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“Why should you have known?”
“I know about abandonment and grief. I know about shutting down. When my gran died, I barely let myself grieve. When my mom left me—every time—I told myself it didn’t hurt and went on. ”
“And with Mom’s death?”
“It’s been harder. I’m not bouncing back well. ”
“Yeah. Me, either. ”
“Dr. Bloom thinks you should attend that teen grief therapy session Wednesday night. ”
“Yeah. Like that will help. ”
She saw how her answer wounded Tully. Marah sighed. She had too much of her own pain. She couldn’t bear Tully’s, too.
“Fine,” Marah said. “I’ll go. ”
Tully got up and pulled Marah into a hug.
She drew back as quickly as she could, smiling shakily. If her godmother knew how alone and desperate she felt, it would break her heart, and God knew none of them could handle more heartbreak. She just needed to do what she’d done for months—get through this. She could handle a few therapy sessions if it would get everyone off her back. In September, she’d be a college freshman at the UW and she could live however she wanted and she wouldn’t be constantly hurting or disappointing people.
“Thanks,” she said tightly. “Now I’m going to lie down. I’m tired. ”
“I’ll call your dad and tell him how it went. He’ll be here on Thursday to meet Dr. Bloom after your next appointment. ”
Great.
Marah nodded and headed down the hall toward the guest bedroom, which looked like a suite in some elegant hotel.
She couldn’t believe she’d agreed to go to a teen grief therapy meeting. What in the hell would she say to strangers? Would they make her talk about her mom?
Anxiety seeped through her, turning into a physical presence, like bugs crawling on her skin.
Skin.
She didn’t mean to go to the closet, didn’t want to, but this buzzing in her blood was making her crazy. It was like listening to some staticky overseas line where a dozen conversations tumbled over each other and, no matter how hard you listened, you couldn’t hear anything that made sense.
Her hands were shaking as she opened her suitcase and reached inside the interior pocket.
Opening it, she found the small Space Needle knife and several squares of bloodstained gauze.
She pushed her sleeve up, until her bicep was revealed, so thin it was just a knot of muscle, pale in the darkness, as soft and white as the inside of a pear. Dozens of scar lines crisscrossed her skin, like spiderwebs.
She touched the sharp tip of the blade to her skin and poked hard, then cut. Blood bubbled up. It was beautiful, rich, red. She watched her blood well and fall, like tears, into her waiting palm. Every bad emotion filled those drops of blood and fell away, left her body.
“I’m fine,” she whispered.
I am the only one who can hurt me. Only me.
* * *
Unable to sleep that night, as Marah lay in the bed that wasn’t hers, in a city that used to feel like home, listening to the nothingness that came from being perched in a jewel box high above the city, she replayed tonight’s conversation with her dad.
Fine, she’d said when he asked how the meeting with Dr. Bloom had gone. But even as she said it, she thought: How come no one asks me how I can be so fine all the time?
You can talk to me, he’d said.
Really? she’d snapped. Now you want to talk. But when she heard him sigh she wanted to take it back.
