They never watch TV. But tonight they feel the need to tune into a sitcom. They’re on the couch cracking up. The indignity of parents. The annoying, irritating, vexatious indignity of parents staying up late when I need to slip out. I want to drop sleeping pills into their wineglasses or short out the tube. Instead, I’m at the dining room table doing my best approximation of studying for my exams. But my brain is repelling math facts, and all I’m doing is tapping my foot, and checking my parents, and wishing they’d go to bed. Bonheur texted me a few minutes ago that the coast is clear at his home. I switch to literature and try to read an analysis of Proust’s l’Éducation Sentimentale that I found online, but the words are thick sludge. The details melt away from me because all I want is to see her. I tell myself it’s crazy to feel this way about a work of art. That it’s insane to want to see a painted girl so badly. But logic won’t win this battle, so I stop pretending to absorb the analysis and I let my thoughts wander.
