Tess rolls her eyes. “Don’t play dumb. There’s no use trying to keep it quiet anymore.”
Oh, god. Someone must’ve found out about my cutting and my multiple diagnoses. And of course, that someone told Tess. And now Tess is furious at me for keeping such a huge secret from her. By the end of the day, the whole school will know.
I ball my hands into fists. Dr. Kreiter would say I’m spiraling, making assumptions without actual evidence.
I wish I could simply ask Tess what she’s talking about, but that would sound needy, and I want to sound aloof. So I unclench my fists, fold my arms across my chest, and say, “If I’m dumb, believe me I’m not doing it on purpose.”
Tess responds by folding her arms across her chest. She’s flat-chested (unlike me) and her arms are so long she can twist them over each other and still fit them around her neck. (It’s hard to explain, but it’s a cool party trick.) She’s wearing a black sleeveless shirt with a high crewneck (the sort of shirt that would look terrible on my shorter, curvier frame). She blinks her big brown eyes. She never leaves the house without a coat of mascara.
“You really don’t know?” I watch her long lashes when she blinks.
“Don’t know what?”
She shakes her head. “I guess she kept it a secret from everyone.”
The bell rings again. Last call for first period. I can’t miss homeroom and also be late to first period. My parents’ deal with Mrs. Frosch doesn’t extend to me missing class.
“I gotta go,” I say, pretending I don’t want to stay here and talk to her. “Text me.”
Tess shakes her head again. “It’s not the kind of thing you text about.”
I stand on my tiptoes to kiss her on the cheek (so carefree, so easygoing). Some guy wolf whistles, and I roll my eyes (immature idiots like him don’t bother cool girls like me), and book it to chem lab before Tess can say another word.
The first time Tess told me she loved me, it was via text, so whatever Tess is talking about, it must be bad—breakup bad, I mean—if Tess thinks it’s not the kind of thing you text about. If I were actually cool instead of just pretending to be, I’d break up with Tess before she has the chance to break up with me. But I won’t, because I’m not.
In physics class, Mr. Chapnick surprises us with a pop quiz. (Hooray.) The classroom is so silent that everyone hears it when my phone vibrates with one text message, then another, then another.
“What is that racket?” Mr. Chapnick finally explodes.
I lean down to pull my phone out of my backpack. “I’ll turn it to silent,” I offer. Mr. Chapnick grabs my phone out of my hands before I can even glance at the screen. “Off until the end of class,” he says, powering my phone down. My classmates giggle. A few of the boys wink at me, like they’re impressed with my nerve—texting during class is strictly against the rules.
I wink back. Can’t let them see I’m mortified.
* * *
When I finally get my phone back after class, I’m surprised to discover that in addition to two Call me, we have to talk texts from Tess (is this her way of building up to the breakup?), there’s also a message from my mother.
Call me when you have a minute, sweetie.
Crap. Mrs. Frosch must have called when I wasn’t just late but completely absent from homeroom this morning. Even OCD can’t get me out of detention now.
I wonder what detention will be like. (I’ve never actually been in detention before.) Maybe it’ll be like it is in the movies, and I’ll bond with kids I barely know and we’ll dance and get high (surely Hiram Bingham will be there, he must have a permanent place in detention), and fall in love and learn something about ourselves.
Or maybe we’ll just sit there without our phones or laptops, bored out of our minds, getting a head start on the next day’s homework because we don’t have anything better to do.
I don’t call Mom. Mr. Chapnick made me stay late so he could lecture me about phone etiquette, and if I don’t hurry, I’m going to be late (again) to my next class, European history. I actually like European history (unlike physics) and Ms. Smit actually likes me (unlike Mr. Chapnick), so I don’t want to get on her bad side.
I need all the allies I can get, especially if I’m about to lose Mrs. Frosch.
The bell rings. Last call for second period. I’ll have to call Mom during lunch.
Four
The Anxious Girl
After fourth period, I gather my books and head toward our usual lunch table.
