don’t–––––even–––––break–––––the–––––skin–––––
Lungs are feeling tight.
Heart is thumping hard.
Rennie’s words are swirling in my head.
Just one cut to feel alive . . .
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And Then
Whoosh!
The skin tears
and I feel this rush
swirling in my brain
like a waterspout.
A finger-tingling,
tongue-numbing,
heart-pounding
rush.
And the pain doesn’t feel like pain
but more like energy
moving through my body
in waves.
Rushing.
Cleansing.
Pulsing.
Purging all the broken bits out of me
like a tsunami washing debris to the shore.
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Afterward
I feel the calm,
the bliss,
the sheer weightlessness
of zero worry.
I’m floating on a smooth glass pond
with bottle-nosed endorphins
swimming all around,
splashing their tails,
smiling their perpetual smiles.
And I want this feeling to last forever.
Because if the feeling lasts,
it won’t matter what Avery says,
or what my mother doesn’t say,
or how twisted I feel inside
because I know for sure
that on this calm, tranquil pond
nothing and I mean nothing
can ever make a ripple in my heart.
But here’s the bad thing:
The feeling doesn’t last forever.
It never lasts forever.
In fact, it barely lasts ten freaking minutes.
Before the guilt sets in.
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I Guess That’s Why I Picked the Word
Hope.
Because part of me really hopes I can quit.
So I can stop feeling guilty all the time.
Like when I’m washing laundry in secret.
Or wasting my allowance on sterile gauze.
Or lying to my little brother, Sean, about
why I can’t go swimming with him.
Those are the times I fumble around
looking for hope.
I hope Rennie will still like me if I quit.
I hope I can stop wearing concealer on my arms.
I hope Bio-Oil really works.
I hope I won’t miss my scars (too much).
But then I remember those ten mind-blowing minutes,
and I think about how it feels the next day,
when everyone crowds around me at lunch,
looking at my cuts, rubbing my shoulders,
dabbing me with I-feel-so-bad-for-you ointment.
And I remember the spotlight of Rennie’s grin
and the way her approval makes me feel special,
and I gotta say, that’s a pretty ginormous feeling.
Like an over-the-top, Sears Tower kinda high.
And just thinking about that
makes my little wad of hope
fell like a spitball
slipping through my fingers
103 stories down
to the bottom
of
my
pocket.
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Wednesday 3:22 p.m.
It’s been 24 hours since I got to Attaboys.
Donya says they have to give me
my official psych evaluation
in the first 24 hours,
or they’ll have to let me go.
That’s part of the Baker Act.
I guess that’s why Roger’s waving me over now.
He introduces me to this pinched-up
Pomeranian face with a clipboard.
Dr. Annoyed-To-Meet-Me
doesn’t even look up.
She just drones off
the same pointless questions
they asked in the ER.
1. Do you know why you’re here?
2. Do you think you need to be here?
3. What would you do if we let you out?
Hmmm. Let me see.
I’m here because Tara-the-Two-Face
is a big drama queen who peddles gossip
like Girl Scout cookies, and opening
that bathroom door was like selling
a thousand boxes of Thin Mints.
Do I think I need to be here?
Are you kidding me?
NO. I don’t need to be here.
But this works perfect for Tara,
because she’d do anything
to have Rennie all to herself.
And what will I do when I get out?
First off, I’m gonna strangle Tara
with a fat wad of dental floss,
now that I know how dangerous
waxed string can be. Then I’ll friend Jag
on Facebook and reblog a few GIFs
for my vast audience of Tumblr followers.
All three of them.
After that, I’ll ride my bike to Rennie’s
and we’ll raid her mother’s bathroom,
paint our nails Lincoln Park after Dark,
and drink Monster until we get a caffeine buzz.
I want to tell the Pomeranian
that’s what I’m really thinking
just to see the look on her face.
But Donya warned me,
it isn’t worth it.
So I give her one of those
fake, elastic smiles
and deliver my best lines of BS.
“I’m here because I made an impulsive mistake.
But I’m feeling much better now.
And it will never happen again.”
Then I do a little curtsy-bob with my head
and the Pomeranian bubbles in her stupid
Scantron sheet and trots away.
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Donya Catches Me in the Hallway
“Not bad,” she says. “Might even get you out.
Unless . . .”
“Unless what?” I ask.
Donya snaps her gum
and loops the pink strand
around her finger slow as taffy.
“Unless you got good insurance,” she says.
“Then you’re screwed.”
I follow Donya down the hall.
“What’d’ya mean I’m screwed?”
“Cha-ching,” she sings.
I stare at her, my face blank,
like she just spoke Egyptian.
“Oh, come on, Kenna,” she says.
“Don’t you get it?
If you got good insurance,
they’re gonna milk it.
Take their time with you.
Find your inner child
and all that crap.
But with no insurance—
Voila!
You’re miraculously cured.
Sometimes the same day.”
I don’t want to believe her.
But Donya knows this place like the inside of her pocket.
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Speaking of Being Screwed
At my school, nobody narcs on cutters.
Not the goody-two-shoes
who pretend they don’t notice
and turn their heads the other way.
Not the stoners who can barely
raise their eyelids.
Not the jocks who are too busy
growing tumors on their arms.
Not even the jerks who call us
emo’s and attention whores,
under their breath.
Nobody.
So that makes Tara the first
narc in history to go running off
to “get help” just because
someone needs a Band-Aid.
Only that’s not why she did it.
Tara did it because she’s a freaking
competitive cutter who can’t stand it
if anyone has better scars than her,
and she got it into her head that
people were paying more attention
to me than to her.
