Cheerleaders Don't Cry

22

Marcy Hannon

The doctor gave me a bottle of aspirin and a long lecture about the dangers of binge drinking before I was discharged. It was more than I got from my parents. They avoided each other for the entire weekend, rotating in and out of my room to participate in strained conversation and guised concern - tiptoeing around me as if I might implode if they stepped too close or said the wrong thing. Neither dared to ask the question that weighed down the room.

"What the hell did you do?"

It was apparent in the disappointment that clouded my dad's expression, or the uneasiness of my mom's flitting gaze. They were confused. Over the past five years, I'd painted myself as the well-adjusted daughter, the only thing left unscathed after their divorce. I'd never been a problem - I had average academics, I didn't tote loser boyfriends to dinner, and for as many times as I've stayed out past midnight, my parents never knew. My dad moved halfway across town and made scheduled, shaky performances once every other weekend as 'the father', while my mom disappeared into her work and surfaced randomly at home for a quick hello before she was gone again. But I remained, monotonous, the kid who was perfectly fine after the world had split in half. Even laying in a hospital bed with a tube shoved down my throat. Perfectly fucking fine.

Mom was working Sunday night, so my dad drove me home. He was silent during the ride - the only noise in the car was the sound of his steady, even breathing. He had always been better than my mom at acting unfazed.

I rolled my window down and tilted my head towards the warm spring breeze. The leaves on the trees had just begun budding. It was past 8 o'clock, but the sun still hovered over the horizon, casting a warm yellow glow over the streets. If you squinted, it could have passed for summer.

When we got home, my car was sitting, undisturbed, in the driveway, as if it'd never even left Friday night. One of my parents had probably retrieved it over the weekend.

"So," my dad said as he put the car into park. He didn't turn off the engine. "I'll see you next weekend?" He was looking in my direction, but not at me. His gaze rested somewhere between the center console, and where my arm was laid.

I nodded, unbuckled and got out of the car. He pulled out of the driveway before I'd even reached the front door.

For the next three days, I stayed home from school, condemned to the bathroom from persistent nausea and migraines. The doctor had warned me of the potential after-effects of alcohol poisoning, and said that I should just try to get a lot of rest and stay hydrated. That advice was 100% useless to me from the perspective of the cold bathroom floor. Through it all, my phone remained silent, just as it had for the duration of break.

I returned to school on Thursday, still retaining feelings of nausea - though they weren't at all related to my recent hospitalization. I had just about a month left of school, but graduation felt as if it were decades away. It took all of my strength to even get out of bed in the morning. After a quick, freezing shower, I haphazardly brushed my hair into a ponytail, and managed to get in my car before 7:45. I arrived at my first hour just as the bell rang.

There was a distinctive shift in the air. The moment that I stepped in the room, I felt the attention of every student snap towards me. The news about Travis and Amber must've spread, the way that gossip always does. A thousand rumors had probably already polluted the social networks, proliferating over spring break until the truth was indistinguishable. I hadn't fully realized this morning, but now I did - I had just walked into a war zone.

I took my seat in the second row and didn't dare look anywhere besides the teacher or the surface of my desk for the entirety of the hour.

During lunch, I hid in the library, snagging a quiet table in the back so that I could work on homework from the past few days that I'd been absent. As I blindly reached into my backpack for my notes, my fingers grazed something smooth and hard. I pulled it out - a phone. Not mine. At some point after the incident in the locker room, I must've subconsciously stashed it in my backpack.