Chapter III

Chapter three

Myra

When Myra got home, Melissa had the TV turned down to a dull buzz and headphones in her ears. Myra could hear the blast of Melissa’s heavy metal over the sound of the news. Striding across the room, she snatched the headphones away and dropped them on the couch - the faint sound of some guy screaming with a loud guitar playing a riff in the background and the pulse of drums and cymbals filled the air - and Myra fixed Melissa with a stern look that seemed out of place because the roles should have been reversed.

            “If you aren’t going to watch TV, you could at least turn it off,” Myra said.

            “I was reading the subtitles,” Melissa replied.

            “Do you ever wonder why,” Myra said, “our electric bill comes back and we can’t pay it?” This was meant for herself, though she secretly hoped Melissa would hear. In her mind, she had said this evenly and looked Melissa in the eyes while saying it; in reality, she had spoken to her feet and under her breath.

            Although Melissa’s headphones were already halfway over her ears, she did hear. She pulled her headphones to her neck and fixed Myra with a stare that said So what? and I don’t care and maybe also Screw you. But what she said was “We always get by.”

            Myra tried to maintain eye contact, but Melissa was unyielding, and Myra finally looked away first. She felt hot with a disturbed feeling. It was a feeling that was synonymous to the words this is not right.

“I don’t want to get by,” Myra muttered, turning away. “I want to…”

She didn’t really know what she wanted as much as feel what she wanted. But having to wear the same shoes all year long and turning her baby clothes into gloves for the winter certainly didn’t make the cut.

Although, technically, she wouldn’t have to if she took some money from her college savings. But that was strictly for ensuring Myra’s escape from 708 Glenwood Lane. She needed every cent to, hopefully, get her into college.

It wasn’t that the Walkers were poor in the usual no-running-water and barely-any-food-to-last-a-day way people thought of when they heard the word. Rather, Melissa’s two jobs - one working at a beauty salon and the other doing the same from her home - and Myra’s one job ensured them a roof over their heads, clothes in their closets (though Myra usually got Melissa’s hand-me-downs), and food in their bellies. They were left with enough for luxuries most would have spent on clothes or shoes, but which Myra saved carefully in jars beneath her bed and Melissa spent on beauty supplies for her job. This plus the occasional odd trinket Melissa got from their neighbors as a thank-you for some expert beautifying kept Myra and Melissa content.

“Wait,” Melissa called. Myra turned back, almost hopeful, but Melissa was just pointing at the television screen, which showed a steaming, orange vehicle wrecked on the side of the road, the fender concave around a tree. “Isn’t that your friend’s?”

Myra began to walk back slowly. “No - I mean, she isn’t my friend. But yeah - that’s Clara’s.” She wasn’t sure whether the appropriate action after this was to leave or elaborate; Melissa addressed her far too little for Myra to have experience in the narrow field of conversations with her mother.

“Clara is just a co-worker.”

A co-worker that didn’t show up for work today, Myra thought. Work, where I met Sean. Then, Myra felt ashamed at the lack of priority in her mind. An accident was far more important than a boy. Even though that wasn’t how she felt.

            “The one with twenty shades of lipstick in her purse?”

            “Not twenty. Like ten.” Myra edged closer to the couch, curious and cautious. Melissa had just referenced a joke Myra had made at the kitchen table, which didn’t make sense, as Melissa tended to consider most conversations - the ones she wasn’t having with herself - background noise, what she engaged in when she was bored.

            “Hmm.” Melissa shrugged. “Does she have one that matches that car?” Clara’s car practically glowed in the darkness, looking like the sort of thing a cat would throw up.

            It took Myra a second longer than normal to realize that this was supposed to be a joke. By the time she realized this, the window for laughter had already passed. The silence afterward felt incredibly awkward, and she thought, This is why Melissa and I can never manage a conversation longer than a three sentences.

But Melissa didn’t seem to care or mind. The news had changed into a long infomercial on some new dieting fad. Uninterested, she cupped her ears with her headphones and turned the TV’s volume down.

After a moment, Myra got the hint: She had curbed a passing interest of Melissa’s. She was no longer useful, so she was no longer interesting or important. Disappointed, she grabbed her backpack from the kitchen table and stomped into her room. Closing the door behind her, Myra flopped onto her bed, belly first, and buried her face in her blanket.

On a usual day, she probably would have analyzed a million other ways a conversation with Melissa could have gone, a million other un-Myra-like replies she could have given that might have held Melissa’s attention longer. But today, what was on her mind consisted mostly of Sean and blank, stormy anxiety.

            Myra groaned, drew her arms close to her body, and rolled onto her back. The glow-in-the-dark stars on her ceiling, pale and translucent and green, looked garish and ugly in the light. Myra remembered very clearly how they had ended up on her bedroom walls. She’d seen them at Walmart and snuck them into the shopping cart without Melissa noticing. That was how she’d gotten the scar on her temple: by falling and hitting her head against her chair whilst trying to attach the stars to her ceiling.

            Now, Myra closed her eyes and imagined a darkened room filled with starlight. From the vision, Sean’s face emerged, and Myra’s body responded by causing her to knit her fingers together.

            She suddenly wanted to take her feelings and analyze them under a microscope, separate all of the ingredients until she broke down this heavy, anxious, indescribable feeling into its core parts. She wanted to know why breathing and thinking didn’t feel right, wanted to know why the only cure seemed to be to breathe harder and think the right thoughts. She wanted to know why she couldn’t sort through anything or why she felt ecstatic and hopeless at the same time. Why she felt bursting and empty all at once.

            This, she thought, must be what anticipation feels like.

            And Sean, Sean must be what something more felt like. She certainly got the sense from him.

Sean is what something more feels like, she thought, and she immediately felt better. Being able to apply an adjective to him alleviated the stress in her stomach.

            Myra sighed and opened her eyes. She remembered, I should probably start on my homework. A new boy would not mean the end of her good grades in school. As she did her math homework, she tried to immerse her mind in quadratic equations and x y z, but the sense of waiting only grew and knotted in her stomach. Her whole body seemed to vibrate, as though someone had plucked a string inside of her.

            When Myra finally turned off the lights and crawled into bed, she could not sleep. Something more, she thought and hummed, hummed, hummed with the words.

Something more something more something more

Sean was a part of something more, and she had a feeling, now she was too.