??????????

WYNNIE

Monday. The most dreaded day of the week. There has to be so much negative energy on that one day alone. Some people say it's the perfect day to start a good week, but I say that there's too many cranky people to not make your day a complete wreck.

In my case, as soon as I walk into class, all eyes are on me.

Okay, I'm capping. This ain't the movies. A few people looked up and whispered, but nobody really gave a fuck that I was back in Earment, or either they hadn't heard. It felt out of place that Khangela wasn't in here. And that Trippy wasn't here yet.

"Welcome back, Ms. Harry."

I gave my teacher a polite smile.

Class went by in a blur, and sooner rather than later, Trippy was texting me. She had a panic attack and was hiding out in the bathroom. Oh, how the tables have turned. I went down the hall to find Trippy, checking all the nearby bathrooms until I happened upon her.

"Trippy?"

"I wanna go home," she whispered. Her face was completely wet and puffy, and she sobbing so much. Too much. She winched every time she breathed in. I sat down on the hopefully clean bathroom floor. She was besides the door, near the sinks. The perfect little cranny where grown ass people still snuck in a puff on a vape or a cart.

"Do you want me to take you to your apartment?"

"I want to go home, Wynn. Not there. I don't want to be in Earment anymore," she told me.

"Back to Houston? You feeling homesick?"

"I'm feeling...I need to be away. Away."

I stayed quiet. "I know how you feel right now. But you have to finish college, Trippy. Remember, that's your goal right?"

"I don't know what I want, Wynnie. That's the problem. I don't know how to move on from here. How to move on from being someplace that someone fucking died. Moving on from being as deceived as I was by Khangela. Moving on from...being a kid. Trying to decide how I feel about you," she looked up at me for the last part.

"You act like you have to have everything all figured out. You don't."

"I do. Because then I'm just gonna be stuck and the world is gonna keep moving without me. Nothing moves on my own time, Wynnie."

"I know that. How do you think I felt seeing you give everybody else the chance of day when it felt like anytime I even smiled it had something to do with you."

Trippy wiped her shirt across her face.

"Call your mother. Tell her to make Reami give you your bedroom back and go home. Be there and recuperate. Do your work online. Okay? I'll come down and visit you when you're ready."

"Why isn't this the same for you? Why is this all- Why are all these decisions piled on me?" she held up her hands, staring at each of them like they possessed the decisions she was talking about. 

"I don't know. I'm hurting too, Trippy. Just not as much as you," I admitted.

"I can't leave Earment. No matter how much I need to be back home," she told me. "My sibling will be glad to keep my old bedroom anyways. They're an annoying brat." Standing up and brushing off her clothes, she left things at that.

I followed her out of the bathroom.

"Why not? If you need to leave, then leaving is your best option, Trippy."

"This morning I got something else. First it was my baby picture and fucking shit thrown at my face, now it's a photo of my mother. When she was young."