That’s crap, of course.
But that didn’t stop her.
And now that I’m gone,
she’ll own fourth period lunch,
with her duct tape bandages
and her six-inch slits,
and she’ll be a freaking rock star
just like she wants.
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I Wonder What Rennie Thinks
Does she think that Tara’s
a two-faced greedy bitch
for ratting me out?
Or that I’m a dumbass
for getting caught?
It’s a very tricky relationship.
The three of us.
I remember how one time
my math teacher spent the whole
period talking about triangles.
How they’re the strongest shape,
and that’s why they’re used for building
bridges and trusses because they won’t
geometrically distort, or some crap like that.
But as usual, school has nothing to do
with real life because if you ask me
triangles are the weakest shape of all,
ready to blow apart at any minute,
especially when the three corners are
Rennie,
Tara,
and me.
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If Sean Was a Shape
He’d be a circle.
Pure.
Honest.
Perfect.
You can trust a circle.
It doesn’t have any crooked angles
hiding secrets in the corners.
It’s the same with Sean.
Sure. He can be annoying
when he blurts things out
like little brothers do,
but at least he says
what he means.
He’s not a liar.
Or a fake.
I bet you could search
a thousand classrooms,
and cafeterias, and gymnasiums,
and never find that kind of honesty
anywhere else. Believe me. I’ve tried.
I think Sean may be
the last circle on earth.
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Wednesday 4 p.m.
It’s bad enough we have to spill our guts
at 8 a.m. when any normal teenager
would still be hibernating.
But apparently one gut spill per day
is not enough for Attaboys.
So when the afternoon rolls around,
they herd us back into the therapy
room for another session.
The only good thing is that Jag’s
sitting six inches away from me
in his Screaming Zombies T-shirt
and I can smell the faint woodiness
of skateboard on his skin.
Jag reaches his arms back to stretch,
and it’s like every muscle in his body
is in perfect, rippled balance,
and I can just imagine
how good he looks on his long board,
pivoting his Levi’s hips,
flexing his marble six-pack,
surfing the smooth cement
with his arms long and low
like fighter-plane wings.
He catches me staring at him
and smiles with that half-broken grin
until I feel so sweet and tickly inside it’s
like I’m swirling in a cotton candy machine.
Too bad Roger has to ruin it.
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Tap, Tap, Tap . . .
Roger drums his pen on the whiteboard
like he wants to knock some sense into us.
He says we should talk about having goals,
because that’s what all adults think we need.
Goals and college plans and career objectives.
But what do they know?
I mean, who says their world is right?
What if our real purpose on earth is
something as simple as
Have fun.
Feel good.
Be free.
If it is, then 99.9% of all adults
are failing miserably on this earth,
and when they die they’ll probably
be reincarnated as boring worker ants
because that’s about all they’re good for.
I almost feel sorry for Roger.
Not because he’s going
to be an ant in the next life,
but because he really believes
the crap he’s writing on the board.
TOP THREE REASONS FOR HAVING GOALS:
* Goals keep you focused
* Goals give you purpose
* Achieving Goals is something to celebrate
He says it’s best to write your goals on paper
and he hands us a yellow sheet and a felt-tip pen.
I know I should play along and scribble something like:
* Quit cutting
* Get straight As
* Join a club
But that would be too easy.
And then someone might expect me to do it.
Besides, who can think about goals
sitting six inches away from Jag’s lips?
Those soft pink pillow puffs,
dreamy as clouds and totally kissable.
So that’s the first goal I write,
in microscopic letters:
Lock lips with Jag Mancuzzi,
Then I notice Skylar
looking even thinner
after three peas for lunch
and I scribble down another goal:
Buy Skylar a jumbo burger.
Finally Donya catches my eye,
pretending to walk with a cane,
like that’s how old I’ll be
when I get out of Attaboys.
So I smooth out my paper
and write my last one:
Blow this place!
And Roger is right.
It does feel good to have goals.
Right up until the time
he comes around and collects
them.
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Waiting and More Waiting
I wonder how long you can sit
in a folding chair before your spine
actually fuses to the metal.
Or how many Nemos
you can count on the wall
before you want to bang
your head against it.
As much as I hate the idiotic
group sessions, the time in
between is even worse.
It’s a million shades of boring.
The only entertainment besides
zoning out to Judge Judy reruns
or watching Bullhorn pluck her lip hairs,
is when we get a new arrival,
like the little head case
who rolls in right after group.
He’s about the same age
as my brother Sean.
Eight. Maybe Nine.
Supposedly, he jabbed
his teacher with a pencil.
But looking at him now,
crumpled in a ball on the floor,
he doesn’t seem dangerous to me.
It’s makes me wonder,
isn’t there something else
for an eight-year-old?
Like a ten-minute time-out,
or no recess,
or “Sorry, kid,
you lose your lollipop.”
Do they really have to Baker Act him?
Seriously?
And when he opens his mouth I realize
he doesn’t even speak English
because he’s all like
“lo siento, lo siento, lo siento”
but nobody’s listening
to the little stabber
no matter how many times
he says he’s sorry.
They try to lift him to his feet
and he goes sort of wild,
kicking and spinning,
knocking Ding Dong’s
sucker jar off the counter.
The orderlies swoop in
and loop this long white jacket
around him until he looks
like a caterpillar in a cocoon.
When they cart him off,
the only thing I can see
are his tiny inchworm eyes
crying out for help.
And it makes me think:
I don’t know why you
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