Seven Cuts

I wish I woke up someday and all of this would end without my having to do anything about it. I live with my brother Matt who is twenty-six, because I don’t have a family in the sense of the word. I mean I have a mother who is married to some rich jerk so now she pretends to love us but really, she doesn’t know the first thing about motherhood. She was tired of us coming in the way of her relationship so first Matt started living on his own and then he took me in. We have a younger sister named Aubrey, but she’s only three and still cute so my mother and my step dad think the world of her. Of course, our step-dad is Aubrey’s real dad so there’s that. In the kitchen, Matt is busy poring over a newspaper in one of his best suits and drinking coffee and there’s a fresh batch of scrambled eggs on the breakfast bar and more coffee and orange juice. It’s his every day routine. Making breakfast for the two of us and even though I’m sixteen and capable of making my own scrambled eggs, Matt never lets me.
The smell in the kitchen, it makes me nostalgic.
It reminds me of a time when mom and dad used to have the same routine and clearly Matt wants to keep it alive more than I do. It was a simpler time when mom wasn’t so zoned out on prescription pills that she couldn’t cook or clean or take us to baseball practice. Once dad broke her heart, it was as though she stopped feeling love altogether. As though it was just a word and held no meaning for her, and I couldn’t understand it. Even when she married our twice-divorced step-father she told us straight away that she was doing it because he had money and that he could support us all. Well, assuming that ‘support’ means setting up a college fund and paying for mother’s trips to Europe, which I suppose isn’t all bad, but it’s not love. It’s the opposite of love. It’s what you do when you don’t want to raise your own children, when you don’t know what love is because you’re a sociopath and don’t realize it because everyone else seems to except you as a normal human being because you’re just like them. Of course I’m hardly the one to comment on ‘normality’ because there’s nothing normal about doing a six-week stint in the loony bin for the opulent and the degenerate that your step-dad had to pay for.
I have never been fond of going to school.
But on this day, I’m actually excited for Matt to stop drinking coffee and drive me there.
Even Matt knows something is up.
And of course there’s a reason for the excitement.
And that reason stands in the parking lot of our school, wearing a brand new sweater that I have never seen her wear before, and a lovely blush colors her cheeks like a beautiful segue for the upcoming fall. The leaves are already starting to turn, changing their colors, but she looks the same—her red hair is glowing, brushing against the wind and her green eyes stop looking at the world and for that one fleeting moment, they are completely focused on me.
She smiles.
Win.
I smile back, which I realize is dumb because I’m wearing the usual emo-goth war-paint on my face and I wear only black so smiling is something that goes completely against it. In my defense, it’s to let the bullies see me as a freak or a Satanist or something and make them leave me alone but it does just the opposite. It garners even more attention but this is one day I don’t care about any of it. Today, she makes the world look different, even if it lasts for about five seconds, tops.
“What’s the matter, freak?” the guy they call Puck blocks my path. “Never seen a girl before?”
I look over at Heather and she’s blushing.
I don’t blame her for not saying something.
Puck and his friends are trouble.
I know that.
She knows that.
Even the school principal won’t go near Puck because Puck’s father is a known criminal and belongs to some gang. He’s even done a few months in prison, which basically gives Puck the permission to bully anyone and treat them however he wants and not be reprimanded for it. If this jerk decides to hit me now, at the least I’m about to score some nasty bruises.
“You know who that is?” Puck asks, gesturing to Heather and she looks uncomfortable. “That’s my girl. If I see your faggot ass within five feet of her, we’re going to have a problem. Do we understand each other, fag?”
I could have walked away.
I should have walked away.
But the next words just sort of spill from my mouth.
“I like her Puck,” I say. “So I can’t do that, I’m afraid.”
I don’t know what drove me to it.
Usually I just listen to their crap and keep my mouth shut, no matter how pissed off I am but today I’m on some kind of rush. My head is filled with adrenaline. When Puck comes at me with a baseball bat I see it all in slow motion—the bat being raised and then hitting my knee, making me fall to the ground and then there’s an onslaught of punches and kicks while I’m cowering on the floor. When they finally leave I don’t even know how I’m going to make it to the nurse, or the emergency room. I’m panicking because I think there’s something seriously wrong with me, that they’ve hurt me beyond what I can bear. I pull myself up; manage to sit against a wall because I’m shaking all over. The bullies are gone but there’s still someone there.
I look up at her gorgeous face.
“Was it worth it, Andy?” she asks.
I want to say that yes, it was worth it; that I could suffer through pain and torture for her and go through a lot more than what Puck and his friends are capable of, and I can do it for all of eternity; suffer, until she realizes how much I love her.
But she’s gone before I can say any of it.
I wait till she’s left.
And then I reach for my wallet.
Hidden inside one of the flaps is a piece of paper that barely conceals a razorblade. Its frayed edges still have my blood on them. The blood is from the previous cuts I’ve made and I carry it around like a trophy, like Dexter carries around his victims’ blood on slides. I use that blade to give myself a cut and it starts bleeding. Right away, it feels as though the pressure that has been building inside me ever since that confrontation with Puck is lifted.
I feel free again.

Notes