Free And Then Things Fall Apart by Arlaina Tibensky Page B

pants. And here we are.
    The term is “heartbreak” because that is how it feels. Your heart, ripped apart like a steak torn in half. And all the while you are supposed to move forward with your own stupid high school life, and do your homework, and look at college brochures, and make crap with Nic for your Etsy shop, and try on prom dresses, and cheer your lungs out for your boyfriend at semifinals. All this while the organ that is keeping you alive is a hot mess, stretching and twisting itself in your chest like a zombie pushing himself out of a grave.
    When I’m feeling numb and want to cry, these are the things I think about:
    1. Their goofy wedding photo with the tux and the white lace. They look so ridiculously happy, I want to keek.
    2. How I used to climb into bed with them in the morning when I was little and they would let me.
    3. When they brought Coffee home from the shelter on Valentine’s Day with a red bow around her neck.
    I don’t think of these memories often. I thought if I typed them up, it would take away some of their power,like how turning on the bedside lamp makes the monster under the bed disappear. But seeing them in black and white makes these events seem like the names in
Suburban Life
of people who have died. It only makes the death of my parents’ marriage seem more real.

DATE: July 25
MOOD: Totally Betrayed. YET AGAIN.
BODY TEMP: 101
    When did my life become a total Lifetime movie cliché? I wouldn’t really call these pages a “diary” or even a “journal.” No hearts dotting the
I
s. They are just pages. Me, my brain, ink, and paper. Mine. Personal. It is obvious, and yet Gram feels that she must surreptitiously examine them while her pox-afflicted granddaughter sleeps like a log beneath the incapacitating coverlet.
    On cable, mothers are always sneaking off and reading their daughters’ diaries. They are looking for information about their sex lives. How far have they gone? In the really good movies, the daughter is a prostitute or a drug addict and/or sleeping with her history teacher, and there is a lot of screaming, and at some point the violated daughter stands and says, “How dare you!” or “You had no right!” Then the mother says, “Listen to me, young lady” or “As long as you’re living under my roof.” Don’t get me wrong, it’s a great script, but when it actually happens to you, it is sort of devastating.
    Maybe I’m jumping to conclusions. All Gram said yesterday was, “They look nothing like fleabites” as she inspected my arm. It got cold in the center of my stomach—dread, I guess. Then she added, “I’ve heard people say they look like, ah, bug bites, you know? How about a cup of tea?”
    I’ve been leaving my pages facedown on the bottom shelf of the nightstand. It’s not like it’s a big secret that I’m working on something in here. Typewriters are loud. My pages aren’t bound in a Hello Kitty embossed pink leatherette diary complete with miniature key. But for Christ’s sake, give me a freaking break. The pages are facedown for a reason. Can’t we all be mature adults here? When chicken pox sleep takes over my body, it is the severely deep, drooling rest of the dead. Gram could move furniture and rip walls down around me, and I wouldn’t wake up. Asleep, I am entirely vulnerable. I feel creeped out and under surveillance, like Sylvia did in the hospital with the tulips leering at her from the bedside table.
    Curiosity killed the cat, Gram.
    I thought we were friends.
    Haven’t I been betrayed enough?
    Now I’ll need to keep my pages under my pillow or between the mattress and box spring or like, on microfilm that I conceal in a false molar.
    When I was maybe eight or nine, I spent a weekend at Gram’s. She babysat me while my parents went away for aweekend. Wisconsin? Canada? Who knows. Who cares. All I