Kiss of Broken Glass (8 page)

like lukewarm milk

aren’t even as hot as my tears.

I feel my lips start to quiver,

and my shoulders shake.

Then my heart splits open

and the words tumble out

like bricks.

“How could Rennie say that?

I thought she was my friend.

My sister.”

But nobody answers.

Not even my own echo.

The shower shuts off automatically,

and I’m still sobbing, watching

ribbons of water slide down my skin.

The drops glance over the scars on my hips,

and ricochet past the cuts on my thighs,

and bounce off the red flippy lines on my ankles

like balls in a pinball machine.

I’m an outcast,

           a loser,

                 a nothing.

I step out of the shower and drag

the towel across my body, but

I can’t look at myself anymore,

because every inch of rejected skin

reminds me of the awful truth:

Now I have more scars than friends.

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Is sleep and sleep and

sleepandsleepandsleepand

sleepandsleepandsleepand

sleepandsleepandsleepand

sleepandsleepandsleepand

sleepandsleepandsleepand

sleepandsleepandsleepand

sleepandsleepandsleepand

sleepandsleepandsleepand

sleepandsleepandsleep . . .

But I’m the kind of tired

that sleeping doesn’t fix.

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That cuts multiply like freaking rabbits.

That no skin is sacred.

That hugs hurt.

That becoming a pathological liar is a requirement.

That guilt feels like being buried alive.

That long sleeves ride up at the worst possible moment.

That being called
emo
sucks.

That cutting can get you Baker Acted in Florida.

That people are disposable.

And that one day, she’d get rid of
me.

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She tells me I need to eat.

Then she stands there waiting,

like applesauce will solve everything.

I stare at the ham sandwich cut diagonally.

The sticks of marbled string cheese.

The bunch of green grapes.

For a split second I flashback

to when I was four years old,

watching Mom peel grapes

one by one

so I won’t choke on the skin.

Mom laughs as they slip through her fingers

and says she doesn’t know why she’s

still peeling them. I’m not a baby anymore.

But she keeps doing it anyway,

grape after grape,

because that’s the way I like them.

Then for the first time in forever,

I get that cookie-dough feeling.

The warm, out-of-the-oven emotion

that a little girl can only feel for her mother.

And I wonder what snuffed that feeling out.

If it was Avery with her

I’m-the-favorite-daughter
routine.

Or if it was Rennie with her relentless

mother bashing—like:

Don’t-expect-a-thank-you-just-

for-pushing-me-out-of-your-vagina.

Or if maybe

           somehow

                 it was me.

Because I believed them both.

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The Pomeranian shows up with her clipboard.

I don’t know if I have the strength

to fake my way through her questions today.

Plus, I’d really rather see why there’s such

a commotion in the lobby behind her,

but I can’t make it out because she’s filling

the whole doorframe with her polyester suit.

While I’m craning my neck, she reads

from the same stupid script as yesterday:

Of course, I don’t say what I’m thinking.

That’s the thing about lies.

Once you get good at them,

they feel more natural than the truth,

almost as automatic as breathing,

and sometimes when I’m feeling

low and lost like now,

I can’t even tell the difference.

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It was Skylar in the lobby

making all that commotion,

because she came back

with fresh gauze on her arm

and two curvy, red lines

bleeding through the cloth like smiles.

Here’s the problem with that.

It’s not that I think any less of her

even though my heart cringes a little

because I know she wanted to stay clean.

It’s not that the butterfly’s dead

even though she named it for me

and thinking of myself as a dead insect

sort of sucks.

It’s not even that I’m worried

about what’ll happen to Skylar next

even though the Pomeranian

is talking to her waaaay too long.

The problem is this:

I can’t
be there
for her

even though I want to,

because those two tiny lines

are a huge freaking trigger

and they’re making me

double over and sweat

until all I can think about

is ripping apart my own cuts

with my shaky bare hands.

How screwed up is that?

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If cutting’s so bad, you should just quit.

Yeah, right.

Like I can snap my fingers

and make my blades disappear.

They have absolutely no idea

how freaking hard it is to stop.

Why don’t you just quit breathing?

That’s what I want to say.

Let’s see how that works out for you.

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Because he taps me on the shoulder and leads

me to his office, which is barely big enough

for a goldfish, by the way.

I’m still feeling triggered and edgy

and I expect him to say a bunch of

touchy-feely crap like:

Tell me what you’re feeling now.

Or

Does Skylar’s arm make you upset?

Or

What kind of memories does this bring up for you?

The last thing I expect is for him to lean over,

open his desk drawer and pull out a jelly jar.