I’ve been sitting with the same group of friends since freshman year. We probably don’t have that much in common anymore, but no one ever suggested a change in our routine.
And that routine makes it easier to avoid Tess and the terrible news she has to share with me.
Seriously, what else but a breakup would be not the kind of thing you text about?
But…she wouldn’t just squeeze it in between classes, would she?
After school makes more sense. It would give us time to talk it out.
But maybe not, because it’s only Monday and she might not want to start the week off badly. Maybe she’ll wait until Friday, and I’ll have the weekend to wallow over it. She can’t do it on Saturday because she wouldn’t do it before Big Night (our school’s annual blowout), and anyway she has a track meet Sunday and she wouldn’t want the distraction. Which brings us to next Monday, and if she was going to do it next Monday, she may as well do it today.
My hands are shaking. I ball them into fists like I did this morning, but that only makes them itch.
Everyone stares at me as I walk down the hall. (Dr. Kreiter says that’s my imagination. She says no one is staring at me. She says, People are never thinking about you as much as you think they do.) But what about the boys who make kissy noises at Tess and me when we walk down the halls holding hands, or the jerk who whistled at us earlier?
Every time it happens, I roll my eyes like it’s no big deal. Sometimes, I even call the gross boys out. But later, at night, in bed, trying and failing to sleep… It’s like I can still hear them. And sometimes it makes me wonder what it would be like to be straight, because maybe then those boys wouldn’t look at me.
Then again, maybe they’d find another reason to stare. Even before I came out, I was sure people were looking at me. (Dr. Kreiter would say that was my imagination too.)
And my dad’s colleague. I stood up to him with aplomb—I really did!—and Dad was so proud. But that didn’t keep me from worrying that I might have gotten my father into trouble. Of course, Dad would say he didn’t care because I’d been right to stand up for myself—but what if he lost his job? Dad would say it was more important to be right than employed. He’d say he wouldn’t want to work for a man who fired him over something like that anyhow. But what if he couldn’t afford to pay my tuition, or our mortgage, or to put food on the table?
I pull my phone from my back pocket to text my best friend—hey wanna ditch lunch and chat?—even though I know she only skips lunch to study. Maybe I can convince her to make an exception, just this once. But I hear Tess’s voice calling my name before I can type a word. I tuck my phone back into my pocket.
“Eat lunch with me today,” she says.
We agreed weeks ago that we were not going to be the kind of girls who blow off their friends the instant they’re in a relationship. My best friend started canceling our plans literally the day after she and her boyfriend got together. (She didn’t even always cancel them, sometimes she simply didn’t show up.) So no matter how much I might have wanted to spend every spare second with Tess, I forced myself to eat lunch with the same crowd as always. Why would Tess suggest making a change now?
Unless she really is planning to fit the breakup in between classes.
I shake my head, shove my hands in my pockets, and tell her, “I can’t.”
I expect her to tell me that
of course I can, there’s no rule that says I can’t sit at another table just this once, but much to my surprise, she nods and says, “I understand.”
She must feel sorry for me. She says, “I never know what the right thing to say is at times like this.”
The words come out before I can stop them. “So don’t say anything. Please.” I hate that I sound like I’m begging. Was it really just this morning that I managed to play it cool?
Tess shakes her head. “I have to say something. I have to do something. We have to do something, you know?”
I nod. Maybe that’s the kind of thing people say to make a breakup sound less one-sided.
Tess says, “Could you just tell her—I don’t know. Tell her I’m thinking about her, I guess.”
Tell who? Tell me? Is she talking about me in the third person? Will that make it easier to dump me?
Tess leans in to kiss me. I’m so startled that I pull away before our lips touch. Who kisses the girl she’s breaking up with?
“I’ve gotta go,” I say, setting off down the hall. “The guys are waiting at our table.”
Tess follows me, the look on her face shifting from sympathetic to angry. “You’re going to sit with them?”
