Marginalia

s.h.e.

When she was little, she once poured salt in her baby sister’s hair.

At camp, when she was twelve, she found the friendship bracelet that her best friend told her she would never take off, lying on the ground.

At sixteen, as an act of rebellion, she skipped the class her mom made her sign up for. She really didn’t want to take the class, but her mom made her, so she skipped and said she wouldn’t make up the absences.

At home, she likes to dress up in a Halloween mask, swimsuit, and 10-inch heels and do TikTok dances in her room.

When no one’s looking, she likes to binge eat cake while writing about her teachers, her classmates, and everyone who makes her mad in a sparkly little journal.

She was once friends with Tabitha. Now they don’t even look at each other in the hall. Behind her back, Tabitha tells people she is the worst. She never wears deodorant, only “cotton candy dream” perfume. Her hair smells like the third floor bathroom. One time, she did not take a bath for eight days STRAIGHT. In gym class, she doesn't sweat a drop, but reeks like a field of rotting garbage.

When she gets homesick, she cries. She doesn’t like being in unfamiliar environments, so she gets homesick a lot.  She carries around pictures of her pets and her room, but every time she is away from home, she impatiently wants to go back. Her first time at sleepaway camp, she was only happy when she would get a letter from home. She would usually cry herself to sleep.

At the same time, she doesn’t like being grounded, and worries about it a lot.

She sometimes sneaks out to the park in the middle of the night and meets up with her friends and they laugh and talk and look at the stars from the tops of trees. They think the park is better at night because there's no one there, so they can all pretend that they are the only people anywhere.

She likes talking about herself, but is embarrassed by this. So she overcompensates by asking about her friends’ personal business a lot, leading them to think she’s sort of nosey or invasive, when really, she’s not.

The thing that makes her feel like her life is worth living is her little sister, whom she loves more than anything in the world.

She has a childhood fear of the animatronics people use in Halloween decorations.

When she was nine, she had a parakeet named Petey who died and taught her about death.

When she was six years old, she went with her mom and sister to the pumpkin patch, and jumped from pumpkin to pumpkin, making sure each one felt loved. They had a family competition to see who could find the most uniquely-shaped pumpkin. Within minutes, her mom and sister had made their choices; she, however, took half an hour to graze the patch. In the very back corner, she found this one tiny pumpkin in the shape of a heart. She won, and she also got to keep it as a souvenir. Her mom promised she would take them back next year, unaware of what was to come. The heart pumpkin slowly decayed in the backyard. Whenever she feels alone, she plays this memory over and over in her head, attempting to feel this uncontainable joy one more time.