But that’s exactly what he does.

Only there isn’t jelly in it anymore.

It’s filled with water and glitter,

kind of like a snow globe

but way more beautiful,

because the flecks are thick and gold

and mesmerizing in the weirdest way.

Roger calls it a
calming jar.

He gives it a little shake and hands it to me,

and while I’m watching the liquid swirl

and the glitter blink like a billion stars,

the strangest thing starts to happen.

I feel my breathing steady and my pulse slow down,

and a trail of goose bumps tiptoe up my arms,

just like when I was little, and Mom traced letters

on my back with her finger.

I wish I could take the jar to my room and shake it

for like the next 26 hours until I get out of here.

But there’s no chance of that, on account of the glass.

So I watch it for as long as I can in Roger’s office,

until the blanket of gold folds on itself one last time,

and the glitter settles to the bottom like star dust.

Roger tells me he’ll give me the recipe,

to make a calming jar of my own at home,

because sometimes, he says, all you need is a distraction.

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Roger wants to use afternoon group

for a mega-brainstorming session.

We’re gonna go through everyone’s problems.

Starting with cutting.

He comes up with a few ideas himself

and writes them on the whiteboard

with a squeaky purple pen.

Go for a walk.

Take a bubble bath.

Talk to someone who cares.

I don’t know what makes me do it.

Maybe I feel sort of bad for Roger

standing up there all alone

with those big, expectant eyes

that nobody will look at.

Or maybe I feel like I owe him

for showing me that glitter jar.

Either way, I decide to give in.

“Draw something,” I say.

Roger’s face lights up and he pens

my answer in swoopy grape letters.

And then it’s sort of contagious

because everyone stops

sitting on their hands,

and counting ceiling tiles,

and pretending to be asleep,

and they start giving up ideas faster

than Roger can write them down,

starting with Jag:

“Punch a pillow.

Jump on your bed.

Scream at the sky.”

And, yeah, I know that sounds like

Jag has anger-management issues,

but just like Roger says,

there’s no wrong answers here,

so don’t get any bad ideas about Jag.

And besides, I could think about that

sexy skater boy jumping on his bed

in baggy white boxers all day long!

Of course Donya has to try to outdo him:

“Throw fruit off your roof.

Stand on your head.

Dye your hair.”

And I have to bite my tongue

to stop myself from saying

that she doesn’t have enough hair

on that weed-wacked Mohawk of hers

to bother with any more dye.

But that’s just because I’m jealous

her ideas were better than mine.

But the one who blows us all away is Skylar.

And not just with her rubber-band fix

or the butterfly project. She’s got a whole

truckload of suggestions that she rattles off

effortlessly, like she’s tried every one:

“Eat chocolate.

Hug a puppy.

Read John Green.

“Make jewelry.

Join a fandom.

Write a poem.

“Blow bubbles.

Play piano.

Sing ‘Who Says’.

“Watch
Juno
.

Order pizza.

Clean your room.

“Surf Tumblr.

Do your homework.

Say a prayer.”

Roger has to stop writing there because

he runs out of room on the whiteboard,

which kind of stinks because he doesn’t

get down some of Skylar’s funniest ideas, like:

Watch English Youtubers

then talk with a British accent all day,

or

Rub peppermint oil all over your body,

or

Put glue on your hands and then peel it off later.

By the time the afternoon session is over,

we’re all joking and laughing

and it feels so good for a change

that nobody even mentions

how Skylar came up with like

937 Things to Do Instead of Cutting,

but she’s the one who’s sitting here

with a brand-new bandage on her arm.

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I know I shouldn’t ask.

But not asking feels like being

on a diet and having a big bowl

of chocolate ice cream shoved in front of me.

Like what am I supposed to do?

Just sit here and watch it melt?

Besides, Skylar doesn’t mind.

I think she
wants
to tell me.

After all, it was
my
butterfly she killed.

“I took the Scotch tape off the nurse’s desk

when that little boy came in. Remember?

Nobody was paying any attention.”

I think about that sweet serrated edge

and that hot, hard tape dispenser

and I have to shake the image

from my mind because picturing

those plastic teeth biting into my skin

is making pins and needles dance on

all my favorite places.

“It’s an addiction, you know,” Skylar says.

“Just like drugs or alcohol.”

I try to shake her off, but she keeps going.

“Endorphins are like narcotics.

That’s why we crave them so bad.

I’m not saying that’s the only reason we cut.

There’s like a million scars out there

and each one has its own story.

“But every cutter would agree with me on this—