Page 20 of However You Want Me

“I have to throw up,” I tell him, leaning forward and the books slip, my leg cramps.

I’m not sure when he starts to hit me. The blows seem like they’re coming from far away. We go back to the beginning of the list and through the whole thing again. At first, he hits me with an open hand, but that must be boring, too, because he switches to a fist.

Why does he do it? I don’t know. I guess it probably makes some kind of sense to the people who run this place, but it will never make sense to me. There’s just no reason for him to do this. It’s not even worth my time to figure it out.

My head is so fucked, I can barely make sense of the room. It spins and goes fuzzy. Everything does. I’m here but I’m not.

I’m also not sure when I stop…being there.

I’m still in the room. There’s no escape from this place, so my body stays on the chair. I don’t try to get away from Mr. Jay’s fist. I know where I am, just like I know the rules are taped to the wall opposite me. The print is too small for me to read them, but I don’t need the paper to tell me what they are.

My mouth moves, but it belongs to someone else. The longer I talk, the more I feel like someone else is talking for me.

The longer Mr. Jay hits me, the more it feels like he’s hitting someone else.

That’s been happening more often lately, I think. I exist in my body, but I don’t. The school exists around me, but it doesn’t. As I sit in the chair, answering Mr. Jay’s questions, I start to imagine another place.

I don’t imagine much at first. For a while, all I can picture is a sidewalk. It’s a regular sidewalk with some cracks in the concrete and grass on either side. It’s not like the patches of sidewalk in front of the school that don’t lead anywhere. This sidewalk leads to somewhere else—I know it.

Eventually, it becomes a street with houses and yards in the front. It’s not some half-abandoned place with one building in the middle of nowhere. It’s a neighborhood.

A nice neighborhood, with people who aren’t sick bastards in it. People who check up on each other to make sure they’re okay. Dads who mow the lawn on the weekends. Moms who go shopping on Wednesdays.

A fucking paradise, right?

I imagine walking down that sidewalk until the middle of the street. That’s when I stop and go into a house.

This isn’t my dad’s house. This is my house. I live here, and nobody else can get in. I can shut the door and flip the lock, and they can’t touch me. The living room has carpet, not concrete, and the furniture’s simple and clean. I’m safe here.

In this house, there’s a picture window in the living room. It’s not some bullshit prison privacy glass. It’s a normal window I can see out of, with curtains that I can close if I want. If I don’t, I can let the sun in. I could break that window with my bare hands, if I wanted, because it’s not safety glass.

In this house, I don’t want to break the window. I don’t need to. None of the people who run the school exist anymore.

Is this a daydream?

Guess it doesn’t matter.

In the daydream, or whatever it is, I sit down on the sofa in my living room and watch the sidewalk outside the house. People walk by. Little kids and teenagers and parents. All kinds of people.

And then she’s there.

She’s so fucking beautiful.

She’s beautiful even at this school, but in the sun, she looks incredible. Everything’s better in the sun. We’re older. Just old enough that no one can force us to be where we don’t want to be.

The girl must feel me watching, because she stops on the sidewalk and looks in. She meets my eyes and waves.

If I wanted, I could go out to her. I could talk to her. Nobody can punish me for that here.

I can do whatever I want. And none of this happened. I never learned the rules so I can look her in the eyes and it’s okay.

I could touch her, even. I could find out what her skin feels like under my hands. I could find out how warm she is. They couldn’t stop me. Nobody could stop me.

Somebody shakes my shoulder. Violently, in a bruising forceful way.

“Fucking pay attention when I speak to you!” he screams and it’s then I feel the blood on my lip, wait no, my nose. My nose bleeds and the pounding in my head gets worse.

Fuck, it hurts. I’m going to throw up.

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