On the last day of the February two-week schoolbreak, I did nothing. It was four-thirty p.m., and I was still in the same pyjamas that I had worn for the past five days. I went down from my room for the first time since yesterday evening to get a snack, probably some milk chocolate we got from our little trip to Switzerland.
The house was empty except for B, Q and I. When I went down, the chocolate cabinet was empty, and I glanced towards Q, who sucked his thumb and had the tablet balanced on his bulging belly. I suspected him, but it was an impressive feat for an eleven-year-old to devour that much chocolate in an afternoon.
B emerged out of his bedroom with a yellow measuring tape and grabbed a slice of bread, spreading raspberry jam on it with a teaspoon. He walked to the windows to bathe in the late afternoon sunlight with a drop of jam spilled on his mouth. I ended up eating nothing except for swiftly drowning down two glasses of water that made me sick later.
I stared at a random thing in the kitchen, which was the cat, Nugget, who ate her croquettes with a loud crunching noise while she swished her tail. I traced my fingers over the wound on my right ring finger where her claws scratched it deeply. The blood had already started to dry, leaving a dark red streak that looked like a self-harm scar.
“Aujourd’hui, tu esrêveuse,” B said as he stared at me with the slice of bread in his left hand. Today you are daydreaming.
I cocked my head to the side. I always did that when I did not understand something—it was mostly complicated French vocabulary that I didn’t know. But this time, I actually did understand what he meant. The thing I could not fathom was his attention to detail. How could someone possibly care that much to notice what was going on through my mind?
“Ça veut dire que tu n’es pas en réalité,” he explained, and I nodded while pursing my lips. I always did that when someone was explaining to me a definition, “C’est comme tu es dans un rêve.” And yes, I was. I was in a dream.
I had cried myself to sleep the night before. I had been reading a book where one of the characters heard from a counselor that he was suffering from extreme depression after he filled out the Beck Depression Inventory, so I did what I always do, which was searching up that thing on the internet and doing the quiz myself. I had the same score he had, forty-three, which was indicated as extreme depression, but I still could not believe that it was true despite convincing myself countless times that I was depressed. You should consult a medical professional or talk to a trusted person , said the website, and I ran a list of the people I knew in my mind. There was no one I was comfortable enough to talk to about what I was going through, all the sleepless nights of feeling an empty nothing, my declining appetite, not being able to decide whether I liked the camembert—to be honest, I wouldn’t choose to eat it again, but if I had to, I would not complain.
“Alors?” E had said with an expectant smile on her face as I took a bite out of the fresh camembert she bought from the farmer’s market that morning. Everybody else at the table stared at me with apprehensive grins. This special occasion had been circulating our conversations for the past six months, and when it finally came, it was anticlimactic. The taste was exactly what I had expected. It was sticky, milky, and thick. That was all the commentary I could give.
“Je sais pas,” I answered. I did not know whether I liked it or hated it. It happened with so many things in the past week. I could not make a decision about whether I liked a certain food I had tried for the first time: tartar, sardines, chilli-flavored black chocolate and kiwi-pineapple juice. It was as if I was going to answer whatever made them the happiest, but I did not want to lie either, so I don’t know was the most uncontroversial answer. After all, they tried all sorts of chilli I brought from Thailand—bird’s eye, the little red peppers and the long green ones—so I had to at least try their cheese.
After I had reflected on how hopeless I had felt—and the fact that I had to go to school the next day—I had bursted into tears. It had been four a.m., and I had planned to finish that novel by the end of the day, but I ended up going to sleep with red, puffy eyes.
I put the glass in the dishwasher, gave a curt nod to B and sprinted up the stairs, back to my bed and binge-watched five episodes of a sitcom.
I guessed it was a cry for help, those swollen, bloodshot eyes that lasted two days after that cathartic sob. B noticed it, and there was a wave of relief or happiness or a feeling I could not pinpoint a name to as he pointed that detail out. Nobody had ever said that to me.
Sometimes back in Bangkok when there were spectral motorcycle lights passing through the diaphanous curtains and when I had cried myself to sleep, trying not to make any noise that would disturb my family sleeping under the bunk bed, I had hoped my friends at school would notice and come up with a simple question asking how I was. I would lie anyway, so it was pointless. But B’s little attention to detail gave me a tiny surge of victory.
I did not cry again for the next three weeks of school.