Ryan Carrelli stood in front of the school bathroom mirror, a broken shard of glass in his hand. He tried putting it aside, as if all he could feel was his arms tingling with need, as if he had not veins but circuitry, sparkling with electricity. He slowly rolled back the sleeves of his shirt, revealing scarred forearms. He took a deep breath, and began cutting.
Down he cut, twice on his left arm, and three times on his right, and as he was making the fourth, his hands fluttery from fatigue, he had looked up and had seen his friend, Gabe Coleman, standing in the doorway of the school washroom, watching him
In all his months of cutting himself, he had never been witnessed in the act itself, and he stopped, abruptly, the violation as shocking as if he had been punched in the face.
Gabe didn't say anything, but as he walked toward Ryan, he stepped back, terrified, waiting for what might happen. He watched as Gabe gently removed the fragment of glass from his hand, and for a moment they remained like that, both of them staring at the glass. And then Gabe, without preface or warning, sliced the glass across his own arm.
Ryan snapped alive, then. "No!" he shouted, and tried to stop him, but he didn't have the strength, and he fell to his feet. "Gabe, no!"
Gabe yelled in pain. But he made a second cut anyway, right under the first.
"Stop it, Gabe!" Ryan shouted, almost in tears. "Gabe, stop it! You're hurting yourself!"
"Oh, yeah?" asked Gabe, and he could tell by the gleam in Ryan's eyes that he was about to cry.
"You see what it feels like, Ryan?" And he made a third cut, cursing again.
"Gabe," he groaned, and lunged for Gabe's shoes, but he stepped out of the way. "Please stop. Please, Gabe."
He had begged and begged, but it was only after the fifth cut that Gabe stopped, slumping down against the door of a bathroom stall.
"Shit," he muttered, quietly, bending over at the waist and wrapping his arms around himself. "God, that hurts."
Ryan scooted over to Gabe with his bag to help clean him up, but Gabe moved away from him.
"Leave me alone, Ryan," he said.
"But you need to bandage them."
"Bandage your own goddamn arms," Gabe said, still not looking at him. "This isn't some screwed-up ritual we're going to share, you know, bandaging each other's self-inflicted cuts."
Ryan shrank back. "I wasn't trying to say that," he said, but Gabe didn't answer him, and finally, he did clean off his cuts, and then slid the bag over toward Ryan, who at last did the same, wincing as he did.
"Ryan," Gabe said, a while later. "This really hurts." He finally looked at him. "How can you stand this?"
Ryan shrugged. "You get used to it," he said, and Gabe shook his head.
DeleteCreated with Sketch.
I woke, my head pounding with the memory I had yearned to erase from my mind, and I glanced over at the remains of the cuts on my arms, pale scars that hadn't completely healed.
At around ten in the morning, we all walked down to the hotel dining hall for breakfast. There was a huge buffet, but I really didn't feel like eating, so I just sat there, watching as everyone else stuffed their faces with waffles and toast.
"Where's Lorraine?" I asked, noticing her absence from the table.
Jared looked around. "I think she's probably asleep." he yawned, spreading butter on his toast.
