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“You do,” is all I can say. Please Hayzel, not now. Not you.

“No,” she replies, shaking her head. “I knew you were struggling, I knew you weren’t okay sometimes, but…” She looks at my wrist then back at my eyes. “I didn’t know and–”

I stare down at the page she was on, one of the older ones. A girl with her arms wrapped around herself, surrounded by black dying flowers. And my handwriting next to it : I still feel his hands.

She takes it back from me, opening it again and I don’t stop her. I’m frozen, and I don’t know how to explain something I don’t understand myself.

Her eyes move across the next page as she’s flipping through it, tears still falling down, quieter now. A flower with blood dripping from its petals. A quote about how blades became my escape. Another page. A line about needing something to quiet everything. Another. A knife and crying eye next to a new quote, ‘I promised myself I wouldn’t do it again but he came back tonight and it hurts.’

Her hand flies to her mouth and that’s when I move toward her. “Stop.”

She looks at me, horrified, worried, sad almost. “You’re taking–”

“Stop reading.”

But she already has seen it all. The dates on top of each page, the entries about the cravings, the ones about wanting to disappear, the ones about hurting myself.

“Scars…”

Please…

“Abuse…”

Stop.

“You…want to leave?”

Yes.

Her breathing changes and the sketchbook almost falls out of her hands. “I was right here,” she whispers. “I was right here and I didn’t know…” I take a step toward her, fighting my own tears, fighting the shame that’s drowning me. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

I stare at the floor then back at her and I smile, hoping she’ll understand that she was one of the few reasons I kept surviving all these years. “If I said it out loud, it would become real.”

She wipes her face again, leaving the sketchbook on the desk and walks toward me with her arms open, ready to hug me. And I let her. She needs it as much as I do.

“It was already real, Mireya,” she whispers against my hair. “I’m sorry.”

“For what?”

“For not knowing.” She squeezes me tighter, and her tears slow down. “We’re going to talk about this once you’re ready.” A small broken laugh escapes me as she continues, “Just you and me. We’ll go somewhere, get something to eat and you can tell me whatever you want to tell me.”

I nod as a singular and lonely tear finally falls from my eyes.

“You don’t have to do it all at once,” she whispers.

Hayzel knows now, really knows. And somehow, she was still holding me tight against her like I was worth the pain.

108

Damien

Play - Talking Body by Tove Lo

Ten Minutes

Vitelli: If you want to get some, come pick me up at Crystal Cove Bar.

I knew immediately that this text message wasn’t from Mireya. If she needed me to pick her up she’d threaten me. Actually she did when she told me earlier not to call because tonight was a ‘girls night’, whatever that means.