The teacher dismissed it as “just another stunt” when the girl collapsed… but minutes later, the paramedics discovered what she had been hiding for two weeks.
The teacher just waved it off, as if my body were a disruption to the schedule.
“If you faint one more time just to get attention, you’ll fail this project.”
Those were the last words I heard from Ms. Patricia Collins before the floor rushed up to meet me.
Not slowly.
Not dramatically.
Just suddenly.
The classroom tilted, the edges of the desks swept past me at an angle, and then my cheek struck the cold tiles of Room 203.
The impact was a dull thud.
Not as loud as I imagined it later.
More like a book someone drops, then pretends nothing happened.
The smell in the room remained strangely distinct.
Chalk.
Damp jackets.
Cleaning fluid that had been mopped across the floor that morning.
And, on top of that, the sweetish breath of too many children in a room that should have been aired out long ago.
I saw it all from below.
Backpacks hung from chair legs.
Sneakers scraped hurriedly backward.
A pen cap rolled across the tile and came to a stop right in front of my face.
I wanted to reach for it, as if that were the most normal thing in the world.
But my fingers didn’t move.
I wanted to say that I wasn’t playing.
I wanted to say that something was burning in my chest.
I wanted to say that I’d been afraid for two weeks.
No sound came out.
A man’s voice above me said, “She’s not responding.”
It was firm, calm, urgent.
That is the sound of someone who doesn’t argue, because she bears responsibility.
Ms. Collins answered from the other side of the room.
“She’s just acting.”
No tremor.
No doubt.
She said it as if she were grading a forgotten homework assignment.
A few students laughed nervously.
It wasn’t a real laugh.
It was that short, fake sound people make when they sense something bad is happening but don’t yet know if they should take it seriously.
Others whispered my name.
Marissa.
Marissa, again.
Marissa, who was supposedly always sick when it mattered.
Marissa, who wanted to go to the nurse too often.
Marissa, who raised her hand even though everyone was already rolling their eyes.
I hadn’t just said it that morning.
I had been saying it for weeks.
I felt dizzy.
My chest would sometimes tighten for no reason.
My legs suddenly went weak—in the middle of the hallway, on the stairs, while getting up.
Once, I held onto the sink until the doorbell rang and I pretended again that everything was fine.
It was easier to explain orderliness than fear.
A neat notebook.
A worksheet handed in on time.
A folder where all the pages lay straight.
As long as all that was in order, one could believe that the rest was in order, too.
My mother wanted to believe that.
She worked double shifts at a diner on Jackson Boulevard.
When she came home, she was so tired that she sometimes still had her shoes on when she fell asleep in the chair.
Her hands smelled of coffee, grease, and dishwater.
She looked at me as if she wanted to catch every one of my worries, but her own body was already at the breaking point.
