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We stay locked like that for a while, and I wait. I see the wheels turning in her head and wonder if maybe she will kill me this time. Maybe she’s wondering if she could and if she’d get away with it, or maybe she’s trying to figure out what she would do with my body afterward.
It occurs to me that she probably has no fucking clue what to do with me now. And then, I laugh.
Rage flashes in her eyes as she drags me by my hair through the living room and over to the staircase. I try and fail to wriggle free, and between that, the force pulling me up the staircase, and my unsteady equilibrium, I lose my balance fairly quickly. She drags me the rest of the way up the steps, each one painfully grating against my spine until we finally reach the landing.
She pulls me down the hall and into my room and leaves me there, slamming the door hard enough behind her that, not having any latch, it just springs back open.
I hear her scream, something excruciating, before she starts to sob, too.
Eventually, she slams her own bedroom door. I don’t leave my room the rest of the day, so I don’t know if she ever leaves hers, either.
I stay there on the floor for a long time, falling in and out of a hangover-induced sleep, staring at the space underneath my bed and through it to the other side where the remnants of the infested cupcake lay on the floor. At some point, I wake up and vomit on the hardwoods. All my heavy body and spinning head can manage to do is turn and face the other way and go back to sleep.
When it starts to get dark, I finally peel myself off the floor. I grab a dirty towel from my laundry basket and clean up the semi-dried puke, gagging again at the smell. Afterward, I creep down the hallway and into the bathroom.
I turn on the shower, letting the hot water run down my aching body. Then, I drop down to the bottom of the tub, dig the razorblade from my bar of soap, and examine the tattered canvas of my body, trying to find the right place to add to my collection. I settle on a spot just above my hip, right where the soft flesh of my stomach begins. I dig in the tip and drag it horizontally across my skin three times, just enough to let it out and leave a mark.
I watch the blood run down my hip, turning pink as it spirals down the drain, and stay there until the water goes cold and finally runs clear.
Then, I crawl into bed, defeated.
When my alarm wakes me the next morning, I’m not quite sure what to do. Do I go to school? Do I…stay in my room? Do I try to make a run for it with no money and nowhere to go? I could take a bus to Seattle and stay there for a while—sleep in the streets and hope that no one recognizes my face.
But the nights are getting colder. And I wouldn’t be safe there, either.
In the end, I get ready for school. I pull on a pair of loose-fitting jeans, a black t-shirt, and my Vans. I dig the makeup Laurel gave me last year from my bag and start applying black eyeshadow to my lids, then mascara to my lashes, and the cherry red color to my lips. I run a brush through my thick, dark hair, which aches at the roots, and examine the bluish-green bruise on my jaw. She’s never left a mark on my face like this before. I wriggle my jaw left and then right, wincing at the pain.
Then, I go downstairs. When I pass Grace in the kitchen, something flashes in her eyes as she takes me in—the makeup I’m notsupposed to wear, the mark on my face, maybe the fucking audacity. I go straight for the freezer and take out a breakfast burrito, then toss it in the microwave, set the timer, and wait. She doesn’t try to stop me.
I see a half-empty bottle of whiskey on the table and stuff it inside my bag. She doesn’t look up, not even when she speaks.
“If I wanted to kill you, you’d be dead already, you know,” she says. “I could sneak into your room at night; do it while you sleep.”
“Trust me, I’m fully aware I’m not safe in my room at night here.”
Her posture stiffens, but she still doesn’t look up from the newspaper. The microwave dings, and I take my burrito with me out the door and to the bus stop. It hurts when I chew.
Other than that, I feel nothing.
Ally never did show up at school on Monday. I worried that maybe she left anyway and I wouldn’t get to see the look on her face, but there she is, just across the hall, rifling through her locker. I look around Audrey, who hangs on my arm going on about Halloween parties and costumes and shit I’m not really listening to and don’t give a fuck about, and watch her. She leans against the open locker door, looking sick. I close my own, throw my arm around Audrey’s shoulders, and start walking in that direction, bringing her along with me. She doesn’t even stop talking to take a breath.
“But then, I heard Sofia say she was going as a pirate, and obviously, I don’t want to show up dressed like her. She probably heard me say it first…”
“Hey, Ally,” I say when we get to her. “How was your birthday?”
She puts her bag inside the locker and slams it shut, the force drawing the eyes of the people around us.
I smirk as she turns to us…until I see the huge bruise on the side of her face.
“It was super great,” she deadpans.
“Oh, look, she decided to try makeup for the first time,” Audrey says. “And itlookslike the first time. You look like a raccoon. Here’s a hint: less is more.”
She doesn’t react, keeping her eyes trained on me.
“How could you?”
“I think it looks good, Ally,” Trevor says, coming up behind me. “Fuck them—both of them. Let’s go to P.E.”
