Grief Girl by Erin Vincent Page A

painful at first, and you’ll probably get a few blisters, but you’ll get used to it.”
    I
wish
I said something like that, but of course I didn’t. I’m just standing here smiling like an idiot.
Smiling!
Why the hell am I smiling, and why can’t I stop? Say something, for God’s sake!
    â€œI never thought of it like that. It’s not that great, you know.”
    Oh, that’ll get ’em, Erin. Have some balls! Why can’t I yell at them and tell them what I really think? What have I got to lose now? Why don’t I tell them that I want to ask my parents’ permission, that I want them to care if I come home or not? That soon enough I’ll realize that wearing my father’s shirt is a pathetic way to hold on to him? That every day after school I have to take three deep breaths before walking inside the house? Why don’t I gouge their eyes out with my fabulous new nails? Why don’t I tell them that every minute of the day is agony, and no amount of nail polish and no number of parties is going to change that? Why don’t I tell them that I live in fear, thinking my brother or sister will die at any moment? Why don’t I tell them that going to bed at night is terrifying? That I can’t close my eyes without seeing Mum’s and Dad’s bodies slowly rotting? That every morning when I wake up I have a second or two of forgetting before it all comes crashing back like I’ve been hit by a car and I have to go through the shock and horror of it all over again—before I’ve even had breakfast! That for the first time in my miserable, chubby-faced life I have cheekbones and don’t want to eat because the thought of food makes me sick? Or that I’m tired and don’t have the energy for all this and can’t imagine how I’m going to get on with life?
    Why do I just smile and walk away?
    These bitches who think they’re so great. Oh yeah, girls, it’s okay to hear you complain about your terrible parents who won’t let you stay out as late as you want while I can do anything. I can’t even sit through a whole class without wanting to scream and run around the classroom before charging through the window headfirst.
    It must be fun to be that stupid.
    Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â 
    I’ve lived a more interesting life than this. I just know it.
    I’m in history class. It’s one of my favorite classes because all my friends are in it. We always get in trouble in history because we can’t stop talking and laughing. We’re laughing and I feel guilty, like I must not have really loved my parents.
    Our cute blond-bobbed teacher, Mrs. Pry, is teaching us about old Russia.
    I lived in tsarist Russia. I can feel it.
    Every time Mrs. Pry holds up a picture of Tsar Nicholas’s palace, inhabited by his regal but greedy family, I see myself standing outside with the rest of the poor angry peasants dressed in beige (God forbid), shouting for better conditions because our lives suck. Hmmm…maybe that’s why I have such a deep-seated hatred for beige.
    All around me I see what
isn’t
in the picture my teacher is showing us: the cobbled streets, the dome-topped buildings that look like colorful ice cream cones. I smell the other stinky peasants…or is that me? Maybe it is me…the current me. I have been wearing Dad’s shirt to school and to bed every night and haven’t washed it, or my hair, for a while. What’s the point?
    I love how when it comes to reincarnation everybody says they were once a princess or an emperor, never a low-down poverty-stricken nobody.
    A couple of years ago I watched
Doctor Zhivago
with Mum and felt like I’d seen it before. I’m still not sure if it was a rerun or if I really felt a connection to Mother Russia. Maybe Mum’s Edgar Cayce books are right. Maybe we do keep being reborn. Maybe Mum was on to something when she said you can