failure i

At the beginning of all of this, I’m afraid, is the ominous question of what it is exactly you are doing with your life.  Since that first breath, the countdown has begun. We will all time-bomb, eventually, sooner or later.  I’m just a car accident or overdose or suicide attempt away from the end. Next time might be the last one. It’s hit or miss. I always seem to miss.

            But if it’s a matter of time, shouldn’t I decide how I spend it. The last moments of my countdown?  When the dimming spark on my firecracker finally does get to the end of the wick, I want to choose the location for that public display we call an explosion.  

I don’t need to be here.

College.

A higher education will not deliver me in whatever anarchic apocalypse is upon us next.

I shake the thought. How much time is there? Don’t want to lose track.

Why do I even bother, anymore?  

Inhale. I let all my angst swell within the blackening bags inside my chest cavity. Relax, I have to remind myself. You’re in way over your head here, I’m thinking.

Just float.

My academic advisor finds me in the quad some time after lunch. She’s this short and slender, young Asian with her black hair rounded just below her ears. For an ethnic or maybe trendy look, orange dusts her eyelids, I guess to distract from pale yellow skin. My academic advisor chews a big wad of bubble gum. Her left arm is bent at the elbow, hand resting at a hip. She’s twenty-five, at most. Twenty-eight, tops.

Advisor Lady’s got those academic-looking framed glasses. They’re slipping down the ridge of her nose. She glares, “I’ve been looking for you.”

For some reason, I’m frozen there, cowering at her presence like she was a towering statue.

I gulp down on the nothing in my throat.

“Me?” I ask, turning a finger inward. Sheepishly smile.

Her penciled-in brows move closer towards each other.

“We had a meeting.” She shows teeth like a dog. “This is the third one you’ve missed.”

“I’ve been busy.” I motion to the disintegrating cigarette between my fingers. I force this ridiculous smile to the surface of my face and blow smoke at her.

“You know,” she takes five steps closer to me and then resumes that same intimidating hand-to-hip pose. “Its people like you who don’t belong here. You make me sick.”

I’ve heard this before and this time has no more of an effect on me. I inhale a mouthful of smoke and let it seep from my teeth as I talk. “I’m trying.”

“No!” she snaps, crouching down to where I’m sitting. “What you’re doing is pissing your scholarship away.”

“That’s not exact—”

“That’s exactly what you are doing and you know it. Such high test scores, such potential.”

I wait for her to tell me that she graduated Harvard at age 12 and took this job instead of becoming a neurosurgeon because she wants to guide the future of the world into making the right choices and living lives much more fulfilling than her own. She wants to fix it.

When she doesn’t, I roll my eyes.

She takes my cigarette and after stealing a drag, stubs it out. Her finger pushes the frames back up her nose. “You should really see someone about that bladder problem.”

“Bladder?” I ask but then realize, “Oh, right, the pissing thing.”

A silence draws over us.

“Alright,” I concede, even though I have no intent on following through. “I’ll try harder if you stop stealing my cigarettes.”

“Deal,” she smiles, standing up and fixing her skirt.  Before she walks away, she pulls a folded sheet of paper of from her pocket. “Oh and try to come up with some better excuses for missing tests, okay? I getting tired of hearing about the dying mother routine.”

My eyes widen at the exposure of my own lie. Unfolding the paper, it’s my midterm grades. I have D’s across the board and the words “IN DANGER OF FAILING” are next to each grade.

Shit. Sometimes I’m so stupid.

“And stop smoking,” she turns and yells from across the quad before she disappears into one of the buildings at the edges. “It’s bad for you.”

“I’m trying to quit,” I mumble in defense.

And fuck. I get it

I screwed it up.