At eleven, he comes in and asks for a black coffee. The store is mostly empty now except for a cluster of writers in the corner and an elderly man who comes every day and reads J. Crew catalogues. John hands me the bag with my breakfast in it. He’s upset.
You forgot this.
Thank you.
Did you eat something?
I look in the bag. There’s a vegan granola bar and a banana inside, and a Tupperware of peanut butter.
Yeah.
What?
A banana.
He doesn’t believe me but he doesn’t say anything. Something else is on his mind. I sneak him a free coffee. He’s brought his computer.
Are you going to stick around?
I want to finish reading something.
He takes his coffee to the window and sits in a red velvet chair with his computer on a small table. The lunch rush is light but a friend from class comes in and we talk for a minute before I introduce her to John. She’s glad to meet him, but John is dismissive. He’s too immersed in his reading to be interested. Although I don’t know what it is, I explain that he’s reading some difficult material. Still, she leaves confused. I text her later explaining it but she doesn’t respond.
At the end of my shift, John is waiting for me outside, smoking a cigarette, staring at the courthouse.
Are you ready to go? I ask.
Yeah.
Are you okay?
No.
We walk in silence.
A group of radicals liberated a fur farm in Iowa, he says. They freed 1,200 foxes.
That sounds like a good thing.
Did you know that foxes are anally electrocuted? That’s how fur farmers kill them.
That’s awful.
We take the long way back toward my apartment, passing Chipotle, Qdoba, a combination Taco Bell/Pizza Hut, and a bar. John wants to stop and get a drink.
It’s two thirty, I say.
He walks past me through the door.
I watched a video of a fox being electrocuted. He screamed like a human.
We sit at the bar and he orders himself a Boddington’s Pub Ale, and orders me a Sierra Nevada.
I don’t really want this.
I wanted to reach through the screen and stop them. I’ve never heard an animal make that sound before.
That night, John pushes me down. He cuffs my wrists together. He cuffs my ankles. The cuffs aren’t real, but they work. He lays me on my side like a pig prepared for roasting.
He turns my head so I can’t see him. I look at the dark corner.
I want you to come.
It’s hard.
It shouldn’t be hard if you love me. Come for me.
He pulses against me. Deep pulsations. I do what he says.
That’s what I wanted.
The library stays open twenty-four hours during test weeks. I awake at one in the morning with my head on a stack of studies I’ve copied from scholarly journals. My computer screen has gone dark. The room is aglow with peripheral blur and my dry mouth tastes metallic. I drink from the Adderall water, but it’s mostly spent. I stand and stretch and look around.
I am the only person here except for the student at the information desk who has also fallen asleep. Something moves by the copy machines: another student. He notices me but returns to his work. The distant hum of the air conditioner blends into the pulse of the copier and the silence between. I drink the rest of the water and walk a circle to the fountain and back, rub my face, and sit back down. I drink some more. My head is heavy with hunger.
I write: Type-1a Supernovae Progenitors From Merging Binary White Dwarfs. Underline it.
Traditionally, the scientific community has believed that mass accretion from a companion red giant pushed a white dwarf past the Chandrasekhar limit creating a standard-sized type-1a supernova explosion. This standard-sized explosion allowed for the use of type-1a supernovae as standard candles for measuring interstellar distances and the expansion rate of the Universe at different epochs. Indeed, it even allowed for the discovery of the dark energy instigating the acceleration of the Universe’s expansion.
My chest expands and contracts. I turn the pages of a study. I set it aside and turn the pages of another study. My heartbeat skips and I return to the first. The white glow of the paper is blinding. I blink. The backs of my eyes feel hot.
I return to the first study and underline and make marginal notes on the first two pages. I do the same for the second. I stare at the space between the two for a long time without seeing anything. I realize I have not breathed for several seconds and take a deep breath.
However, recent studies throw doubt on our understanding of the causes of type-1a supernovae. Intercontinental analysis of 23 type-1a supernovae shows them exploding with different luminosities, suggesting that up to 75 percent likely originate, not with single degenerates accreting matter from main-sequence companions, but from merging double degenerates.
John calls me and the sound of my phone makes me jump. He has not taken his pills. Otherwise, he’d be asleep.
I’m in the library. I can’t talk.
I have new information, he says.
I’ll call you when I leave. Why aren’t you sleeping?
I’ve stopped taking my medication. There’s too much to do.
I have a paper due at eight. Let me finish and call you after.
I’ve made a list of supplies.
Just send me everything. I’ll find what we need.
Pay cash, he says.
I lie on the grass of the quad and feel the distance between my class and me. The difference between my class and me is vast. I don’t belong in a class.
I feel I don’t belong anywhere. I feel I don’t belong. I feel estranged from my body. It weighs me down. The best is to do away with it: be light.
Be free.
Shine without physicality.
I see myself as I am on the grass. I see myself as someone sees me. I see I am the grass.
Feminine, happy, successful, confident, alluring, intelligent:
the dark body that draws your gaze magnetically toward it.
Kelly Rowland Admits She Was Jealous of Beyoncé. I spin. The grass is cold, wet flesh.
I turn; draw away. I find this disgusting.
I find myself disgusting.
My body is disgusting.
A wreck.
5 Instagram Tips Everyone Needs To Follow According to The #RichKids of Beverly Hills.
Please don’t touch me, Earth. I’ll wreck you.
When animals feel they’re backed into a corner.
Brooke Burke-Charvet on That Sexy Gas Pumping Photo: “It Could Have Been Bad.”
I rise and flow to the concrete monolith, enter through the double-doors, pace the halls.
Is This Demi’s Best Hair?
I turn in celestial communiqués for a living to my professors: manifesto.
Please approve of the work I do. That’s all I ask.
To be a good worker or to do without.
Arms, legs.
Or to finally stand alone.
In June, my coworker invites me out for drinks after our shift. My birthday has just passed and she buys me a Bacardi and Diet, and a Smirnoff and tonic for herself. She tells me she moved to New York from Oregon with her girlfriend and their dog. Her girlfriend’s parents didn’t approve of her being a lesbian and after months of suffering demonization from her mother, they thought it best to leave. My coworker is majoring in biology with a minor in poetry. When she can, she takes her dog to Jones Beach.
She’s only working at Starbucks because they have health insurance and stock options, and plans to leave if she gets into grad school at Harvard or MIT, where she’s currently applying.
John joins us halfway through our first drinks and orders a Dewar’s on the rocks. He’s had a few beers already, at home, and I can picture the cluster of bottles left by the trashcan. My coworker tells me how she misses her parents’ farm.