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Anything else I can roll with. Puking into the trash can? Fine, it’s usually because I’ve been forced to overheat from exercise. Stumbling around as if I’m drunk? Cool, I’ll pretend I can’t walk straight instead of copping to the fact that I’m a fall risk.

Migraines make me mean. Pushing my hand into my pants pocket, I wrap my fingers around my knife. Razor blades are harder for me to keep because the staff monitors them. I bought a pocket knife for getting back and forth from work since it’s not in a great area. I also have to take the bus, and there’s always sketchy people on it.

Would it be so bad if I made one little cut? I need to take the edge off, do one thing that I can control.

Gasping as I press my body against the wall, I whimper when nothing helps.

“Stop…crying,” I whisper. My eyes already feel swollen, and I know I’ll look like shit tomorrow. Thankfully, I have makeup to help, but I’m always so damn pale.

I have a hard time handling being out in the sun. I try to avoid it as much as possible, and take a handheld fan with me to school. I get made fun of for having it. If I had a nickel for every time I was called a pampered princess, I’d be a millionaire.

I’m a fucking foster kid. What part of my life is pampered?

Unsnapping the button on my pants and pulling down the zipper, I wiggle them down to my knees. Juniper will come back to the room soon if she hears that I have a migraine. She’s the only one who knows I cut regularly, and usually helps clean up the mess.

Breathing shallowly, I pull my phone out as well and use it as my light. There’s a variety of white scars up both my thighs, a kind of fucked up painting of my inner screams. There are so many things that these scars could tell a person, if only they were willing to listen.

“Ow, ow, fuck me,” I whisper. “Just stop!”

I talk to myself a lot as I plead for my body just to function differently than it does. I’m always ignored. It would figure.

Swallowing hard, I grit my teeth as I open the knife and get to work. The first tiny cut makes me hiss, but it’s blissful. I swear, this is so much better than drugs. I tried it once and it made my heart worse than it already is. I thought it was going to explode when I tried marijuana at a party.

It figures the potsy girl wouldn’t be able to handle pot. Fucking hysterical.

It takes three more little cuts before a sense of calm and silence slides through my veins. Each one is deeper than the last, yet I’ll do anything to feel better. Even the music on the other side of the wall stops, and I moan slightly.

Why can’t this be my life? I haven’t been able to get close enough to death to know, however, I wonder if this is what it’s like. A sweet drifting in silence. My therapist tells me constantly there are things in life that I should attempt to experience before checking out permanently, and I promise her every session that I’ll try.

If I wanted to, I could end it all with my knife, but I take my promises seriously. Instead, I press the cool metal flat on my bare skin, and that helps to ground me where nothing else has worked.

All I have is my word. It’s important that I keep it when I make a promise. So, I sit against the wall as my cuts bleed along my skin, staining it with my secrets.

No one has to know. I drift as I coast on the high cutting gives me, and I finally get the nap I’ve been craving until Juniper finds me hours later.

This is my life, until something steps in to end it all.

CHAPTER

TWO

NOOR

“You’re picking me up?” I ask Miss Martin, slipping into the back of the car. I slept like shit last night, and my thighs still hurt where the cuts burn. Juniper patched me up as usual and sent me to bed, but my dreams were filled with memories of my father.

Instead of staying safe the night he killed my mother and himself, Dad found me and beat me with the shotgun. The nightmares spiralled into him killing me, and I woke up screaming. Ugh, I hate waking everyone up with a bad night.

“I didn’t want you to walk today,” she says mildly.

“Thank you,” I sigh, shutting the door quietly. “Any other reason?”

I can’t help feeling suspicious after our conversation last night.

“Yes,” Miss Martin says, trying to get around the kids that keep cutting in front of her. They’re not supposed to do that and they’d deserve it if she ran over them.

Getting comfortable in the back seat, I wait for her to answer me. I have a paper to write and apparently I have detention tomorrow for “falling asleep” in class. I have to tell Miss Martin that my streak of not fainting has come to an end.

“I have detention tomorrow,” I blurt out.