Deadra Acosta

May 28 20XX

Wet Paper Bag

GETTING OFF

Today was my last day inside of a wet paper bag. There were five silent minutes in fourth period after the econ final was over; at least, I was finished. I’d probably keep my B. It wasn’t that hard.

But anyways, nobody called, and there was nothing else on my phone. Even if there was, the games didn’t matter. I didn’t wanna do anything. I couldn’t bother.

I put my phone away and looked forward. The girl sitting next to me had her head against her arms on her desk. She had some kind of product in her hair. It made it stiff. I could smell it.

The kid sitting in front of her was playing a video game. He was wearing a Sepultura shirt and thick-rimmed glasses. His face was a bit spotty, he was really pale and skinny, but he had a good jawline. He asked Kacey out to prom and she told him no.

Alexis was looking into a pocket mirror, putting on lipstick. All her makeup was really colorful, just short of neon. She was the only one I knew that could pull it off. She looked kinda like a goddess, like a Greek sculpture. There was one time at a party when she drank so much she took her top off and just walked around with nothing but a bra. All the guys looked at her like a pork chop, like a piece of meat. I sat next to her in the kitchen when she started vomiting.

I held my notebook at the rim of my desk and looked up every now and then. The pen stuttered to make their features, coming up short on ink. I began slicing apart Zach’s face—the kid with the video game—but that was also fine. Sarah, the one sleeping, turned out pretty good, her crumbled ball of cardigan and leggings. And Alexis looked good enough on my notepad. It was only five minutes like this.

“Three of my classmates died in the month of May,” I overheard Aunt Betty say last weekend. She gave me a bat mitzvah card for my birthday last year. Dementia would kill her too, soon.

When I got home, I started thinking of My Uncle. He was a boulder of a human thing. He wasn’t a man, but just like a shape anymore, a blob, a mass. The gut melts below his ironic muscle shirt, dipping into the snags on his stained basketball shorts. The fat drips from his wire frame like ranch dressing, freckled black and white as bird shit.

He moves like a novelty-sized condom fucked and crusted like magma, pushing the lawnmower up the incline and into the weeds like Sisyphus about to die of heat stroke. My Uncle should die of heat stroke. My body creases against my bedding, my skin submitting to the tightness in my jeans and the awkward pull against my shirt. I’m too tired to readjust, or do anything but think about My Fat Fucking Uncle.

I guess I get hot or angry or both and pull out a piece of paper. Through the window’s blanket, a cigarette burn breaks the sun into fragments, seeping into my eyes as I rise to the desk. Tony Hawk is doing a kick flip and suffocating the sky. The room is stuffy, there is no fan, and my pencil drags out My Uncle’s plight.

In the picture, his cake batter face is flushed, the swan wig hisses, the butcher-red lipstick and bar-hooker eyeshadow makes him into a sexual minstrel. It’s a black, refined circus act, flowing from the lips like a mom that should’ve swallowed. It looks just like him in my head, maybe nothing in real life, but that makes it more powerful. This is my hate-sex.

Today was my last day of high school. Today was my last day in a wet paper bag. I’ve finally clawed my way out after being tied at the feet and spit-roasted, sucking on the sting of bleach, testosterone and chlorine in the locker room. I am my own person.

Dilapidated, I tape the picture to the princess mirror in my childhood bedroom. I take some scissors I sharpened with sand paper and spread their legs. I have them mount my arm and slowly pull inwards. Meanwhile, my other hand is between my thighs. It reminds me when I went to church without underwear. I still slept in this room then. My blood mixes on the moth-rotten comforter, sinking into my ammonia. I should get a picture of this. I am my own prison now.