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I am such a train wreck. I walk away from the school, unnoticed, since others are leaving as well. Early lunch is after third period. I walk down the drive and make my way through town at a pretty good clip, just walking, but walking with someplace to go. I realize after I have walked for a little over an hour that I am no longer carrying my third-period textbook and notebook. I wonder where I left it. I walk down and out of town, taking the country road that leads to our trailer, our burnt-out shell of a trailer.
It is well past noon when I arrive. Walking five miles takes a good bit longer than riding a bike five miles, or even jogging five miles. I would have jogged, but my shoulder and collarbone are still tender, and the walk was more than I really felt up to. I stop at our drive and walk slowly toward the caution-taped husk of the trailer. I think I am going to go inside, but I am hesitant to break the taped seal over the door. I walk around the trailer, looking at the scarred tin and debris that litters the ground nearby. I walk past the house and out to the fire pit. I sit on the log next to the cold, dry ashes. Looking up at the building, smoke-blackened and warped, I see the memory of my mother stepping out that back door and staggering down the steps.
I’m so embarrassed. Not just by my mother but by myself as well. The replay of me sobbing into Derrick Jessop’s chest makes me cringe. How am I supposed to survive here? How do people with horrible lives go on? Why do they go on?
I am staring into the ashes, watching the light reflect, not registering until it finally does, a broken shard of a bottle. It’s about two inches long, curved and sharp. I dig it out of the dust, careful. I wipe it clean and stare for a long time through the distortion of it. I run my thumb along the sharp edge, and a small wheel of blood pools. Better. My focus narrows and tightens, and some string that has been wound so tightly suddenly pops, and there is the strangest sensation of less. Less pressure. Less fear, less pain.
I don’t think; I just watch as the sharp-edged shard shreds along the blue line of my vein. It is deep, but strangely satisfying after the small scratching of my words. Small pops release in my head, and I watch as the drops of blood make little puffs in the ash when they fall. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. What is that from? I run the glass up again, following the first cut, and the tension running down my back begins to lesson. Deeper, deeper, deeper, and the flood of blood pours, doesn’t drip, doesn’t drop. I hear a car coming down the road and am on the move again. I walk into the woods and make my way toward the little tilted building that Dylan had taken me to that day he told me about Jake, so long ago. I stop once when the flow slackens, to reopen the congealing line. I leave a blood-spattered trail and end up sitting next to the tree where Dylan had started telling his story about coming here to escape from Jake. From drunk Jake.
I feel so much better. So much better than the words scratched only a couple of layers deep on my feet. So much more satisfying. The small pain of the cut is so much easier to cope with than all the other muddled pain inside of me. Slice. I’ve maybe not even touched the vein, my target, but it is so satisfying. So completely satisfying.
***
It is late afternoon when I make my way out of the trees and slowly walk back to town. The blood dried and caked and flaked from my arm. There are a few smears on my hip, and a couple lower down, but nothing that will make anybody say that I slit my wrist today. I want to open it again, but I am hungry and need to go home instead. The shard of glass is safely in my back pocket, its curve matching nicely to my own.
The apartment is dark when I get there, and it is only after I look in her room that I realize my mother is not here. I hope she doesn’t come back. I take a shower and change. I open the cut once more in the shower and watch, hypnotized as the red slips silkily down the drain. So this is what survival feels like.
I am eating a peanut butter sandwich when there is a knock on the door. I am dressed in jeans and a sweatshirt, my feet bare and my hair still wrapped in a towel. I pad through the living room and look out the peephole. Dylan. I feel like I haven’t seen him in months, although it was really only a week ago since the trailer burned. I take a deep breath and open the door.
He doesn’t move for a minute, just stares at me, breathing. “Can I come in?” I realize that I have been doing the same thing, staring at him, breathing.
“Sure.” I open the door wide, thinking to glance at my wrist and assure myself that my new hobby does not show itself.
“You okay?” His hand brushes against my cheek, and I tilt into his palm, nodding. “What happened today?”
“Nothing. I just had to go.” I shrug as if it doesn’t deserve more than that.
“So, Jessop?”
