There hadn't been a day since the sending of the accidental email that Jordan had woken up any later than seven in the morning. She would wake up, often without hitting the snooze alarm on her bulky digital alarm clock; she would shower, lathering her hair in all number of product that was supposed to sparkle the pink into longevity; she would make herself breakfast, sometimes make her siblings breakfast, and on one occasion made her parents breakfast. She would talk about how she was feeling that morning, what she was going to get up to that day, and sometimes even make a joke. She liked to think it made her seem normal, but through her laughing at herself she often saw Mom and Dad glancing slightly at each other, as though they were unsure where Jordan was going. She would ignore this. She would then look around the house for things to do - this could sometimes be an empty shelf on the pantry, or a loose piece of wood beneath the baseboard, and she would figure out what she would need to do that day to find a solution to this problem. Sometimes they were easy, like a trip to Wholefoods. Other times, they involved sitting in the loungeroom on her phone browser, figuring out what kind of wood glue she would need to buy. By the end of the day, whatever she had put her mind to would be done, in one way or the other. She wasn't the most ingenius student in her class, but she had a knack for figuring things out or things randomly falling into place. By the time she was done, she either had a full day she could spend at the park, or it would be dinner time, in which she would openly help out with the making of the food for the family, wash up the dishes by herself at the end of it, or both. Once that was done, which depended on how much cheese the family was eating that night and how attached it became to the plates and bowls, she would plant herself at the end of the sofa and watch television silently with her parents until suddenly, it was time to sleep, and then Jordan would immediately have a mug of tea and go immediately to bed, upon which she would wake up as the sun did the next morning and the whole process repeated itself.
And all of this was because she had sent a stupid email she didn't deserve to and she was too terrified to ever go near her computer ever again.
Maybe it was disconcerning to her parents to not see Jordan process her grief correctly, but it happened in its own little ways. Every time she thought about not seeing Abel or Val again, the thoughts filled up her mind like a gas chamber, but she would quickly disappate them by reminding herself that she herself too would die one day, and then suddenly her own mortality returned to her because now instead of wondering what happened to her best friends, she was filled with existential dread and was simply trying to calm herself down from the fact that she would no longer exist one day. Some people might say that this wasn't a way of processing her grief, but to them she would say shut up shut the fuck up you have no idea what the fuck i've been dealing with shut the fuck up right now
or something like that.
But Jordan really did just want to figure out how to move forward properly. She wasn't like the popular kids, or the social kids, or the kids with active clubs. They probably all had their groupchats, or their counselling meetings, or their own melodramas, or their projects, or their ability to sleep with each other. Jordan had none of that. She probably wasn't alone, but she felt it, and that made it real. Every time she got on Facebook on her phone, thinking about what she would say to Artem, she would instinctually uninstall Facebook from her phone instead because putting the words into the universe was just too hard.
And today was another day when Artem's face popped up on her Facebook Messenger, a little reminder that she would often look at his profile but not message him, while she was in the backyard of her house, mowing the lawn. The motor was running, as she stood there in the middle, phone in hand and not focused on the length of the grass. She couldn't tell if her hand was trembling because of the lawnmower or because she was reaching that point where she was too scared to even try. The macro ran through her head again - Jordan would look at Artem's face for a few more seconds, click the bottom of her phone a few times, hold her thumb on both the Facebook app and the Messenger app, until she was given the option to delete them from her phone, and then she would, and then the tremors wouldn't stop anyway, and then she'd stop doing whatever she was doing before walking inside and downing an entire litre of tap water in a single stand, because it would work for her hunger pangs when she was younger and there was always a fleeting moment of hope that it would work for her anxiety as well.
Except this time, the macro didn't click into place. Instead, Jordan simple put her phone back into her sweatpant pocket, and continued mowing until the grass became even again.
And then Jordan was sitting on the edge of the bath, behind a locked bathroom door, processing why the words her parents had told her over dinner had hurt so much.
It was as though their voices weren't real anymore. She couldn't even begin to remember exactly what was said, but it had hurt. Something about it being great that she wanted to help out around the house so much, but she had been accepted into university for a reason and she was going to have to start getting ready for that in a few months. That a terrible thing had happened to her classmates but life was going to have to move on. That if she wasn't moving on, they would have to send her back to her counsellor, and deal with the trauma in a proper manner. Jordan's own words had been sprinkled in between, but even then she couldn't remember their shapes, only their sentiments.
