A State of Disease: AP Government
Excerpt from a Young Adult Novel with the same title, currently in process. Published with the author’s permission.
There is no avoiding it; Lucine Bellerive is dead.
The air in the school is equally dead. Breathing it in makes Tobias feel sick. It is heavy, stale, and rotten in his dry throat. The heaviness of the air falls on his lungs, falls on his heart, and collects primarily in his stomach, for that is where his sickness grows.
Tobias’ intestines actually twist.
He hadn’t slept well the night before. He awoke in the middle of the night, and his stomach felt as if it were on fire. Tobias wanted to scream and curse the agony that had pervaded him, but he couldn’t for it was dark, and his mother and sister were asleep. All he could do was lay in bed and groan, turn and toss and twist through his sheets like how his sickness toiled in his gut.
When Tobias had finally gotten up to use the bathroom, hoping it would help empty the feeling of misery, it didn’t. In the bright, artificial light of the restroom, he could see the black bags under his eyes in the mirror. There was unfathomable pain in the green of his iris, and his dark hair was a mess.
Tobias was a broken man, a boy made old through the infliction in his stomach.
Now, Tobias sits in school, and the sickness is growing still. He doesn’t know what plagues him, but he knows it is there. It is strengthening itself inside of him. It is going to overpower his entire body; he can feel it.
Tobias has the epiphany that this sick feeling has always been inside of him, but only now it is showing itself. It is easy to say the dis-ease is because of Lucine’s death, but there are many factors at play. Tobias doesn’t have a father. Social media makes him anxious and depressed like Linh. The politics of America swallow him.
There are many things to blame for his sickness, but Tobias can’t pick one. All he wants to do is blame himself, hate himself.
Tobias sits in the back of his AP Government class. The isolated desk makes him invisible; he had often enjoyed disappearing and observing the world without him in it. Now having a full view of the classroom has become a curse.
There is Lucine’s empty seat.
Tobias’ resentful yet haunted gaze is unmoved. He stares at the vacant seat for eternity. Tiredness batters him. Memories haunt him during the day, because he could not sleep long enough to dream over the night. Tobias remembers the time he and Lucine lay together on the oceanfront.
His heart flutters.
Tobias then remembers the time she cursed him out, told him that she hated him.
Everything is all there, but not in his mind. The memories are living inside his gut. A new beauty or horror sprouts every moment, and its emotion hollows out his insides.
The instinct to use the bathroom cuts through Tobias like a knife. If he could just get the feelings out, he wouldn’t feel sick anymore, but he can’t.
He sits in class in agony.
Tobias’ mind is going a million miles per hour while his body remains perfectly still. He doesn’t cry or scream, not in class. Decay consumes him; Tobias mentally crawls into a ball, getting tinier and tinier while his eyes stay glued to Lucine’s seat, unable to get the image of her naked body out of his mind.
Linh sits a few seats in front of Tobias. She cried before class, hugged him tight. It makes Tobias feel sicker. Who did this to them? Who made his best friend cry?
Tobias knew it was Linh’s father and knew it was school that made her stressed, but it is so easy to blame Lucine. Lucine had cursed them. Her ghost is in the very room, watching them watch her.
Tobias looks down at his desk. He envisions slamming his head into it, hard enough to crack his skull or make his forehead bleed. Maybe then he could forget about Lucine and his pain.
His fists tighten into hard balls. It takes all of Tobias’ self-control to not kick his table across the government classroom. It would be so easy to get up and grab Lucine’s empty desk, shatter it against the wall. He wants to break it like how she broke him.
Tobias’ surge of anger dies down rapidly, and his head collapses gently into the desk with shame. Tears are ready to fall in front of his teacher and classmates. Tobias doesn’t know why he is angry or why he is so sad. Of course, he loved Lucine, but he hated her too. Her death is but one of many problems.
The world and society itself feels sick, cursed by the girl it has killed.
There has to be an escape from the horrible feelings. Tobias can’t exist in the classroom for another minute. School is a cruel eternity. Time does not pass, and he is going insane.
Tobias pulls out his iPhone and goes on Instagram, completely ignoring the lesson. It is so easy to do at any given time. It is so easy, so addicting, but the escape doesn’t make Tobias feel any better.
His Instagram feed is filled with pictures of Lucine.
“I miss this girl today,” a caption reads.
“I didn’t know her too well, but RIP,” another person comments.
Tobias’ head is pounding. He can’t escape his feelings. Lucine’s empty desk rests before his eyes, and on his phone, society only exemplifies his irritating reality. Instagram isn’t an escape; it is a continuation of the sickness gnawing at his stomach.
Unable to stand the sight of Lucine’s pictures, Tobias shoves his phone back into his pocket. Government bores him. Within minutes, Tobias returns to the familiar embrace of his social media, hoping to think of something besides school, but he sees another post about Lucine, this one reading, “Fuck this thot, I’m glad she’s dead.”
Memories of Lucine’s naked body fuel Tobias’ frustration as he blocks the profile that reposted the yearbook photo of his ex-girlfriend. It is awful to disrespect the dead, but the dismissive attitude in Tobias confirms that those cruel words were the ones he really felt.
The cycle of getting on and off of his phone continues indefinitely. Reality and its escape are equally insufferable.
Lucine’s death didn’t cause this cycle. It was always there with the state of the world. All through high school, Tobias would get bored with homework or upset with a classmate, then he’d get on social media to get away from it all, but the fight would be continued there.
Tobias took his classmates and problems home from school to lay with them in bed. He slept with everyone in a way, for they were only a few seconds away. The unpleasant was unavoidable. Society in its grotesque entirety lived in Tobias’ pocket, and with it, a sickness lived in his gut.
Tobias grumbles under his breath. “This is the best class ever.”
His government teacher is complaining about Trump, something that got old after day three, and it is now March of 2018. There is nothing Tobias can do about her problems as a high schooler. He can care less about the constant complaints now that Lucine is dead, but it genuinely feels as if every day his own teacher tells the class that their generation is fucked.
Tobias wants to die.
After class, he walks with Linh toward their statistics class. Tobias knows jack shit about math. After Lucine, he feels as if he doesn’t know anything about anything. His mind is lost, and his stomach remains in agony as they walk the halls together.
Tobias wears all black, and Linh wears gray-denim jeans and a matching jacket. This school and world have stolen the color from their lives. The best friends don’t say much. They don’t need to.
As Tobias plops into his math seat, he sighs. Linh slouches into her desk next to his. There is no denying that she is thinking about their project for class. When the teacher mentions its due date when the bell rings, Linh visibly shakes with anxiety. Tobias frowns with déjà vu.
They argued over the work before, and he hated it. Linh snapped at him. He snapped at her. They were better than that. They deserved to be better people, but this world had broken them slowly.
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About the Author
Aaron Skye Pharr is an English teacher and writer from Richmond,Virginia. In 2017, Aaron was diagnosed with Ulcerative Colitis. He is working on a verse-memoir about the condition and other projects to encourage vulnerability through storytelling. His writing appears in Wordgathering. Aaron’s website is aaronspharr.com.