Smile

by Jensen Rocha ‘23

Smile. It says so on a post-it note stuck to the mirror in my bathroom. I force my lips into a curve. Smile. Today will be a good day. Today will be a good day. 

I’m walking to school and I see this man walking the other way. I’ve seen him before, maybe here, maybe somewhere else. Smile. The curve gets bigger. He has one too. Smile. He will not remember this tomorrow. But maybe he will. Maybe I will. Smile. 

My first class is in room 209, I sit next to a girl, she turns to me. Smile. I grin back at her. Smile. The pages of her notebook flutter as she opens it to continue her notes. I turn to the front of the room. There’s a pair of spectacles above a large nose above a smile. My mouth stays flat, I take out my pen and look at the post-it stuck to the front of my notebook. The curve erases and the lecture begins. Thoughts run through my head as words pound through the air. The class laughs, a joke maybe? Moment. Moment. Then I do what I should. Smile. The bell rings. A pen, a binder, a notebook, slide into my backpack. Zip, zip, zip, I feel the noise of my closing backpack echo through the room, drowning out all the other sounds. The world is an ocean and I am drowning, drowning, drowning in it, but soon, as the lady in the brown chair whose teeth are always showing says, I will find a way to smile. 

A hand crosses my line of vision, bringing back the noise, it holds an eraser. I reach out and grab it, feel my mouth stretch. My brown eyes move up to meet blue ones. Her name is Stefanie. We were friends once, before I realized how meaningless a curve and a few white cubes were. I want to tell her the things I have learned, but I understand she would prefer not to know, so instead I Smile. My hair slides through the air with a gentle whish as I turn on my foot to leave. Pitter, patter, pitter, patter, my steps are the noise, so I keep walking. 

Class, class, class, lunch. My feet take me to get my food and the curve returns as the lady behind the window plops a spoon of mashed potatoes on my plate. Smile. My lips say thank you when my tongue cannot. The rest of my food slops onto my plate and I walk myself to a table. People say hi to me and I show them my teeth. Smile. I wonder if they sense warmth or if the curve of my lips is just as emotionless as it feels. I can feel their mouths on me as they turn the corner of their faces up in return. Smiles. I force a swallow before my throat chokes up and have a seat. 

At the table they all chatter, and I feel rather than hear the vibrations that are meant to convey meaning collide into me. Teeth clack, air zooms, and all around me, across the entire cafeteria, thin lines of pink flesh stretch into inverted rainbows. I feel my breathing pick up to a rate I can’t control, and my eyes are leaving, leaving, leaving my body and I am looking at a cafeteria of people smiling and laughing and cheering and screaming and I’m wondering, wondering if any of them are feeling what I’m feeling. If any of them are sitting there with an expression they’ve been told should mean something plastered on their face, wondering why they can’t feel what they’re supposed to and why they can’t be like anyone else and why no one seems to care whether they’re there or if they’re not and why their parents don’t talk anymore except to scream and yell and punch, but they still twist out a smile like it’s supposed to mean something, like everything is still the same. Because the world is big and I am small and a smile doesn’t mean a thing, except for the post-it notes on my mirror and up in my room and on my binder tell me that it should, that if I just smile, even though the papers can’t get the last signature and my father’s fist still leaves marks and my mom’s teeth still shine through her tears, everything will be okay and my breath will come out normally and I’ll hear voices again and make noises again and be a person again. Except my lips just keep stretching and stretching and stretching and instead of making me feel anything they just make my breath come out faster and my eyes leave my head and show me the billions of empty, empty smiles in the world leaving me to wonder if any of them are real, if anything is real at all. Because what is reality but a bunch of faces that repeat a mantra that somehow means something. Smile. Smile. Smile. 

And then everything goes black. Infinitely and endlessly black and I feel at peace because I feel and see nothing at all. 

The whir of a monitor wakes me up. And I see shiny white teeth caught between pale pink lips. 

Are you okay? The lips move. 

I stretch mine in return. 

Smile. 

Enough said, enough said.