AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“You better,” she says.
She stands up and kicks me once more before heading for the door.
“She should have aborted you,” Grace says. “God, I bet she spent so many nights wishing she did over the last eighteen years. We’d all be a lot happier.”
I don’t reply. I stay on the floor, still curled in a ball. I don’t want her to see me cry.
“You know, she tried to ditch you once. She brought you to my parents’ house after your dad left her—asked them to take you. They said they weren’t responsible for cleaning up her mistakes. I wish we would have done the same.”
She pauses for a moment, waiting to see if she’ll get a reaction from me like she wants. I can feel the disappointment coming off of her when I lie there, not saying a word and not letting her hear me cry.
“You can join us for dinner now,” she says as she leaves the room.
I pause momentarily at the door to gather myself before pushing it open and heading down the staircase, my hands still shaking.
Mark sits on the living room sofa, watching the evening news, while Grace sets the dining room table like nothing happened.
“There you are. Finally,” Grace says as if she wasn’t just upstairs kicking me, and she’d been down here waiting on me all this time. “Go wash your hands; I’m sure they’re disgusting like the rest of you. Mark, dinner is ready!”
I wash my disgusting hands, and then we sit there like we do every night when Mark is home and eat like we’re an actual family. Mark asks me about school, how the meet went, and my grades.Grace mentions that I spend too much time in my room with my sketchbook and should be using that time to study, and Mark reiterates the importance of time management skills in every profession.
It’s eerie, really—the way we all sit here together, engaging in mundane small talk about our days as if everything that happens between these walls is completely normal, like we don’t all know exactly what the fuck is going on here. Like I’m not counting the times they refill their glasses, and I don’t fall asleep afraid I’ll wake up with a hand covering my mouth.
Just as long as we keep up appearances, right? As long as it doesn’t get on them, as long as they don’t have to look at it, nothing will ever change. No one will care.
That night in the shower, I dig my razor from the soap bar. I look at the ugly scars on my hips and thighs—the ones Devon licked before he told me there was nothing wrong with me.
And there it is again, crushing my insides.Regret.I wish I hadn’t gotten involved with or dragged him into any of this. I don’t know what I was thinking.
And I’m running out of canvas I can carve into and still hide under my track shorts.
I lift my left arm instead and drag the razor across the soft flesh on the underside of my bicep. There’s a lot less muscle here—a lot less of anything here—and it hurts more than it does on my leg. Or maybe I dig in a little deeper—the razor is starting to get dull from being in the soap bar for so long, and it’s probablytime for a new one. It bleeds…a lot. I add a second and then a third before leaning back and watching it run toward the drain, swirling with the water and running down pink. It doesn’t slow for quite some time.
Afterward, I replace the blade in the soap bar and towel off my body. I wrap my arm with tape and slip into my oversized hoodie and sweatpants.
I get into bed, and I don’t sleep again.
The following day, I head downstairs for school and find the kitchen empty. A feeling of relief washes over me—he’s gone again. He mentioned he was going to Olympia next week, but I didn’t expect him to leave so soon. There’s no breakfast on the table, so Grace must have slept in. I grab a banana from the counter and slip out the door. I stand and wait for the school bus with a bunch of younger kids from the neighborhood like I do every morning.
That vice-grip feeling returns when I step off the bus. I’m going to see Devon in art. I bet he won’t even try to talk to me or look at me.
Just like I’ve been telling him I wanted…
At least the pain in my chest takes my mind off the pain in my arm. I’m trying hard not to scratch it or pick at the tape covering it, but it doesn’t feel quite right.
I open my locker and find a greasy McDonald’s bag sitting on top of my books. I pick it up and look inside. Biscuits and gravy—my favorite. Even though I have eaten regularly over the last couple of weeks, my stomach starts to churn.
There’s a small, folded piece of paper inside. I dig it out of the bag and open it.
Don’t go to art. Meet me at our spot first.
Our spot? What’s—
Oh.
I wait for the bell to ring before I head to the gym and find Devon under the bleachers scrolling through his phone.
I stop about two feet away from him.
