Kiss of Broken Glass (6 page)

are getting ready to bunch up.

And then out comes the downpour.

A torrential ten-Kleenex typhoon.

Luckily her crying sort of waters down

the rest of the tough-love words:

Foolish.

Dangerous.

Serious consequences.

After a while, the storm blows over.

Mom’s hands puddle in her lap

and her head droops like a branch

still heavy with rain.

Great.

Now I’m gonna have to hug her and shit.

And when I do, she’s probably gonna

whisper that question in my ear.

The one I can’t answer.

Why, Kenna? Why?

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It would be so much easier if I had one.

Like if I thought I caused

        my brother’s illness,

           my boyfriend’s suicide,

              my parent’s death.

Like if I had

        an alcoholic father,

           a bipolar mother,

              a secret abortion.

Like if I’d been

        molested,

           abused,

              stalked.

Like just about ANYTHING!

Then maybe this would make more sense

and I could answer the question—

Why?

But here’s the thing.

I don’t have any deep, dark secrets.

Not like that anyway.

My life’s not some riveting novel

where you rush through the pages

to get to the end and find out

what horrific, repressed memory

caused me to cut.

The fact is,

I’ve had a pretty ordinary childhood.

Boring?
(Yes.)

Predictable?
(Yes.)

But stitch-worthy?
(No.)

So I guess that brings me to the
real
secret.

The deepest, darkest kind there is.

I’ve been cutting for absolutely no reason at all.

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Because that means I’m just a copycutter.

A follower who did it to fit in.

And now I can’t stop.

I bet if my IQ was even

a pimple-bump above average,

I would’ve thought of that

before I made the first cut.

But I didn’t think.

About anything.

Except—

my perpetually perfect sister

my Judge Judy mother

my Piglet father

my no-sprinkles future

my incurable case of Ordinary

the sting of being alone

and the rush of being accepted.

On second thought,

maybe it’s the little problems

that pile up the worst.

Deeper and darker.

One after another.

Until there’s no light at all.

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Like Tara who #cut4sid.

That all started because some troll

tweeted about how Sid Riff

was smoking pot instead of

recording albums like a hottie should,

and some fans decided to cut themselves

and post pictures to show Sid how sad they were

that he was turning into a bad person

and making their whole lives a lie.

24 hours

30,000 messages

and 23 million impressions later,

Tara came to school with the words

cut4sid
carved into her thigh

and a smile as wide as Texas

because she’d been retweeted

4,962 times.

It was the highlight of her year.

And the funny thing is,

she doesn’t even like Sid Riff.

But that’s the kind of thing

competitive cutters do.

And that’s exactly what my mother

would never understand.

How cutting’s everywhere now.

On a whole new level.

Not just in the closet.

Sometimes people do it because

of their deep, dark secrets,

or to fit in with friends,

or to piss off parents,

or to be razor rock-stars.

But who cares why we do it.

It’s a stupid question.

So when my mother asks,

I don’t even answer.

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The urge to cut is so strong

it feels like Saran Wrap around my brain.

No other thoughts getting in or out.

If I was at home right now

I’d bolt up the stairs,

three at a time,

not looking back,

until I got to the bathroom,

where I’d lock the door,

turn on the shower,

hover over the sink and

slice
,

           
slice
,

                       
slice
.

God I miss that feeling!

The rush.

The calm.

The way the blood pools warm at first

then cools like morning dew on slivered skin.

The sway.

The swirl.

The way the crimson dances ‘round the bowl

then trickles tiny teardrops down the drain.

The crimp.

The curl.

The sound Saran Wrap makes as it unsticks

and finally lets the air back to my brain.

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“Try this instead,” she says.

And then she shows me how to snap

a rubber band against my wrist.

It’s not as good as cutting.

But somehow the steady rubber sting

settles down my nerves enough to draw.

I look at my limp, leaking girl

lying worthless on the paper.

She deserves hands, I think.

To wave hello.

To catch bouquets.

To squeeze palm to palm.

Not hands to hold a blade.

But I can’t seem to draw them right.

They’re lifeless, unnatural, cold.

They make me want to tear the paper up.

So I sketch the moon instead.

Moons are easy.

A white, unblinking eye

watching through the window.

Like a god who sees bad things

happening to good people every day

but doesn’t even care.

Skylar glances at my drawing.

She’s writing a poem,

counting syllables on her fingers

one by one.

Skylar thinks God
does
care.