I shrug. “I always sit with them.”
“But I thought today—” She shakes her head. “I can’t believe this.” She looks so disgusted that I freeze in my tracks.
“Believe what?”
“You’re not actually taking his side, are you?”
“What are you talking about?” I ask, utterly confused.
“Oh, I get it.” She folds her long arms across her chest. “You’re going to play it like, Innocent until proven guilty, it’s her word against his, there’s no evidence—as if she isn’t evidence! How can you do that to her?”
“How can I do what to whom?” I stuff my hands even deeper into my pockets, hoping she can’t see them shaking through my jeans. I want this moment to end. I want to make it outside and to our table, where I can sit down and let the guys do the talking. They’re loud enough that no one will hear how hard my heart is pounding.
“I heard it had been going on for a while,” Tess spits. “You know, if you were any kind of a friend, you’d have figured it out months ago. There must have been signs.”
Everyone in the hallway has stopped to look at us. At me. I’m not just being paranoid like Dr. Kreiter says. This isn’t me spiraling—they really are staring now.
“I’ve gotta go,” I manage. My voice sounds small. Thin. Weak.
“I don’t even feel like I know you anymore.” Tess shakes her head. “It’s over.”
Oh, god, I can’t believe it’s actually happening here. Now. In the middle of school. With everyone staring at us. In the made-up scenarios that dance around my imagination, I never pictured anything this awful.
“You’re not going to say anything?” Tess asks. She doesn’t know how hard I’m working to keep my jaw still, trying to keep my teeth from chattering.
So I stand there silently while Tess turns around and walks away.
* * *
My pulse is so fast, it doesn’t feel like a beat at all. It’s more like an endless, deafening hum.
Count backward from one hundred, I tell myself. (That’s what Dr. Kreiter suggested once. She also suggested squeezing an ice cube to mimic the discomfort of cutting, using a marker to doodle on the part of my body I want to cut, ripping up paper into tiny pieces, or eating sour food. But the only one of her ideas I’ve tried is the counting backward one because it’s the only one that doesn’t require a prop.)
I dig my fingers deep into the pockets of my jeans. Through the material, I can feel my nails against my skin. I’ve only ever cut on my upper thighs, where no one will see. With Tess, I undressed in the dark, dove under the covers immediately, so my scars would stay as invisible as possible.
At least I don’t have to worry about that anymore.
I’m supposed to go to the nurse’s office if I feel the urge, that was part of the deal. But the nurse would call my mom, and Mom would call Dr. Kreiter, and Dr. Kreiter would insist on scheduling an emergency session. She’d bring up medication again, group therapy. Dad would be disappointed that I wasn’t able to hold up my end of the deal after all. I’d let him down, just like I did when I got an eighty-nine on my physics test last semester. (Eighty-nine is the cut off between an A-minus and a B-plus, and people who get B-pluses do not get into Stanford.)
I run across the parking lot until I get to my car. I manage to open the door and slam it shut behind me.
My trembling hands reach toward the glove compartment of their own volition. I feel—as I always did (do?) before cutting—like an outsider floating above my body, watching what’s happening. Dr. Kreiter calls it a trance.
I used to keep an extra razor blade in the car for emergencies, but I threw it away because my parents asked me to get rid of anything I used to cut, and I promised I would. (That was part of the deal.)
I open the glove compartment. The instructions that came with the car when my parents leased it for me are stuffed in there, along with some tissues, a granola bar, my registration, and god knows what else. I dig through it all until I find the mirror. It’s tucked into a bright yellow compact with blush on one side, even though I never wear blush.
When Mom first found out about the cutting, she acted like she wanted to get rid of every sharp object in the house: every razor blade, every steak knife and butter knife, and each pair of scissors. She said she didn’t want anything to trigger me. I considered suggesting that she redecorate the bathroom, since I’d (mostly) only cut in there, and the familiar surroundings might trigger me even more than knives and scissors (which I’d never used for cutting), but in the end I kept the thought to myself.
