They're Just Words
Seven
The next time I saw Max was after my three-hour shift at
Starbucks on Friday.
He’d come at exactly five o’clock, and I knew
why.
He knew I’d be done with work, which meant he needed to
tell me something important.
I immediately threw off my apron and ran over to him, hugging him
as tight as I could.
“Max!” I breathed into his shirt. “I
haven’t heard from you in days. Are you okay? How’s
Clare?”
His eyes were pained and bloodshot.
He bit his lip and looked down at me.
“That’s what I came here to talk to you about,”
he said gravely, pointing to the sofa to my right.
“Let’s sit. Did you get your coffee yet?”
“Yeah,” I said, shaking my half-empty cup in his
face.
He didn’t laugh, just sat slumped down onto the cushioned
sofa and looked over at me sadly.
“We found out who the father of my sister’s baby
was,” he said, swallowing nervously.
“Who?” I pressed, putting my hand on his knee.
He flinched and moved my hand off of his leg, making my brow
crease in confusion.
Why was he acting so strange around me all of a sudden?
“It was your brother,” he choked. “And I think
it would be best if we stopped hanging out. It’ll just make
things more complicated than they already are.”
***
“You stupid, stupid pig!” I cried, shoving my
brother’s drunken body against the wall on Friday
night.
He pursed his swollen lips in pain and huffed a breath of
air.
His brown hair was messy, sticking up in all the wrong
places.
His shirt was unbuttoned at the top, revealing a least
five bruises.
I’d decided to stay home instead of going out with him to
give myself time to contemplate everything that had happened
within these past few weeks.
“Cara,” he slurred, “Cara. Stop it.”
“How could you get my best friend’s sister
pregnant?” I yelled at him.
“Cara, I had so much fun tonight,” he said, looking
dreamily up at the ceiling. “I danced so much that my feet
started to hurt.”
My jaw clenched angrily as I pushed him against the living room
wall again.
“You stupid…you stupid idiot!” I
screamed, tears miserably running down my face at three in the
morning. “How could you be so careless?”
“What is going on here?” I suddenly heard a raspy
voice say from behind me.
“Nothing,” I muttered, trying to walk by my mother
and towards my room, but her hand stopped me.
“What happened?” she demanded, searching my eyes.
“Why are you crying?”
“Ask Drake when he’s sober,” I sneered, pushing
her away from me and running into my room.
I locked my door and threw myself on my bed, crying into my arms
to muffle the sound a little bit.
My family couldn’t afford a baby.
Drake didn’t even have a proper job!
Sure, he graduated high school, but just barely.
He didn’t even have an impressive resume or any real
experience with work.
How was he going to be able to raise a child?
What if Max never spoke to me again?
This was possibly the worst thing that had happened to my family
in a very long time, and my family goes through a lot of bad
stuff.
My cries soon turned into gasps; I hadn’t realized how much
I missed that feeling, of not being able to breathe after crying
for so long.
End it, a little voice whispered in my head. Break
the skin.
I flung myself to a sitting position and reached for the scissors
in my nightstand drawer, opening them to an angle that would cut
perfectly through my skin.
I locked my door and got my “First Aid Kit” box out
from underneath my bed in preparation; it was like a procedure,
the whole thing.
I pressed the sharp blade to my wrist and cut, deep enough that
it hurt, but shallow enough that the bleeding would eventually
stop if the wound was taken care of properly.
My mouth opened slightly, gasping as blood trickled around my
arm, running in circles across the circumference of my wrist.
I tear dripped off my chin, even though I’d stopped crying
at that point.
I immediately reached for the gauze in the little white box below
me and carefully wrapped it around my arm.
After taking a few deep breaths, I was able to put the box back
under my bed and clean off my scissors so I could use them next
time I felt like cutting.
I knew it was stupid.
I knew cutting was a sign of weakness, but that’s why I
kept it a secret.
People needed to know I could take care of myself, and trust me,
if they knew I cut my wrists, they would automatically assume I
wasn’t stable enough to look out for myself or my
family.
I lay in bed, looking up at the electro band posters on my
ceiling for what seemed like hours.
I didn’t even recognize the names of some of the bands I
had posted on the walls in my bedroom, so I stood up on my bed
and started ripping them all off, crumpling them into little
balls and attempting to throw them into the trashcan beside my
desk.
No more pretending to be someone I’m not.
No more being anybody but myself.
