The Sharp Time Read Free

squealing brakes behind me but in the next second I’m still completely alive.
* * *
    And then there’s coming home but not walking into the house right away, just sitting on the freezing porch swing and smoking before walking around to the backyard—the kidney-shaped flower beds crunchy with ice-glazed leaves, the chain-link fence a geometry of snowy iron diamonds—before I go in the back door and move from the January cold to subtropical heat. I forgot to turn the heat down after I took my shower this morning. Guess who’s not paying attention? Yet again.
    And there is the big surprise of the cool gray button on the answering machine. I was expecting the wild siren flash of multiple missed messages: maybe not the police, but at least the principal, the counselor, my Honors English teacher, Ms. Lisa Kaplansky. A friend or two. But no.
    And so I eat a fun-sized Almond Joy and pace around for an hour; I watch TV and wait for the official phone calls. On the Discovery Channel, a cheetah outruns a gazelle and plunges his openmouthed face into the gazelle’s skinny neck. But after the chase, after all that pouncing and guttural roaring, the cheetah doesn’t seem especially hungry for the body and the blood. The cheetah rests his claw on the gazelle’s open chest and licks its shoulder, nonchalant: I just did that because I could, people . I switch to the mind-numbing show where celebrities dance, and paint my fingernails black raspberry. When my nails dry, I lie on my back on the couch and put my hand under my shirt, cradling the hurt part of my ribs. I consider the water stains on the ceiling; if I don’t blink, if I squint until my eyes water, I see the angel Gabriel with his arched wings and kind out-stretched hands, his head cocked to the left, as if imploring me to get off my sorry ass and do something . And so I haul myself off the couch, switch on the computer and Google the shit out of Mrs. Catherine Bennett.
    There are ever so many—a Playboy Bunny, a marine biologist, a birdhouse builder—but I finally find my own private Catherine Bennett. She teaches at Woodrow Wilson High School. She is a consultant on a textbook called Math Without Fear! She donated fifty dollars to the Humane Society in honor of the late Mr. Fluffers Bennett. She lives at 1207 Ponderosa Lane. I put her address into MapQuest, and while I study the grid of intersections and arrows that leads from my house to hers, my mind wanders to the image of me at school, gathering my books off my desk and walking out the classroom door, my classmates seated, unsure whether to stay or to go, and then the asthmatic gloom of the hallway, of searching for my car keys in my pockets and my purse and backpack, waiting for the small relief of metallic shivering and deciding that I will change my stupid fucking destiny, that I will drive away from Woodrow Wilson High School and apply for a job at the Pale Circus.
    I call my friend Caitlin Jantzen and leave a message on her cell phone: “Bennett lost it today. On me. Freak show extraordinaire. Did you hear? Jesus. Call me.” But my hopes aren’t that high. I haven’t returned her calls in months, and Caitlin has a new boyfriend in a band, a strapping lad, handsome and prehistoric, with high cheekbones and a large, commanding skull that houses a brain the size of a shelled walnut. I try to decide who to call next, but then the story itself is so humiliating … so I zone out and put on cherry lip balm, coats and coats of it, a soothing and useful repetition, thinking that my waxed lips will never chap, thinking: Hurrah! I am embalmed .
    I walk into the kitchen for variety and stare at the mosaic of crumbs on the floor. I briefly consider sweeping and mopping, thinking it will be brisk and medicinal. Instead, I light a cigarette. I flick the spent match into the sink and exhale into the silence. Because I’m paying attention to potential fire hazards. I turn on the tap and let water stream over the match,