Lazarus

I shove my bursting binder towards the other end of the table and hear a clank. My blue flowered mug rolls idly as a teaspoon-sized puddle forms. I spread out a sheet of Bounty, explaining to my mother that my whole entire cup spilled and that it’s okay. I clean it all up, but since she promised me two cups would she please put on just one more pot?

Subconscious sips become anxious gulps. The clock lurches forward, disregarding my panicked glances. Okay, focus. What is gas chromatography? The stationary phase is in a column, I think, and the carrier has to be something inert, but I can’t piece together the vague recollection. Something about volatile liquids and a detector, maybe an oven?

The kitchen is warm, uncomfortably warm, so I grasp the flashcards tighter. What is “vesper” theory? Hybrids? When did we go over polarity? The scrawled pencil marks fall away the more intently I stare. My eyes swaying and blurred, like a camera in the hands of a second grader.

I exhale shakily. Vision dissolves on the surface of coffee and I can see my broken self from a distance. Hunched in the corner of the dim kitchen, hugging a flannelled knee. Mascara smudged under eyes, coffee clutched in hand. A moment of nail biting, and then complete stillness.

The isomers, the dipoles, the valence electrons, logarithms, Hamlet, the Civil War, one night up to 2 AM, the next to 4. I feel myself slipping further behind, losing my grasp on all that matters.

They are wrong, a B on a test will in fact kill me.