Remember therefore from where you have fallen 

- Revelation 2:5 

I say it’s autumn, there are red leaves, but the leaves are rose gold in the morning and sickly yellow by night. 

I tell you calluses are gouged from my hands but they should be hands in the shape of the violin fingerboard. 

My hair whips in the wind. I catch a strand and rub it between my fingers, rub rub rub until it falls loose. The tips are oily, itchy in my scalp; it lays quiet in my hand, subdued by my violence. 

I say to no one in particular: my hair is too wild now, I must get it fixed. The hair goes snap-snap-snap on my face and I pick at the calluses on my forefinger. No one replies. 

I don’t fix it. Instead I order a hamburger from an off-brand Wendy’s and write some lessons you can’t learn until you've spent nights editing your craft, on WeChat moments. I search funny cat vids on a Thursday night and laugh at the big mean dog because it was giving its slobbery yellow ball to the kitten. The music is irritating, though; someone transposed Vivaldi’s Spring to C minor in an effort to sound fancy and modern but forgot the B flat. Only an idiot’s ears wouldn’t catch the jarring thrum from the synthesizer. 

It’s pathetic. 

I scroll through the comment section with the video on mute. The influencer has a gold-plated open-air mansion with an Olympic-sized swimming pool and its own cinema (the comments said so). I am so impressed that I subscribe immediately. I guess some people are born with money.

I google Siamese cats. I scroll through the pictures. The page doesn’t end. I scroll down some more. Each one is doing a different pose, fluffed up fur and vacant blue eyes, like they were posing for Prada’s new ads. I click on one of the links and the website has Help save this cat from canine distemper! written on a blank page. I can't find the picture. I settle for the icon that directed me to the donation site instead, loading http://theredcrosssss with 5 s’s, in small, grey letters. I pick at my hair while I wait. The roots are slick and sheathed in oil, a little cold when touched to my lips. 

The loading finishes but I don’t resume. I keep pulling at my hair. Nails scrape calluses on my finger, snapping strands like twigs. There is a rhythmic, soothing quality to the rp-rp-rp of hair being torn out of its follicles, a sweet and addictive feeling. Bit by bit by bit by bit. I don’t even stop to admire the fat puddle of the oil under the sickly LED light, I just pull and pull and pull. Yank throw yank throw yank throw. My mouth feels wet. 

Well, it’s only a few hairs. I stuff my hands under my knees, kicking away a small pile of hair. I scratch my face with my left hand, brush off a stray hair, press it back under my leg. The mattress is too hard. 

—really, at this angle, it’s just the normal amount of shedded hair on the floor. 

Dray posted a selfie pressing a toy gun into someone’s head, kicking a shattered violin fingerboard with the captions kneel to daddy stupid musicians. I move to block him, but end up going through all 193 messages he sent. Then I throw down my phone and plan to sleep. 

Something vibrates under my body with a hsshssshssss that makes my bones tingle. I reach between sticky layers of cloth to drag it from underneath all the dead weight (mine). My stomach rubs against the screen, leaving wavy marks. Face ID doesn’t work. 

Stupid phone. 

The ringing of the phone is an insistent zzzz zzzzz zzzzzz, which turns out to be Arya Follow sending me 583 new messages. I manage to get the password right on the fifth try, and I scroll down, trying to power down the phone. Instead my hands brush the sound button and the damn thing blares with a sudden wrath, going beep beep beep beep, it’s all I can think of beep beep beep beep like the oil slicks on my hair beep beep beep beep calling judgement on ostracizing the C minor Vivaldi beep beep beep beep beep beep oh god shut up shut UP—

My hands go smashing at the screen. With mercy from god the thing falls silent at last. I find Arya’s contact and hit DELETE. The phone freezes on her most recent message to me and stays there. The loading button does loop-de-loops while the messages keep sending. 

I can hear someone breathing as the loading portal spins around the screen. Thud thud. Thud thud. Spinning once, twice, three times before blinking out into the home screen. I start picking away the clogged roots of my eyebrows with the edge of my nails, methodically working from left to right, bit by bit by bit. My nails dig into my flesh; there is no sound but the rp-rp-rp of my hair and a weird thumping in my chest.

Then it buzzes once. 

I look down. A message from Karinette DuPont, my eighth grade Literature Olympiad teacher, reads in the group chat: 

@Vega, Lee: last warning - submit the Great Gatsby analysis tomorrow or it will go on your permanent record 

It was sent at 21:33. 

I delete that too and climb back to bed. 

(A hair slips into my mouth and 

I forgot my pills) 

The phone stays a metal slab in my hand.