Smile On His Lips and Cuts On His Hips (Jalex)

Forty - Make It Through

I examined the walls surrounding me, eyes passing over the same posters and scraped paint that had been confining us for the past year. Our instructor was up front, droning on about matrices or something. Finals were imminent and I knew that my test average was likely to drop even further if I didn't improve, but I couldn't force myself to listen to her monotone lectures for more than five minutes before my thoughts peeled away, lyrics spinning across my synapses and fingers twitching together underneath my desk.

The door clicked open, a kid I didn't recognize shuffling in with a green slip in his hand. The paper was passed off to our teacher, and she temporarily capped her expo marker as the teenager took his exit. My vision traced the slip's path, confusion stiffening my features when it was pressed onto the fake wood before me.

I met my teacher's wrinkled gaze as she nodded towards the door; the green paper apparently called for me to exit class immediately. My heartbeat stuttered as I read the summoning to the office, leaving the doodles that were meant to be notes open on my desk and acknowledging Josh's questioning look with a halting shrug.

My teeth stung at the inside of my cheek as I stepped into the silent hallway, nervous eyes flickering across the lines of lockers and through cracked-open classroom doors. Solitary teacher's voices or clattering collaboration filtered past the hinges, barely translating into words in my brain.

The only thing I could think of that would interest administration in me was the cuts. It was a semi-annual event, the the teacher-led awkward conversations about mental health and demands to alert the guidance staff if we had any concerns about our peers' stability. Of course, nobody ever actually strode into the office and announced that their friend hadn't been all sunshine and rainbows lately, because the general consensus was that we should collectively stick to our own issues and stumble towards the end without interfering in others' lives.

Or so I'd always assumed. But it couldn't be a classmate that exposed me, because Alex was the only one who knew anything, and he would never. My problems were mine, and the idea of anyone, especially aged strangers, scraping through the ruts of my mind and divulging their contents to everyone I'd been concealing my scars around scared me to death. It sent my heart convulsing, my nerves shaking, my jagged nails cutting into my thumbs.

Maybe someone had seen the truth behind my sarcastic admissions. Maybe my boxers had been tugged too far down my hips while I wiggled out of my jeans in the locker room. Maybe a blood stain had been exposed above my waistband.

Despite the unlikeliness of those occurrences, it was impossible that the one person who positively knew of the razors in my drawers and the blades in my thoughts had told anyone. Because, fuck, Alex wouldn't. He'd hate it, he was fully aware that I had twin apprehensions, and, really, high school counselors? Really?

He would never.

Obviously, I didn't give a fuck about what some pseudo-psychiatrists knew about me or the opinions they may possess, but, presumably, they were required to alert parents if their son was physically mutilating himself. And my mom already semi-seriously asked if I was depressed often enough - last fucking thing I needed was her monitoring me constantly and injuring the atmosphere in our residence further, my dad's fury-outbursts becoming diluted with pity. Fuck, as if that would be any sort of constructive.

It could be something else, and I shot pleas into the void for the skin I'd broken to remain concealed, asking for any higher entity to give me one fucking break, to just let something go right for once. For it to be about something insignificant, an issue that I could help fix, not one that I contained.

I stuttered over to the adult at the office's entrance, presenting the call slip to her. The paper's shaking increased when she directed me to the Vice Principal's office, the jittery bones of my fingers curling around the edge of the bench outside his door.