I don't know what I'm doing when his voice is in my ear, and I'm crying on this end. We're fighting again, he and I, and I don't know why I called him, but I did. These days it's me against everyone. Amanda v. World; bets can be placed a the counters to your left. The match of the century. We haven't seen one this big since Nietzsche v. God.
Nothing's wrong, I'm telling him, Nothing at all, and there are ants crawling up my back and the sun is too hot and I want to be anywhere but here and this thing, this one thing that I've ever been truly proud of myself for is falling apart. I'm fucking up a scene in the play, I just can't get it, I can't be as pissed off as they want me to be and the teacher is talking to my friend, the assistant director, in hushed whispers about it.
The only problem is that I can hear everything he's saying.
I'm crying and I can't stop and I haven't cried in so long, so long, because grown ups don't cry. Two boys from class come out to see if I am okay, because the teacher asked them to. The prick.
After telling the assistant director, my friend, that I just wasn't getting it right, after no one had spoken to me about it, after I sat down in my seat instead of running away like I wanted to, he walked over and took my script book. And he thumbed through it. And he mocked me, contorting his face in a parody of my own.
This is a teacher, remember.
I don't say anything when I get up to leave. I just look at him and smile a little, smile a little and walk slowly towards the door. The light floods in and that's when it starts.
I call him and I can't stop crying, and I hate how everything is the same after I have been trying so long to fix it. I hate how I am still emotionally unstable, I hate how I am the only person stupid enough to get upset and start crying. It used to be a secret, that I cried.
No one ever expects the angry ones to cry.