Daughter of the Demon (II)

Drowning

~Jemma~

                I came to school the next day like I told Jacob I would. But I was distant. As in, more distant than usual. And he noticed.

Even Mr. Matthews noticed. He tried to ask me what was wrong but I excused myself from any further conversation. I didn’t feel like talking. I didn’t feel like doing anything.

I felt sick during lunch. Not throw-up-sick, just sick. Empty, lost, scraped cleaned and filled with nothing. I avoided Jacob’s eyes, and even Angelina felt the bad aura around me and didn’t come near me. At the end of the day, when I saw Jacob trying to approach me, I hightailed it out of the courtyard and to the girls’ bathroom. I stared at myself in the mirror, clutching the sides of the sink so tightly my knuckles turned white. My eyes had deep bags under them and I looked nowhere near myself. My wavy black hair was in wisps in front of my face, shoulders shaking. I could feel the demon inside of me creeping up, clawing its way out.

I jerked forward, my head near the sink, breathing hard. I needed something sharp. Something . . .

No.

I reached in my pocket and took out a freshly sharpened pencil. I held it clenched in my fist. My eyes trailed from it to my forearm where the other scars were.

Don’t do it.

I held it over my arm, pausing slightly.

You’re better than this. Don’t do it.

I pressed the tip against my arm.

Don’t. Do. It.

I took a deep breath and jammed the pencil into my arm, dragging a jagged line across my wrist. Blood started pouring out into the sink, and I panicked. Too much. Way too much.

What had I done?

I widened my eyes at myself in the mirror. All I saw was a monster.

                The blood wouldn’t stop, and there were probably a million things I could be doing to help the situation, but all I could do was stand there. All I could do was stare at the foreign face in the mirror and wonder when the hell she flew over the edge.

                Maybe always. Maybe you were always gone.

                Somebody entered the bathroom, rifling through her purse. I needed to move, do something, but nothing would help. Nothing could conceal the blood dripping down my arms, in the sink, on the floor. It was literally everywhere, and I didn’t know what to do.

                There was a moment of dead silence, the air thickening with the irony stench of my blood and the general septic smell of a bathroom. I had never seen the girl before, though I hadn’t seen majority of the people in Heart High School. She looked to be my age, with short blonde hair and wide blue eyes that stared horrified at me. Her jaw unhinged and words escaped her.

                So she screamed.

                “Oh, my God!” she cried, running from the bathroom. “Help! Somebody help!”

                And still, all I could do was stand there like an idiot, gawping at the reflection of me but not really in the mirror. I was trembling, skin turning ashen and grey, head dizzying.

                “Holy shit!”

                The next voice was familiar, and I couldn’t explain the reassurance that entered my heart at the sight of Jacob standing in the doorway, taking in the scene with horror and confusion. I held my arms out in front of me, blood on my shirt and my jeans, just everywhere.