens the door, no problem. At the elevators, she hesitates, so I press the button and we wait, her arm around my shoulders. When the doors open, we get on, and I push the button for the fourteenth floor. The elevator stops on the third. An old woman steps in. She looks at me suspiciously, but Mabel sets her straight.
    “My daughter,” she says. “She’s the baby.”
    The woman rides with us to the tenth floor where she gets off, forcing a smile on her way out. In the hallway on the fourteenth,