Words can Draw Blood

Monday Mornings

Laura’s groans and covers her head with her pillow as her alarm clock beeps. She puts out her hand to click the snooze button for the third time that morning but accidentally smacks the clock off her nightstand. She groans as she sits up and pushes her covers aside, slides on her white slippers and stands up. She leans over picking up her alarm clock and turns it off, placing it back to its original spot on her nightstand.

She rubs her eyes and walks over to her closet grabbing a sweatshirt and putting it on. Laura walks over to the mirror and combs her fingers through her hair as she looks at her reflection. Her dark brown eyes staring back at her as her light brown shoulder length hair curves around her face. She looks at her legs and she frowns. She never liked her body. She was only 4 foot 9 inches and she weighed about 130 pounds. Everyone else in her freshman class weighed around 100 pounds, but she was short, which made her look even bigger. She sighs and opens her bedroom door that leads to the hallway.

Across the hall is her brother’s bedroom, Michael. She walks over to his door and knocks, “Mickey, time to get up!” Michael answers back but it just sounds like muffles and groans to Laura so she ignores it and continues her way down the hallway to the stairs.

As she enters the kitchen, her mother smiles and gives her a side hug while she’s holding a plate of scrambled eggs in the other hand. “Morning, sweetheart!” she says as she walks over to the table, placing the eggs down. “Breakfast?” “No thanks. Not really hungry,” Laura answers as she starts to walk over to the cabinet. Her mother’s face turns concerned, “That’s what you said last night for dinner, are you sure you’re alright?” “Yes mom, I’m fine. I’m just not hungry, that’s all.” Her mother purses her lips and nods, “Alright.”

As her mother turns around to face the stove, Laura opens the cabinet and reaches up to grab a glass. Her sweatshirt slides down her arm revealing scars. Laura quickly pulls her sleeve back over her arm, her heart beating what feels like a 100 miles an hour. She immediately looks in her mother’s direction to see if she saw anything, but she found her just as she saw her 5 seconds ago cooking at the stove. Laura quietly sighs with relief as she grabs the glass and goes over to the fridge.

As she’s grabbing the milk out of the fridge door, her mother says “Any after school activities today?” “Not today..” she says in a quiet voice. “I thought you stayed for extra Spanish help on Mondays?” her mother says as she glances over at her daughter. “Yeah, but I’m not feeling it today,” she says as she pours her milk. “I don’t care if you’re ‘not feeling it today,’ you still need to go! Especially since that last report card of yours,” Laura’s mom says as she raises an eyebrow at Laura. Laura’s heart sinks at the mention of her report card, ‘Why does she only mention the bad things I do?’ she thinks to herself.

“Were you guys talking about me again and my great report card this quarter?” Michael says as he walks in. His short dark brown hair is spiked up in the front, which makes his dark green eyes even cutter than they already are. Even though he was only in 7th grade, he was already 5 foot 6 inches. That made him 9 inches taller than Laura, talk about embarrassing.

Their mother laughs as she puts out another plat of eggs on the table, “See? Michael did great, why can’t you do as well as him?” Laura’s heart breaks. Her eyes start to sting telling her to leave before she starts to cry. “I’m going to go get ready,” she says as she places her unfinished glass of milk on the counter. She tries not to make eye contact with either her brother or mother in fear that she’ll burst out in tears. She quickly leaves the kitchen and runs up the stairs into her bedroom.

Once she reaches her bedroom, she closes the door behind her and takes a couple deep breathes. She closes her eyes and sits on her bed to calm herself down. Laura is an extremely sensitive girl; almost anything can bring her to tears, even if it’s meant to be sarcastic. She takes one last deep breath and calms herself down. She opens her eyes and stand up, walking over to her closet.

She opens up her closet and reveals dozens of long sleeved shirts, sweatshirts, cardigans, sweaters, and about two t-shirts. She stopped wearing tops that exposed her arms when she was about Michael’s age. That’s when she started to cut, in 7th grade.

When she first started cutting she still wore short sleeves, but one day when she was washing dishes with her mother, her mother saw the scar and asked what happened. Laura lied of coarse and told her mother that there cat Twinkles did it. Laura could tell her mother was having a hard time processing this because Twinkles would never hurt anyone, except Michael. But her mother apparently bought it because she just said, “Well, try to be more careful with him next time,” and she went back to washing the dishes.

Ever since then, Laura has been careful to make sure she always wears something that covers her arms. She has a couple of t-shirts and tank tops so that her mother won’t suspect anything. Every once in a while she’ll wear a tank top or t-shirt but she’ll wear a blanket around the house with her to cover her arms. She just simply says that she’s cold and she’ll get away with it.

‘Man,’ she thinks, ‘my parents really don’t pay that much attention to me…’ She glances at her clock that reads 6:23AM. She sighs as she grabs a black and white stripped sweater cardigan out of her closet along with a black tank top and some jeans. She gets dressed and slides on some grey ankle boots.

She looks at herself in the mirror before she applies her makeup and bites her lip to hold back from crying. ‘I’m so depressed looking,’ she thinks to herself, ‘how do my parents not worry about me?’ She purses her lips and thinks, ‘It’s because they don’t care about me,’ she turns around and looks at her nightstand drawer, ‘No one does.’  She walks over to the drawer and grabs the handle. She’s about to pull it open when she stops herself. ‘No… you can do this.’ She lets go of the handle and backs up, she turns and faces the mirror again.

She puts on her makeup and brushes her hair and her teeth. She opens her bedroom door and walks down the hallway. “Kids! Bus is here!” their mother yells from the bottom of the stairs. “Coming!” Michael yells as he runs passed Laura in the hallway and runs down the stairs. Laura sighs and walks down the stairs; she grabs her backpack and her coat and kisses her mom good-bye. “Stay for extra Spanish help today, sweetheart!” her mother yells to her as she exits the house right behind Michael. Laura acts like she doesn’t here her and walks onto the bus with Michael right in front of her.

‘Let the week in hell begin..,’ she thinks to herself as she walks to the back of the bus.