And I don’t have to participate; I can lurk. Scroll and read about the lives of others to my heart’s content. I don’t even have to leave my apartment . . . which is something I avoid at all costs anyway. I never go farther than the coffee shop next to my building.
For the most part, the forum members don’t ask me about what I did this weekend. They don’t poke and prod for details about my life, or lack thereof.
Instead it’s just betta fish this and scorpion fish that. I like that.
Especially one person in particular. We’ve been messaging a bit.
But it’s not like that, I swear. We just chat sometimes.
About aquariums in the local area. Mostly. And, fine, other stuff too.
Besides, I don’t even know what he looks like. He’s a total stranger on the internet, and I wasn’t born yesterday. He could be a hideous, disgusting monster. Right? Or a total fucking catfish.
I glance around my bedroom behind me, the unmade seafoam bed, and a pillow surrendered to the floor, casing half off, cotton-white underbelly exposed.
An empty frame rests on the nightstand, which I’ve meant to fill with a picture of my mother, my only remaining family.
But somehow, I can’t ever seem to find the time.
I check the updated posts on the forum and breathe in deep.
Betta has fin rot . . . AGAIN. Think I’m going to kill myself.
Magic crab keeps disappearing and reappearing. Where’s he going? A time loop? A portal?
Can a guppy suffer from depression?
Is my neon tetra pregnant? Because I am.
Hmmm . . . I scroll, scroll, scroll, click, click, click. No new messages from my friend. A sensation in my belly droops.
May as well start this miserable day.
I change into sweatpants and an old T-shirt that says Just Breathe because it’s good to live aspirationally, and pad my way to the front door, forcing the thong of my blue flip-flops between my sock-covered toes and sneaking down the concrete stairwell of my building.
Better the creepy stairwell than the risk of running into the creepy neighbor, Jason. Still, when I glance over the railing, the hole in the middle of the spiral curve gives me the feeling that I’m circling a drain.
I make my way to the hole-in-the-wall coffee shop next to my building, where I get the same thing every time with my scrunched-up wad of dollars. “Black coffee, please.”
“How you doing, Jules?” the owner asks me as he takes my money in exchange for his goods.
I don’t know how he knows my name since I’ve never introduced myself, but his face is crinkled from old age, little gray hairs sprouting from his ears and nostrils. He wears a black and white keffiyeh around his neck. A small sign hangs off the ninety-degree cliff of his counter that reads something in Arabic. I don’t have the guts to ask him what it says.
His voice is soft. “You hangin’ in there?”
I just nod, don’t look up. Even though this small coffee shop is one of my safe areas, I’m still on high alert, muscles tensed. He’s a nice man, but I can tell by the pitying look in his eyes that he feels sorry for me. As if he worries each time I turn up at his shop. That kindness lands flat, though. Sympathy makes me itchy to the gills. I’d rather he just not look at all.
I’d rather no one look ever.
He hands me my coffee, so strong it could strip the grease off an airplane engine, but I like it that way. I grip it hard in my fist as I scurry back into my building and up the stairs, the harsh LED overhead lights accentuating my eerie blue veins, almost luminescent beneath my pale skin. I shudder at the sight of my own flesh. Did it always look this way?
My reflection flashes next to me, distorted and dingy in a wire glass window but still unmistakable. The pale blonde hair, the light blue eyes, the tall, thin figure. I’ve been called beautiful many times before.
My mother used to enter me in baby pageants. That’s how it all started. “And you hugged every judge! Never fussed!” She’d brag to her friends. As I grew older, the parading didn’t stop.
Next came the clothing catalog shoots and the teen magazine covers. Then the runways and editorial spreads.
Until, one day, when I was around twenty-three, a woman approached me with a business card. “You look like someone who’s searching for something new. Here, take this.”
I flipped the card over. Galaxia Business Conglomerates. It looked like a scam, but I went to the website listed on the card and applied for a position as a copywriter. That’s how I finally got out of modeling.
“You let your looks go to waste,” my mother chastised. “Do you know how many girls would kill to have your figure? Your hair, your eyes, your nose? The opportunities I’ve gotten for you?”
“If they want to kill me for it, I wouldn’t stop them,” I mumbled back.
That used to really piss her off.
“Ever since you quit modeling all you do is mope, mope, mope around the house all day. Don’t go out like normal girls. Never even had a boyfriend! Really, Jules?”
But how could I have a boyfriend if my looks made me worthy of murder?
Not to mention, that’s when the dreams began.
Well, not really dreams. Nightmares. And I don’t even know if I can call them that because I never remember them. All I know is that for years now, I’ve had the same problem. I fall asleep, the world goes dark, and then I wake up . . .
Breathless.
The heavy emergency-exit door swings open loudly. I’m relieved to make it back to my apartment without running into Creepy Neighbor Jason. Once returned, I plop down in my chair, close out the Freemont Aquariumaniacs forum—still no messages—roll my head to each shoulder, then click on my assignment for work.
