I didn't even notice the sun leave. One minute the living room was that dusty gold color—the kind that makes the cat hair on the rug look like tinsel—and the next it’s just me and this blue glare. My tea is stone cold. It’s got that oily film on top, like a puddle in a gas station parking lot after a storm. I took a sip without thinking and it felt like swallowing a wet penny. Disgusting. But I didn't get up to dump it. I just sat there in the dark because my thumb was busy scrolling through three hundred comments on the Fairview Gazette page about the new roundabout they’re building over on 5th. Some guy named Dale—profile picture is a blurry fish he caught in 2012—is calling everyone a socialist because of the traffic light removal. And there’s me, a woman who used to explain the finer points of the French Revolution to bored sixteen-year-olds, typing out a three-paragraph rebuttal about urban planning. Then I deleted it. Then I typed it again, but with more vitriol. My fingers are cramping into this weird claw shape, like some bargain-bin Nosferatu. It’s pathetic, really. A real chef’s kiss moment for my dignity. I’m thirty-nine and I’m "retired" from the district in the same way a car is retired when the transmission falls out on the interstate. The disability paperwork is a mountain of paper that smells like stale coffee and failure. My monthly check is a joke, a little crumb the state throws me so I don’t starve too loudly. I spent today counting out quarters for the laundromat because the machine in the basement of this building eats dimes like candy and spits out soap suds. My life is a series of small, grinding gears that don't quite catch anymore. I used to be the person who had a color-coded planner for every day of the week, and now I’m arguing with a man who thinks "infrastructure" is a code word for the apocalypse. It’s 2am now. Or maybe it’s 3. The time on the top of the screen is just a suggestion at this point. I found myself looking up the obituary of a woman I went to high school with just because someone mentioned her name in a thread about the old textile mill. She looked so happy in her photo. Teeth like piano keys, skin glowing. And here I am, sitting in a chair that’s losing its stuffing, my neck clicking every time I breathe. I’m an absolute specimen of human achievement. Truly. If you look up "peaked in the faculty lounge" in the dictionary, there's a grainy photo of me eating a lukewarm Lean Cuisine. I keep reading these comments. People are so angry. They’re screaming into the void about property taxes and the local high school’s football coach. It’s a cacophony of illiterate rage. I should be crying, maybe? Or at least feeling some kind of righteous indignation? But it’s just... flat. It’s like watching a movie with the sound turned off. My heart is a heavy piece of wet charcoal in my chest. It doesn't spark. It just sits there, making everything around it messy and dark. I feel like my capacity for real emotion was used up by year seven of teaching middle school, and now I’m just running on the fumes of other people's anger. My mother used to say that boredom is a luxury for the rich, but I think she was wrong. This isn't luxury. This is a slow drowning in shallow water. You’d think the end of a career would feel like a grand finale, a curtain call with flowers and a standing ovation. Instead, it’s just the hum of the refrigerator and the blue light of a smartphone screen reflecting off my glasses. I can hear the neighbors arguing through the wall—something about a lost remote. Their voices are muffled, like they’re underwater. I’m just waiting for the bubbles to stop. I went back to Dale’s comment. He replied to me. Called me a "libtard schoolmarm" and told me to get a real job. I laughed, and it sounded like a dry branch snapping. A real job. As if managing thirty-two kids with varying degrees of trauma and a curriculum designed by people who haven't seen a classroom since the Ford administration wasn't "real." But I didn't type that back. I just looked at the screen until the words turned into black ants crawling across a white desert. I’m an intellectual heavyweight fighting a war against a man who uses "your" instead of "you're" and I’m losing. The radiator just kicked on. It makes this high-pitched whistle, like a teakettle that’s been forgotten on the stove. My feet are numb. I should probably go to bed, but the thought of the sheets—cold and smelling of the cheap lavender detergent I bought on sale—makes me stay right here. In the dark. With Dale and the roundabout and the cold tea. It’s easier to be angry at a stranger on the internet than it is to look at the pile of bills on the kitchen table that I can't pay until the 1st. It's a grand diversion, isn't it? A way to keep the lights off. I feel like a ghost that forgot to leave the house. I’m haunting my own life. I see the person I was five years ago—sharp blazers, a plan for every Tuesday, a belief that I was actually making a dent in the world—and she looks like a stranger. Someone I’d see on the street and ignore. Now, I’m just a collection of aches and digital footprints. A mid-career tragedy in pajama pants that haven't been washed since Tuesday. I finally dumped the tea. I didn't turn on the light. I just felt my way to the sink and poured it out. It sounded so loud in the quiet kitchen. Like a waterfall. I stood there for a minute, gripping the edge of the counter, waiting for some kind of epiphany. Some realization that would make the air feel lighter. Nothing came. Just the sound of a car driving by on the wet pavement outside and the itch of the tag on my shirt. I’m going to go lie down now. Maybe tomorrow I’ll delete the app. But I know I won’t. Dale is probably typing a reply right now, and someone has to be there to see it. Someone has to keep the score.