Girl in Pieces (8 page)

When I'm done, when my body gets that worn, washed-out feeling from crying too much, I get up and stumble back down the too-bright hall to the nurses' station. Vinnie was right, my scars itch horribly.

The outside of me is on fire and the inside of me is empty, empty. I can't cut, but I need something taken away from me, I need relief.

Vinnie gives me the gold smile from behind the nurses' station. All of the nurses have photographs pinned to the cubicle wall behind the desk. Kids, tons of them, chubby ones, skinny ones, unsmiling teenagers, and dogs, lots of dog pictures. Vinnie's girls, they must be the ones in the frilly white dresses, with the dark, dark hair, just like his.

I point to my own hair, that awful nest. Just smelling it makes me feel sick, all of a sudden. I want it all gone, that last bit of being
outside.

“Off,” I say hoarsely.

Vinnie holds up his hands. “Nah, nah. You wait till you earn your Day Pass, girl. Then you go out with the others, go to Supercuts or something. I'm not touching no girl's hair.”

I pound my fist on the counter, lean in. “Now. Has to be
now.
”

“Puta madre,”
he says under his breath.

He jerks his fingers to the Care room. “Come, come. And don't cry, neither. There's only one way with hair like that.”

In the cafeteria, it's Isis who speaks first, her little mouth opening, macaroni and cheese sliding back onto her plate. “Holy fucking Christ, Chuck, check you out.”

Blue begins to laugh, a deep, infectious sound that startles Francie, who sits next to her and never eats. Francie smiles, too. Blue says, “I hate you, Silent Sue, but you look a shit-ton better. Almost human.”

Even Vinnie whistled as he ran the electric shaver across my scalp, my hair falling in heavy clumps to the floor. “A face! The girl has a face,” he said.

I peered at myself in the Care room mirror, a real mirror, a long one on the back of the door. I kept my eyes above my shoulders, just looking at my face, but not for too long, because I started to feel sad again, seeing me.

The girls get quiet as I start eating. You wouldn't think it would feel strange to show your scars to a group of girls who are nothing but scars, but it is. I keep my eyes on my plate.

I'm going to rifle the lost and found for a long-sleeved shirt after dinner. I feel exposed and cold. I miss my ratty mustard-yellow cardigan that I used to wear before I left home. It kept me hidden and safe. I miss all my clothes. Not my street clothes, but my long-ago clothes, my band T-shirts and checkered pants and wool caps.

Isis swallows. “Christ, Chuck, what'd you use? You really went to fuckin' town.”

Isis has a terrier's thin, nervous face. She twists the shaggy loops of her braids through her fingers. The others wait. From the end of the table, Louisa gives me a faint smile.

I loved the breaking of the mason jar. You had to strike it hard, because it was thick. Unlike other glass, mason jars broke in hunks of curved, gleaming sharpness. They left wide, deep cuts. The thick pieces of glass were easily washable, savable, slipped into the velvet pouch and hidden in my tender kit for the next time.

Thinking about it fills me with anticipatory shivers, like how I felt in the Care room, which is
unacceptable,
Casper says, a
trigger,
and I can see some of the others now, like pale Sasha with her sea-blue eyes, beginning to frown. Blue and Jen S. wait, faces blank, sporks in the air.

I think I want to tell them, I think I want to talk. I feel a humming in my chest and I think I might have some words, maybe, though I'm not sure how to order them, or what they would mean, but I open my mouth—

From down the table, Louisa speaks. Her voice is throaty and lush; the band she sang for was called Loveless.

“Glass.” Louisa gathers her dinner things. She is a peckish eater; just a little bit of this and that, and she never stays for long. “She used glass. Breakfast of desperate champions.” She shrugs at us, wafting to the trash can with her cardboard cup and plastic plate and spork.

The air around the table stiffens at first, as each girl thinks, and remembers her favorite implements. And then the air loosens.

Isis resumes eating. “Hard-core, Chuck.”

I fix my eyes on my glistening mound of macaroni, the single row of green beans, the brownish pool of applesauce.

“It's not Chuck, Isis. It's Charlie.
Charlie Davis.
” My voice isn't hoarse now. It's clear as a bell.

Jen S. says, “Whoa.
Somebody's
got a voice.”

