It’s Okay. I Don’t Even Care.

I am a starfish. Actually, I should say I’m imitating a starfish. Instead of lounging on a dark seaside rock, my body has given up on my bedroom’s rarely vacuumed carpet floor. Instead of the ability to grow replacement limbs should science be damned by a real Sharknado, I would only have one leg or arm and probably die from blood loss. At this moment, I’d be okay with that outcome. All I have are self-deprecating anxious thoughts running through my mind so a sweet release wouldn’t be entirely uninvited. Before I consider death…

I force myself from my warm home into the bitter morning air, the kind of atmosphere that stings your face on contact. No one else was outside. Probably sleeping the few beneficial extra hours not offered to high school students. I sprint across the street as if I could outrun the cold. My neighbor and friend since the age of five, Abby, regularly drives a carpool to school for the other girls in the ward. A typical carpool would alternate drivers, but she insists. We back out of her icy driveway. Abby and I usually start our mornings gossiping about…