The curve of the ceramic under her form felt real, but everything outside of that was a question. The bath water was running, she could hear its thunder as it left the tap and crackle as it hit the curve, but the people in her mind were disappearing, even her own family. They existed, but they weren't real to her anymore. She knew how parents were supposed to act, but she didn't know how the humans known as Senka Brankovich and Lukas Brankovich were supposed to sound despite being the people that raised her.
Jordan eventually shed her clothing, caught a glimpse of the body she so despised in the mirror, and slipped into the water. A mug of tea sat on the tiles. Her eyes stayed to the ceiling, Eventually, she felt her right foot turn one tap, inducing heat beneath her feet, then the other. Her eyes were still on the ceiling. They could see Jordan's everything, above and below the water. They stayed there, until she blinked
and she awoke again, realizing her skin felt tight beneath cold water. It gripped onto the side of the dry ceramic, having been still for what had to have been hours. She flung her hand out to the side instinctively only to accidentally dip a pruned hand in what was essentially icy leaf juice. Were Jordan still not stuck in the mist she would have registered some disgust. Instead, she stepped out of the water, pulling the plug in the meantime. She toweled herself, before returning to the side of the tub and swirling her hand around the water above the drain so it didn't sqeak as it fled. She grabbed her cold mug of tea, left the bathroom, and a look at the hallway clock told her it was somehow 2am, which meant she was the only one awake. Water dripping onto the carpet, she returned to her room, leaving a trail behind.
As she sat on her bed, drying herself, she looked back at her computer, the one that betrayed her and that she could never go near again. Everything about it just felt so damn appealing. The shape of the screen made her eyes feel calm, the keyboard made her fingers feel thrust with energy, the seat was her throne. There was an area of the internet where she once belonged, and she'd been detached from that. But there was also an area of the internet where she'd done nothing but make a fool of herself, somehow think she was worthy of ascending to a level of importance that she didn't deserve. It sat in someone's email inbox, forever proof of how she was worthy of any ridicule she'd ever receive.
But just as Jordan blinked she felt herself back in her throne, turning on her computer, and opening her emails again.
If she was capable of recognizing her feelings she would have felt the pit in her stomach open into a black hole because she was waiting for the ticker to click and see if she'd received a response. Blue names filed into view, rolling the credits, and none of them were important
until they were, because she had received an RE:. And it was the exact same title she'd sent in that ill-aimed attempt at help.
She clicked the email, but it wasn't just a click, it was a burst of thunder.
Dear Jordan,
"MOM! MOM!""Is there anything you need at the store? I can go there, please." "I mean, if you really didn't want to come here and he knew you didn't like parties, it seems like a really crappy thing for him to do-"
We are happy to have received your email and hope our own finds you well, considering the circumstances-
"They're dead, they're all dead-""But I don't need therapy, mom, I just need to-"
"Please, Ana, just let me drive you-" "Do you want to leave? If you want to leave, I could probably ask one of my friends-"
While what has happened at George Hunter High School differs greatly from-
"I can't breathe, I can't breathe-""I SHOULD HAVE BEEN THERE WITH THEM! WHY DID YOU HAVE TO GIVE ME THAT STUPID FUCKING TIRE-"
"Please, Ivan, I just-" "It can be very dirty, yes. But I'm sure we're all mature and smart enough to not have to go there, right?" "I can't breathe-"
"Jordan, it's okay, honey, it's okay, we're here-"
And while we may need you to meet with-
"We're going to be sending you back to Doctor-""Don't you dare talk to us like that, don't you dare-"
"FUCK YOU."
We would be honoured to partner with a brave, surviving student such as yourself.
Regards,
Sherry Gage
Never Again MSD
Regards,
Sherry Gage
Never Again MSD
And suddenly, Jordan Brankovich blinked, returning to life, as she stared confused at the email she'd just received from one of the major activist organizations in the United States.
And without any concern that it was the middle of the week and two in the morning-
"What the fuck?!"