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“Okay, JJ.”
“Bye.” A split second hesitation follows, then, “Mase Face.”
“Bye,” I whisper, but he’s already hung up.
Pushing to a stand, I wince at the numbness in my butt from sitting for so long. I unlock the door and leave the bathroom, freezing when I find my Mom walking up the stairs.
Her gaze lifts to mine, and she frowns. “Mason? Are you okay?”
The phone’s clutched in my hand.
“Were you…were you crying?”
I blink a couple times, remembering…
She comes up to me, and holds my shoulders just like she did when I was little. I’m only a couple inches shorter than her now.
“You can’t send him away,” I tell her.
Her brown eyes widen. “Mase?—”
“He’s my little brother.”
Her face creases, eyes filling with tears, and she nods.
“I’ll get a job,” I tell her.
She laughs at that, the wet, croaky kind of laugh I haven’t heard from her in years.
Wrapping me up in a hug, she presses her cheek to my hair. “You are not getting a job. We’ll figure it out. We’ll be okay, kid.”
Nodding, I hold her tight. She’s my mom. And unlike my dad, she’s never lied to me.
So I have to believe it.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
AGE 12, JANUARY
It starts out as an accident, the first time it happens.
I hiss, flinching, when a starburst of pain explodes across my inner arm.
I drop my bag, my gaze catching on the jagged metal wire poking out of where I hadn’t fully zipped it. A notebook coil that must’ve gotten caught on something, and unraveled.
I lift my arm, frowning down at the small, papercut-like slice just above my wrist. It’s small, maybe half an inch long. Lips pursed, I reach over with my free hand, and rub my fingers into the surrounding skin. And then I’m squeezing and stretching and pushing at the skin, watching the way blood bubbles up. And a voice from somewhere deep inside me says, “More.”
I don’t understand it.
Why it feels…important. It’s just a cut. Not the first, and definitely won’t be the last. How many times have I scraped my hands or knees over the years playing outside? On splinters. From papercuts flipping through my comic books too fast.
I cock my head, watching, waiting, my heart thumping loudly in my ears.
Last week, Izzy put on a movie called Thirteen.
I wasn’t really paying attention for most of it. Only reason I didn’t go up to my room is because Mason asked me to stay. He wasn’t really paying attention to the movie either. He was flipping through some rock and roll history book that he’d gotten for Christmas—a gift from Gavin. It was like a magazine, but hardcover, with pictures of famous guitarists and drummers, and article clippings and interviews.
So while he read through that, and the others watched the movie, I worked on my comic book—my secret one—making sure to sit against the wall, between them and the TV, so no one could see.
