I remember the look on her face in Study Hall the day I saw her rubbing her arm on the seat of the chair while she pretended to be asleep.
“Third row, last chair,” she says. “Just thought you might want to know. In case they find your metal thing.”
On Thursday I don’t wait for you to ask me where I want to start. While you’re still closing your door, I ask if you want to see my scars.
Your face is neutral. “Do you want to show me?” you say.
I nod. I pinch my sleeve between my thumb and index finger, but instead of pulling it up, I pull it down. Until it covers my wrist. Until it covers my hand. Until my whole arm is hidden inside my sleeve.
“I use my mom’s Exacto knife.” I stare at my shirtsleeve. “Or her embroidery scissors. Once I used the paper towel dispenser in the guest bathroom here.” I feel the corners of my mouth turn up; I’m not happy but somehow I have to fight the urge to smile.
I check for your reaction. You’re expecting something, I can tell. Your normal, calm face shows a hint of waiting. Waiting, and something else, something like hope.
I roll my sleeve between my thumb and index finger, then deliberately, with a kind of reverence, I pull my sleeve back, all the way up to the elbow, and extend my arm to you.
You’re not disgusted or frightened or any of the hundred wrong things you could be; you look like yourself, serious, curious, and maybe, maybe, just a little bit proud of me.
I look at my arm. It’s crisscrossed with pink lines, lines that strike me as delicate and faint, lines I remember making.
I gently pull my sleeve back down and decide it would be good to make some kind of joke right about now.
“Guess I’ll never wear a strapless ball gown,” I say.
You look perplexed.
“Debbie, you know Debbie from my group, she’s always drawing fancy ball gowns. I’ll have to ask her to design one for me—one that has long sleeves.” I laugh. You don’t.
“What makes you think you’ll never wear a strapless ball gown?”
I shrug. I never planned on wearing fancy clothes, but for some dumb reason, now I really want to. In fact I want to so badly, I feel like crying. “I don’t know.”
“You might wear a ball gown someday.” You say this quite surely.
“I might?”
You nod. “I have every reason to believe you’ll do all the things every other girl does, all the things you want to do.”
I’m still stuck on the stupid ball gown that I never cared about until now. “With these arms?” I thrust my arms out, keeping my sleeves wrapped around my thumbs.
“Those scars will fade. It looks like some have already faded.”
I consider this.
“There are treatments, too, medical treatments that can help get rid of scars.”
I must look dubious because you go on.
“I knew a little girl who was in a terrible car accident. A beautiful little girl whose face was absolutely covered with cuts; she had nearly a hundred stitches in her face.”
I wince. I feel so sad, so sorry for this little girl, I want you to stop. But I need to hear more.
“She’s a model now,” you say. “She’s a very successful, very beautiful model. She had plastic surgery to get rid of her scars. You would never know what happened to her when she was younger.”
I like and don’t like this story, but I don’t know why.
A bird outside your window trills. Another bird, far off, answers.
“I may not want to get rid of my scars,” I say finally.
You nod.
“They tell a story,” I say.
“Yes,”you say, “they do.”
It must be the end of our time because you’re standing up. I wait for you to say Good work, see you tomorrow. But you just stand there with your hand on the doorknob. I get to my feet and look at the clock. Our time was up a few minutes ago. I tug at the hem of my shirt.
“Callie,” you say. “Is there something else you want to say?”
I shake my head. But I don’t move.
“You seem to be waiting. Can you tell me what you’re waiting for?”
I shake my head again. Then I nod.
You let go of the doorknob.
I reach into my pocket and pull out the metal strip. “It’s from the cafeteria,” I say.
You don’t seem to understand. I hold it out toward you.
“You’re giving this to me?”
I keep my eyes on the stain on the carpet and nod.
“Can you tell me why?”
“Not really.” I roll my feet onto the sides of my sneakers. “So I don’t…you know…” I know I have to say more. “So I don’t use it.”
I look up from the carpet to check your reaction. You’re tapping your lip with your finger.
“I’m glad,” you say finally. “I’m very happy that you don’t want to use this to hurt yourself.”
My arm is getting tired; the metal strip feels very, very heavy. Finally, when you reach out and take it, it slips from my fingers, weightless. You place it on the corner of your desk.
“I’ll keep it here until you’re ready to decide what you want to do with it.”
I don’t understand. “I get it back?” I look over at the small, dull square of metal sitting on the edge of your desk, so close I could just reach out and slip it back in my pocket.
“Callie.” Your voice is a little sad. “There are all kinds of things in the world you could use to hurt yourself. All kinds of things you could turn into weapons. Even if you wanted to give them all to me, it wouldn’t be possible. You know that, don’t you?”
I do know that, I guess. I nod.
“I can’t keep you safe,”you say. “Only you can.”
That night we see Becca in the dining room with her new group from Humdinger. Maybe I’ve been here too long— they don’t look that bad to me.
Becca walks past our table carrying a glass of water; behind her, another girl, who looks normal except for the twitchy smile on her face, is carrying two trays. They get to their table and the girl sets one of the trays down in front of Becca, pulls out a chair for her, then hands her a napkin.
Debbie is staring; then she shades her eyes, still watching Becca and her new friend. Finally she turns to Amanda “Guess Becca’s found somebody new to be codependent.”
We go back to our dinners, trying not to look at Becca anymore. The pasta tonight is especially bland. I consider going to the salad bar. I check first to see if the Ghost is there, waltzing. She’s not.
“Where’s the Ghost?” I ask Sydney.
“Home,” she says. “She went home.”
Tara and Sydney complain about the food, but I don’t really pay attention. I’m thinking about how people leave here: Ruth, Tiffany the Ghost. Some leave on schedule, some leave without warning. But everyone leaves eventually
Tara’s asked me a question. I can tell because everyone is looking at me.
“Huh?”
“Is it OK with you if we let Debbie have the remote tonight?”
“Sure,” I say. “Absolutely.” It’s a simple question, the kind of thing the group used to vote on all the time, but this time, I’m included.
Debbie flips through the channels so fast it’s hard to tell which shows she’s rejecting. She stops briefly at the Food Channel, where a woman in an apron is making apple brown betty in what looks like a real kitchen.
“No,” Debbie says, pushing the button on the remote. “Watching someone make dessert is not a good idea.”
She flips through a few more stations, then stops at a show where all you can see is the front door of a house. A scratchy voice comes on: “What is the nature of your emergency?” A subtitle repeating these words scrolls by at the bottom of the screen. A child’s voice, barely audible, comes next: “My mommy’s on the floor.” The child starts crying. The subtitle says: “(Child crying.)”