“Eat lunch with me today,” she says.
We agreed weeks ago that we were not going to be the kind of girls who blow off their friends the instant they’re in a relationship. My best friend started canceling our plans literally the day after she and her boyfriend got together. (She didn’t even always cancel them, sometimes she simply didn’t show up.) So no matter how much I might have wanted to spend every spare second with Tess, I forced myself to eat lunch with the same crowd as always. Why would Tess suggest making a change now?
Unless she really is planning to fit the breakup in between classes.
I shake my head, shove my hands in my pockets, and tell her, “I can’t.”
I expect her to tell me that of course I can, there’s no rule that says I can’t sit at another table just this once, but much to my surprise, she nods and says, “I understand.”
She must feel sorry for me. She says, “I never know what the right thing to say is at times like this.”
The words come out before I can stop them. “So don’t say anything. Please.” I hate that I sound like I’m begging. Was it really just this morning that I managed to play it cool?
Tess shakes her head. “I have to say something. I have to do something. We have to do something, you know?”
I nod. Maybe that’s the kind of thing people say to make a breakup sound less one-sided.
Tess says, “Could you just tell her—I don’t know. Tell her I’m thinking about her, I guess.”
Tell who? Tell me? Is she talking about me in the third person? Will that make it easier to dump me?
Tess leans in to kiss me. I’m so startled that I pull away before our lips touch. Who kisses the girl she’s breaking up with?
“I’ve gotta go,” I say, setting off down the hall. “The guys are waiting at our table.”
Tess follows me, the look on her face shifting from sympathetic to angry. “You’re going to sit with them?”
I shrug. “I always sit with them.”
“But I thought today—” She shakes her head. “I can’t believe this.” She looks so disgusted that I freeze in my tracks.
“Believe what?”
“You’re not actually taking his side, are you?”
“What are you talking about?” I ask, utterly confused.
“Oh, I get it.” She folds her long arms across her chest. “You’re going to play it like, Innocent until proven guilty, it’s her word against his, there’s no evidence—as if she isn’t evidence! How can you do that to her?”
“How can I do what to whom?” I stuff my hands even deeper into my pockets, hoping she can’t see them shaking through my jeans. I want this moment to end. I want to make it outside and to our table, where I can sit down and let the guys do the talking. They’re loud enough that no one will hear how hard my heart is pounding.
“I heard it had been going on for a while,” Tess spits. “You know, if you were any kind of a friend, you’d have figured it out months ago. There must have been signs.”
Everyone in the hallway has stopped to look at us. At me. I’m not just being paranoid like Dr. Kreiter says. This isn’t me spiraling—they really are staring now.
“I’ve gotta go,” I manage. My voice sounds small. Thin. Weak.
“I don’t even feel like I know you anymore.” Tess shakes her head. “It’s over.”
Oh, god, I can’t believe it’s actually happening here. Now. In the middle of school. With everyone staring at us. In the made-up scenarios that dance around my imagination, I never pictured anything this awful.
“You’re not going to say anything?” Tess asks. She doesn’t know how hard I’m working to keep my jaw still, trying to keep my teeth from chattering.
So I stand there silently while Tess turns around and walks away.
* * *
My pulse is so fast, it doesn’t feel like a beat at all. It’s more like an endless, deafening hum.
Count backward from one hundred, I tell myself. (That’s what Dr. Kreiter suggested once. She also suggested squeezing an ice cube to mimic the discomfort of cutting, using a marker to doodle on the part of my body I want to cut, ripping up paper into tiny pieces, or eating sour food. But the only one of her ideas I’ve tried is the counting backward one because it’s the only one that doesn’t require a prop.)
I dig my fingers deep into the pockets of my jeans. Through the material, I can feel my nails against my skin. I’ve only ever cut on my upper thighs, where no one will see. With Tess, I undressed in the dark, dove under the covers immediately, so my scars would stay as invisible as possible.
At least I don’t have to worry about that anymore.
I’m supposed to go to the nurse’s office if I feel the urge, that was part of the deal. But the nurse would call my mom, and Mom would call Dr. Kreiter, and Dr. Kreiter would insist on scheduling an emergency session. She’d bring up medication again, group therapy. Dad would be disappointed that I wasn’t able to hold up my end of the deal after all. I’d let him down, just like I did when I got an eighty-nine on my physics test last semester. (Eighty-nine is the cut off between an A-minus and a B-plus, and people who get B-pluses do not get into Stanford.)
I run across the parking lot until I get to my car. I manage to open the door and slam it shut behind me.
My trembling hands reach toward the glove compartment of their own volition. I feel—as I always did (do?) before cutting—like an outsider floating above my body, watching what’s happening. Dr. Kreiter calls it a trance.
I used to keep an extra razor blade in the car for emergencies, but I threw it away because my parents asked me to get rid of anything I used to cut, and I promised I would. (That was part of the deal.)
I open the glove compartment. The instructions that came with the car when my parents leased it for me are stuffed in there, along with some tissues, a granola bar, my registration, and god knows what else. I dig through it all until I find the mirror. It’s tucked into a bright yellow compact with blush on one side, even though I never wear blush.
When Mom first found out about the cutting, she acted like she wanted to get rid of every sharp object in the house: every razor blade, every steak knife and butter knife, and each pair of scissors. She said she didn’t want anything to trigger me. I considered suggesting that she redecorate the bathroom, since I’d (mostly) only cut in there, and the familiar surroundings might trigger me even more than knives and scissors (which I’d never used for cutting), but in the end I kept the thought to myself.
Eventually, Dad pointed out the impracticality of getting rid of everything sharp. Plus, I’d never cut myself with anything but an old-fashioned razor blade, and I’d tossed those like I promised. So I’m allowed to cut my own food and (after a few weeks) to shave my legs. Honor code and all that.