“He gave me a bike.” I say it as offhandedly as I can, as if it is just a kindness someone showed, as if it hasn’t sent me over the edge.
“I know. He told me. He feels like shit for destroying yours.”
I laugh. “He shouldn’t. It was junk anyway.”
He glances at me but then continues looking through the living room.
“So this is your new place?” I nod. “Nice.”
“How did you know where I was?” I ask.
“Stopped and talked to Mr. Billups.” I nod again. Of course, that makes sense. “Are you okay?” I nod again. I so badly want him to touch me, but I keep my distance. He has had plenty of horrible in his life, I remind myself; he does not need mine. He has a future to think about. “Derrick thought he upset you.”
“You know it was his sister and nephew that she killed?” I ask
He nods. “It was an accident.” I nod. Just like your brother was an accident? But I don’t say it, and am worried that he has seen the thought pass through my eyes.
“They are dead, and he’s giving me a bike.” I close the door and follow him into the room. “That’s fucked up.”
“It wasn’t your fault.” He reaches out and takes my hand—the hand attached to my freshly sliced wrist. “It was an accident,” he says again.
“Yeah, I know.” I retract my hand, giving him my other one as I turn him into the kitchen. “Peanut butter and jelly?” I offer, and he shakes his head. “I appreciate the bike, really, but I just can’t accept it. He doesn’t owe me anything. Nobody does.” I feel so clear headed. I haven’t felt so stable, so non-crazy in weeks. I pick up my sandwich to take a bite but end up setting it back down. “I went out to that building, the one you showed me in the woods.” He nods and I go on. “It really is a good place to think. I sat there and just thought. I thought about how I’ve been so upset and so angry, trying to understand what I am supposed to do, and it suddenly just came clear. I don’t have to do anything. I don’t have to fix my mother; I don’t have to try. I don’t have to care what anybody else thinks of me. That’s hard because I’ve always cared. I am going to be away from this town someday, and I will never, ever look back. So really all I have to do is get to that point. Every day between now and then, I just have to get through.” He nods, looking out the window.
“Can I help?” he asks, his voice quiet.
I shake my head. “No. You already have. This is something I have to manage on my own, or I will never be free. You can’t fix my life. You can’t fix me. I thought you could, that night I came to your house in the rain . . .” My voice trails off, and a fine flush rises up his neck and floods his cheeks. “I’m completely broken in ways you don’t even know. I have to fix myself.” He nods, but I can tell he doesn’t like it, he doesn’t agree.
“You know I am always here for you.” He steps closer, and I can smell the scent of him, that warm, peaceful scent that is only him.
“I do.” I wrap my arms around his waist, and his arms encircle me, his chin resting on my head, his breath rustling my hair. “You are my best friend. You are always my best friend.”
“I really care about you.”
“I know.” And I love you, I think, but do not say it. I hear his voice telling his dad that we are “just friends” that night in the rain, and I hate him a little bit as well. I have to push you away, push you on with your life, push you out of mine. “I just need some time to get myself together. It’s just something I have to work through on my own.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean you can’t do it for me. You’re a great friend, and you’ve always been there for me.” I hear the clip on the word friend, and a shadow passes his face. I wonder what that means. “I can’t keep seeing the beauty of your life and not having any of my own. I have to figure this out on my own.”
“No. You don’t. You shouldn’t.” I start to disengage from him. He lets me go. “You really don’t have to do this alone.”
“But I do. I’ve tried doing it with you, with your family, but it just gets so confusing. I just need to focus on my shit and work it out. You know.” He looks at me for a long time, and I can almost see him dredging up his own memories of how he dealt back in the day, after his brother died, when Jake was still drinking.
“You don’t.” He runs his hand over his chin and mouth, a motion I have seen Jake use when he is deep in thought. “But if that’s what you think you need, I’ll give you space. I’ll do whatever you need me to do.”
“I think I need space,” I say, the sharp pain hitting my wrist when I spin, rubbing the wound against my cuff.
“Is that what you want?”
“That’s what I need.” I know this is what has to happen, whether I want it or not. God knows I don’t want him to walk out that door, but a few minutes later, I am closing the door behind him with the strangest mix of relief and pain warring in my chest.