Eventually, Dad pointed out the impracticality of getting rid of everything sharp. Plus, I’d never cut myself with anything but an old-fashioned razor blade, and I’d tossed those like I promised. So I’m allowed to cut my own food and (after a few weeks) to shave my legs. Honor code and all that.
The very first time was in December. End-of-semester finals. And the SATs were only months away. I needed to study all weekend. Dad was planning a demonstration (immigrants’ rights) in the city, and he was disappointed that I couldn’t come. Home alone while he and Mom were out protesting, I was full of nervous energy. I felt guilty that I hadn’t gone with my parents. After hours of studying, the words were swimming on the pages and screens in front of me, but I had to keep going, to justify staying home. But I couldn’t concentrate on anything. I even tried to take a break, but I couldn’t sit still long enough to read or watch TV. My heart beat so fast, it felt like a bird in a cage that thought if it beat its wings hard enough, it would take flight, cage and all. My hands shook so hard that it felt like I was bursting with energy waiting to be set free.
So I walked into the bathroom off my parents’ bedroom. I took one of Dad’s old-fashioned razor blades from the medicine cabinet. He inserts a fresh blade into a shiny chrome safety razor each month. He says it’s the only way to get a properly close shave. I brought the razor blade back to my room. I’d seen characters on TV do this, read about it in books. Even though I was home alone, I shut the door. I pulled down my pants and made a tiny cut on my inner thigh.
And I felt better.
It was a relief, like all that energy finally had a way to escape. My heart stopped racing, my hands stilled. I had one thing—the pain—to focus on, and suddenly it was easy to concentrate on that, and only that.
That makes it sound so much simpler than it was. The truth is, it wasn’t that easy to cut myself. At least, not the first time. I was surprised by how hard I had to press, by how my skin resisted. I thought of all the times I’d cut myself accidentally: paper cuts and slipped knives and poorly shaved legs. It had never seemed difficult. If anything, it had bee
n all too easy before. But I was patient, and eventually I pressed hard enough that my skin gave way. I thought about surgeons—surely they don’t hesitate before making a cut.
I wasn’t scared when I saw the blood. It didn’t even startle me, the dark red against my skin. You know in the movies when some character is freaking out, and another character slaps them across the face, and then the first character feels better? It was like that. The cutting calmed me down.
Later, I rubbed Neosporin over the cut and covered it with a Band-Aid. I cleaned the blade with rubbing alcohol and slid it beneath my mattress. The cut was so shallow that it had already stopped bleeding, and probably wouldn’t leave a scar, but better safe than sorry. The next day, I bought myself a fresh tube of Neosporin at the pharmacy, a bottle of rubbing alcohol, and a bag full of cotton balls. I used each item every time I cut. I even bought a second set of supplies, including an extra blade, to keep in my car’s glove compartment.
Now, I open the car door and drop the compact on the ground, hard. I can hear the glass shatter. Mom once told me that a cracked mirror means seven years of bad luck.
I’m not sure my luck can get any worse.
I’ve never cut with anything but a blade, never gazed longingly at sharp objects, wondering what would be able to pierce my skin.
But desperate times call for desperate measures.
Just knowing what’s coming makes me calmer. I stop trembling, and my heartbeat slows. I bend down to pick up the mirror.
Where will I cut? I could unbutton my pants and nick my upper thigh, but in the car it would be easier to lift my shirt and cut my belly, maybe just below my waistband. But then the band might rub against the cut all afternoon, which might become a problem if it bled into my shirt (my tee is white today) and someone saw.
Hiram Bingham’s ugly brown car is behind me. He’s the only person with a less desirable parking spot than mine. It’s not like he needs to be particularly close to school since he barely bothers to go to class.
I’ve heard that Hiram can get stuff. Something to calm you down, something to perk you up. Something to help you sleep at night, something to help you stay awake and study.
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