Blue nods, gazing at me. “Things,” she says, sipping her coffee thoughtfully, “are about to get interesting around here.”

Casper smiles at me. “Big changes,” she says. “Talking. Cutting your hair. Bandages off. How do you feel?”

I reach for the sheets of paper on her desk, the blue ballpoint, but she says, “No.”

The turtle has paused in the tank, like he's waiting for me, too. His tiny body bobs in the water. Does he like the little ship at the bottom, the one with the hole big enough for him to swim through? Does he like the large rock he can hoist himself up on and rest? Does he ever want to come out?

I pull the hoodie I found in the lost and found box tighter around me, close the hood tight around my face.

Ugly,
I tell her, my voice muffled and my face hidden by the hood.
Ugly. It still feels ugly.

It isn't that I never noticed exactly, that Jen S. disappeared every night as soon as Barbero fell asleep on the Rec couch. I mean, she would tell me. “I'm going to the bathroom,” she'd say, her long ponytail falling across her shoulder as she leaned in, looking at what I was doing on the computer. “My stomach is really acting up. I might be a while.” Or, “I'm just gonna go jog the halls. I feel a little pent up. Be good.” And then she'd go.

I was, weirdly, getting a little caught up in this class thing. I had finished twelve units so far, putting me near the middle of a mythical senior year. It was kind of satisfying to click SUBMIT and then wait for Jen S. to come back and do the grading with the secret password. School, it turns out, is super easy once you remove all the other kids, asshole teachers, and disgusting shit that goes on.

So I'm waiting for her, and waiting, and sort of watching Barbero snore on the couch, when it occurs to me she might not be doing exactly what she says she's doing. But before I can even think about what she might be doing, I think about what
I
could be doing, while she's gone and Barbero is comatose.

It only takes a few minutes. I open another window, set up a Gmail account, wrack my brain for his last known email address, enter it, hope for the best, and open the chat box. I haven't talked to him in over a year. Maybe he's there, maybe he's not.

Hey,
I type.

I wait, picking at my chin. My head feels a little cold now, with all my hair gone. I pull my hoodie up. He has to be there, though, because it doesn't say
Michael is offline
or anything.

And then there he is.

OMFG is that rlly u

Yes

R u ok

No. Yes. No. I'm in the loony bin

I know my mom told me Your mom told her

I'm wearing clothes from the lost and fucking found

Im at a show

Who?

Firemouth Club called Flycatcher U know Firemouth? U wd lk them

My fingers hover above the keys.
I miss you

Nothing. My stomach starts to squeeze a little. A little bit of the old feeling is coming back to me: how much I like-liked Mikey, how confused I was that it was Ellis he wanted, even though she didn't like him like that. But Ellis isn't here anymore. I bite my lip.

I look back at Barbero. One of his legs has drifted to the floor.

Michael is typing
…then:
Ill have mom bring u some of T's clothes

His sister, Tanya. She must be out of college by now. Mikey's house was always warm. In the winter, his mother made fat, soft loaves of bread and big pots of steaming soup.

Chat says,
Michael is typing.
He didn't say he missed me or anything. I take a deep breath, try to stifle the growling little voice in my head that tells me,
You're dirty and disgusting, idiot. Why would anyone want you?

Im coming up in May for a show at 7th Street Entry with this band I work with. Be there for two days. Can u put me on some visitor list or something?

Yes!
I start grinning crazily. My whole body has turned to feathers, I feel so light at the thought of seeing Mikey. Mikey!

Michael is typing:
I hv to go, show ending have class tmrow I cant blv its u u have a phone # too?
and I am up and running to the phone on the Rec wall, where the number is written in black Sharpie ink, along with
NO PHONE CALLS AFTER 9 P.M. NO PHONE CALLS BEFORE 6 P.M.
I'm running back, repeating the number in my head, when my bootie gets caught on a plastic chair and I go sprawling. Barbero's up in a flash, quicker than I've seen him move, ripping the buds from his ears. He whirls around. “Where's Schumacher? Where the fuck is Schumacher?” As I try to scramble up, he's busy, reading what's on the computer.

He presses his fat finger on a key and the computer screen fades to black. Mikey disappears.

“Back to your hutch, rabbit. I've got to go hunt down your friend.”