I slid my phone out from under the desk with a hand that would not stop shaking. I opened the family group chat and hovered my thumb over the keyboard. For a fleeting second, I considered texting my friend Toby instead.
Toby sat just two rows away in my English class and lived only a few minutes from the school. But Toby was also in the middle of a class, and he did not have his car that day because his brother had borrowed it. I took a deep breath and typed a message to my family.
I told them that I was not feeling well and that I had severe stomach pain. I asked if someone could please come and pick me up. I watched my message appear directly beneath a photo Chloe had posted of her new outfit with a caption about a fashion crisis.
Three small dots appeared under my mother’s name on the screen. They disappeared, then reappeared, and then finally a single word popped up. Meredith asked, “Again?”
That was her entire initial response to my body telling her that something was wrong. Rick chimed in immediately after, asking if I was just trying to find a way to skip school. Chloe followed up by complaining that they were currently out doing things.
I stared at the screen until the glowing letters began to blur into one another. The pain stabbed me again, and it was so intense that I made a small, involuntary sound. The girl sitting at the desk next to me glanced over with a worried expression, but then she quickly looked away.
High school students are often experts at pretending not to notice when someone else is experiencing a private humiliation. I forced myself to type one more message into the chat. I told them that it was really bad and begged them to please help me.
Nobody responded to that final plea. Mr. Garrison turned away from the board and looked directly at me. He asked if I was still with the class or if I was somewhere else.
The entire room seemed to turn their heads to look at me at once. I forced myself to sit upright, though the movement made my head spin. I told him that I was fine, but my voice sounded thin and brittle even to my own ears.
He frowned and asked if I needed to go see the school nurse. Every instinct I had developed over eighteen years screamed at me to say no. I told him I was okay, and he eventually turned back to his lesson.