Just one small cut.
2
The worn leather surface of my quieting-down kit warms in my palm, both temptation and anchor. I don’t open it yet, though my fingers trace the edges with reverence.
My thumb finds the scar on my inner wrist, a pale line hidden among a dozen others. I follow its path, ridge by ridge, a ritual as familiar as breathing.
This one was the first, from a time before I learned better ways to hide what I was doing. Now I’m smarter. Thighs, ribs, places no one but me ever sees.
Twenty, nineteen, eighteen…
I count backward, trying to ground myself in the present, but the numbers slide away like water through my fingers.
Seventeen, sixteen…
The leather kit grows heavier with each passing second, a promise of the calm that follows release.
Fifteen, fourteen, thirteen…
The zipper of the kit catches the light as my fingers toy with the pull. Inside waits the only thing that stops the world from spinning out of control. A controlled hurt to drown out the one I can’t forget.
Twelve, eleven…
My phone buzzes in my pocket, slicing through the countdown. I ignore it, but it buzzes again with stubborn insistence. And again. And again.
With clumsy fingers, I fish it out. Micah’s name lights up the screen, followed by a string of messages.
Micah
Where did you go?
Are you okay?
Saint?
Talk to me
His concern reaches through the screen, a tether to the world outside this stall, outside my head. I stare at the letters until they blur, unable to form a response that won’t worry him more.
What could I say?Sorry, being touched by astranger made me remember the guard who raped me in juvie?
Some truths stay buried, even from Micah.
The kit calls to me with a siren’s song. One quick cut and the pressure would ease. The noise in my head would quiet. I could face Micah again with a mask of calm and pretend the instructor’s demonstration didn’t shatter something inside me all over again.
The zipper opening sounds loud in the quiet of the bathroom, and I thumb open the case.
A metal blade gleams inside, promising relief in its razor edge. My fingertip hovers above it, not quite touching, but pulled there like gravity. The trembling in my hands would make the cut sloppy, but clean edges don’t matter when no one else will see the marks.
A shadow falls across the top of the stall, and I freeze.
“You want to go kill someone with me instead?”
Jade’s question cuts through the fog in my mind, casual as if he’s offering coffee. His silhouette peers down at me from over the stall door, arms hooked over the top. He surveys the open leather case in my lap without surprise or judgment.
My grip tightens around the blade. “What the fuck, Jade? What if I was taking a crap?”
“Would prefer that, if we’re being honest.” He shifts, the metal door creaking under his arms. “Seriously, though, I have a lead on a guy who deserves to be sliced open more than your body does.”