Even when it doesn’t feel like it.

And she’s pretty sure that one day

God will lift all the pain right off her

and toss it aside like an old jacket.

But for now, she’s wearing it tight.

Zipped up to the chin.

Just like me.

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Silent sobbing. No one sees.

Weeping like the willow trees.

Feel my heart about to pop.

Need to make the aching stop.

See moon’s shimmer softly pass.

On the shards of broken glass.

It’s an ekphrastic poem.

That’s what Skylar calls it.

She says that means the poem

was inspired by a piece of artwork.

My
artwork.

I tell her that
ekphrastic

is the dumbest word I’ve ever heard.

It doesn’t sound very poetic to me.

More like a hairball that the cat coughed up.

But
her
words are poetic.

Beautiful.

           Powerful.

                       Painful.

Like she cut out a piece of herself

and left it lying there on the paper,

just so I’d know—

I’m

not

alone.

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He’s staring at the moon.

Thousands of miles from here.

I wonder if he’s thinking about

the three goals he wrote for Roger’s exercise:

* Get out of here without the family meeting.

* Get out of here without the family meeting.

* Get out of here without the family meeting.

But the sad thing is nobody gets out

of here without that almighty meeting.

Especially when decking your dad

is what got you here in the first place.

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But she doesn’t call it the moon.

She calls it
Lunabella

because that sounds like

a sexy-hot girl who would

meet her at Chicory’s

and drink café mochas

until they were both

as happy as exclamation points,

and they’d hold hands

on top of the table

not just underneath

even when Donya’s

stupid parental unit

steamed in

hotter than coffee

ranting about how two girls

holding hands was a sin.

I ask Donya if that really happened.

But she doesn’t answer.

Instead she just says that Skylar

can tell her so-called God

to shove His so-called plans

and stop messing up

every minute of

her so-called
life
!

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“My father’s Higher Power was a lightbulb,” he says.

“A 60-watt incandescent.”

Jag tells us how he used to go to Al-Anon meetings

before his father drank up all their savings

and started talking with his fists.

“AA lets you believe God can be anything or anyone,” he says.

“Like God can be Buddha or a ceiling tile or even a lightbulb.

It doesn’t really matter. As long as you believe that
something

is your Higher Power.

I ask Jag if AA would let Colin Krusher be God.

“I know Colin is more like a fallen TV angel, “ I say.

“But he’s been resurrected four times on my favorite show

and he’s the only angel who’s lasted through series nine

so that pretty much makes him immortal, if you ask me.

Plus, in real life, Colin founded a charity that gives away shoes

and umbrellas and mattresses to old people who haven’t

had a new bed in like half a century.

So Colin deserves to be God way more than a 60-watt.”

Jag nods and looks at the floor.

“Yeah. I guess Colin could be God,” he says.

“But just so you know,

that lightbulb thing

didn’t turn out too good for my dad.”

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Donya’s grinding her teeth again.

Like she’s mad at half the world.

I bet my dad doesn’t have to

listen to a racket like this

when he’s at the Hyatt

or the Holiday Inn

a thousand miles

away from home.

I bet he props himself up

on fluffy hypoallergenic pillows

and drinks four-dollar bottled waters

and watches the 10-p.m. news

with all the comings and goings

of some random city.

And even though he’ll only

stay there a day, maybe two,

I bet Dad cares more

about what’s happening

in De Kalb, Illinois,

or Madison, Wisconsin,

than he cares about

what’s happening

to me.

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I’m on that dark country road again

where the sky is purple

and the air is so full of static

the hairs rise up on my arms.

Then I see that horse.

The gruesome, white, wild-eyed horse.

Flaring her nostrils.

Rearing her head.

Like a warning.

I want to bolt back into consciousness.

But right away I can tell

it’s one of those hosed dreams

where you can’t wake yourself up

no matter how hard you try.

I’m trapped.

Immobile.

Suffocating.

But then I hear Rennie’s voice:

Just one cut and you can breathe.

When she appears,

she’s ten feet tall.

On freaky spider legs

just like the ones in Dalí’s paintings.

And I figure that right about now

Dali would probably drop the spoon,

wake himself up,

and paint some freaky clocks.

But I’m stuck watching Rennie

as she mounts the horse

and wraps her legs around its belly.

When she grabs its mane, the horse bucks and flails,

and I feel my heart thud like a nine-pound hammer.

Thump-thump.

Thump-thump.

Thump-thump
.