It was the worst beating I ever had, like he had channeled all his frustration with my brothers and directed it all on me. My mom kept me out of school for two weeks while I healed, telling the school, family, friends, neighbors—anyone who asked that I had strep throat and was highly contagious.
I lay in bed almost the entire time, feeling my body heal, but my mind and will to live died, knowing it would never get better, that this was it for me.
I blink the thought away as I sit down on the floor and lift up my shirt. I vowed when I went to college that I’d give it up—stop the fucking habit. But I guess it owns me more than I thought.
***
The next day in Biology I’m trying to hold as still as possible to keep the pain on my stomach contained, but I keep glancing behind me at Callie, who seems oblivious that I’m turning into a stalker.
Professor Fremont takes his sweet time wrapping up his lecture. By the time I make it into the hall, it’s crammed with people. I’m blocking the doorway, trying to determine whether I want to skip my next class or not, when someone slams into my back.
“Oh my God. I’m so sorry,” Callie apologizes, backing away from me like I’m a criminal. “I wasn’t paying attention to where I was going.”
“You don’t have to apologize. I promise I’m perfectly fine, even though you ran into me.” I flash a grin at her as I move to the side, so people can get by. As my midsection turns, my muscles burn.
“I’m sorry,” Callie repeats and then shuts her eyes, shaking her head at herself. “I just have a bad habit of saying sorry.”
“It’s okay, but maybe you should work on breaking it,” I suggest, bracing my hand on the doorframe. Her brown hair is pulled up and thin wisps hang around her face. She’s wearing jeans, a plain purple t-shirt, and minimal makeup. Her tits aren’t hanging out of her top and her jeans aren’t skin tight to show off her curves, like how Daisy dresses every day. There’s nothing to check out, yet I find myself really looking at her.
“I’m trying, but it’s hard.” She looks down at the brown carpet, so shy and innocent. The girl looks like she needs a thousand hugs to erase all the sadness she’s carrying around on her shoulders. “Habits are very hard to break.”
“Can I take you out somewhere?” I ask without even thinking about what I’m doing or what the consequences will be. “I really want to say thank you for, well, you know, for what you did.”
Her eyelids flutter open and my heart skips a beat. That’s never happened before and it tosses me into a momentary state of vertigo. “I’m actually supposed to meet Seth in just a few minutes, but maybe some other time,” she says evasively and starts down the hall, swinging her bag over her shoulder.
I fall into step with her. “You know, he’s an interesting person. I have him in my English class and he always raises his hand, just to give the wrong answer.”
A faint smile touches at her lips. “He does it on purpose.”
Pressing my palm against the glass, I hold the door open for her. “Why?”
She blocks the sun from her eyes with her hand as she steps outside. “Because it’s on the list.”
I pause just outside the doorway, cocking an eyebrow. “The list?”
“It’s nothing.” She waves her hand at me dismissively. “Look, I have to go.”
She picks up the pace, her thin legs moving quickly as she leaves me in the campus yard, her head tucked down and her shoulders hunched as if she’s doing everything she can to be nonexistent.
Callie
My dorm room is located in the McIntyre building, which is the tallest of the residence halls. I swipe my ID card to get into the hall and then push a code to enter my room. From out the window, the people look tiny, like I’m a bird seeing everything from an Aerial view.
I pull out my journal that I keep hidden beneath my pillow and grab a pen. I started writing in it when I was thirteen, as a way to put my thoughts down on paper. I wasn’t planning on making it a lifelong hobby, but I feel so much better when I write, like my brain is finally free to say whatever it wants.
The edges of the cover are tattered and some of the pages are falling off from the spiral. I sit down with my legs crisscrossed, and press the tip to a clean sheet.
It’s amazing how the things you remember forever are the things you’d rather forget and the things you desperately want to grasp onto seem to slip away like sand in the wind.
I remember everything about that day, like the images have been burned into my brain by a branding iron. But I wish they would blow away in the wind.
There’s a knock on my door. Sighing, I hide the notebook back under the pillow before answering the door. Seth strolls in with two iced lattes and he hands one to me.
“You sounded like you could use one of these.” He shucks off his jacket, drapes it over a chair that’s in front of the desk, and sinks down on the bed. “Okay, spill your guts.”
“I don’t know why he’s talking to me and asking me to go places.” I pace the floor in front of my bed and sip on the straw. There are sketches and a poster of Rise Against on my roommate’s side of the wall, and her bed is covered in dirty clothes. “He’s never really talked to me before.”
“Who, Kayden?” Seth asks and I nod. He flops onto my bed and scrolls through my playlists on my iPod. “Maybe he likes you.”
I stop in the middle of the room and shake my head, the ice swishing in the cup. “No, that’s not what it is. He has a girlfriend—a super slutty girlfriend who he can touch.”
“He would probably touch you, if you’d let him,” he says and my breath catches in my throat. “Okay, so we’re not there yet.”