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“Ow! Shit! Fuck! You stabbed me,” Devon says, cradling his bloody forearm close to his body.
“I’m sorry!” I tell him, mortified. “I’m so sorry. You…you can’t sneak up on me!”
“Yeah, I’ll remember that for next time. Fuck,” he says again, shaking his head. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”
“You didn’t scare me,” I tell him. “You surprised me. Believe me, I’ve seen far scarier things than you.”
”Idobelieve you,” he says. “I saw you run out of the cafeteria; I just wanted to make sure you’re okay.”
“Yeah, I bet you regret that now.”
“Not at all,” he says with a half smile. “I think you just got a whole hell of a lot more interesting.”
“Yeah, right,” I scoff.
“I’m serious. What the hell happened back there?”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Okay, but—”
“I’m not weak. Or helpless.”
“I can see that.”
He sits there, watching me, waiting for whatever I’ll say next. He is attractive—more so even than the guys who sit at our table. I’m not really sure how he got lumped into the freak pile, and I didn’t. If anyone is worthy of that pile, it’s me. He’s tall and fit with a defined jaw and shaggy hair as dark as mine that I want to run my fingers through. Enough that I could really get a hold of it if I wanted to—not that I do…or would.
Piercing blue eyes, though. That’s all I see now—so pale in contrast to his other features.
I don’t even mind the gauged ears or the septum ring the rest of them always make fun of. I think I like it.
If I could, I think I’d get one through my eyebrow. Maybe my lip, too. I wonder what it would feel like. I wonder how it would feel if he rolled his tongue over it—or sucked it into his mouth.
I realize that I’m biting my own and stop.
I think a lot about how I would decorate my body, my face, if I had the chance. Other people’s bodies, too.
We all come into the world as blank canvases. And we leave it carved in scars—some we show the world and others that remain invisible unless someone knows exactly where to look—but they make us who we are, whether we want them to or not. I’d like to make my own canvas into something pretty or at least something I’m not ashamed of. Someday, I will.
“I’m gonna go,” I tell him. I toss my things in my bag, stand, and throw it over my shoulder.
“You have a track meet tomorrow, right? In Mount Vernon?”
Yeah, I do.
“Don’t sneak up on me anymore,” I say. “And…no whistling.”
“Whistling?”
“I don’t like it.”
“Okay, no whistling. No problem.”
I leave just as the lunch bell sounds without saying anything else. It’s not like I want to be alone. It’s not my choice, it’s my circumstances. It’s not that I’m entirely uninterested, but that I don’t have the mental space or energy to think or feel things like that anymore.
But that has taken a toll on me and made me wonder if I’m now incapable. I wonder if I’ll ever want to be touched and what it would take. I want to think the answer is yes, but I’m not sure.
I think maybe I’d like it if Devon touched me.
