Kiss of Broken Glass Read Online Free

Notices Me Staring
    I look away
    but not fast enough
    and her fragile smile melts.
    “Sorry,” I say.
    “I’ve just never seen scars
    like that before.”
    She studies me.
    Traces a finger across her arm.
    Tells me they’re her babies.
    She’s even got names for them.
    Fat baby.
    Ugly baby.
    Lonely baby.
    Failed- a-test baby.
    Dissed-at-school baby.
    Argued-with-mother baby.
    Why-don’t-you-just-kill-yourself baby.
    My cuts don’t have names like that.
    But if I gave them names, they’d all be Rennie.

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Rennie
    Where do I begin?
    I guess we met around
    the second week of sixth grade.
    Right about the time I was discovering
    that in middle school there’s no such thing
    as being a wallflower.
    You’re either popular or ridiculed.
    Accepted or abandoned.
    Worshiped or crucified.
    There’s no in-between.
    No place for invisible.
    Nowhere to hide.
    I was a little unprepared for that,
    having been a houseplant all my life.
    Comfortably nonexistent.
    But Rennie took me in.
    Introduced me to the black-booted,
    purple-haired dress-code violators
    who would one day be
    the Sisters of the Broken Glass.
    And for the first time,
    I belonged to something.
               was seen as someone.
                     was popular somehow.
    I belonged . . .
    Even though I knew that meant
    I’d have to cut too.
    Sometime.

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Six Months Later
    Elbow on the sink.
    Right hand trembling.
    Drag–––––the–––––glass–––––across–––––my–––––wrist–––––
    chalky–––––dotted–––––lines–––––
    don’t–––––even–––––break–––––the–––––skin–––––
    Lungs are feeling tight.
    Heart is thumping hard.
    Rennie’s words are swirling in my head.
    Just one cut to feel alive . . .

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And Then
    Whoosh!
    The skin tears
    and I feel this rush
    swirling in my brain
    like a waterspout.
    A finger-tingling,
    tongue-numbing,
    heart-pounding
    rush.
    And the pain doesn’t feel like pain
    but more like energy
    moving through my body
    in waves.
    Rushing.
               Cleansing.
                           Pulsing.
    Purging all the broken bits out of me
    like a tsunami washing debris to the shore.

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Afterward
    I feel the calm,
    the bliss,
    the sheer weightlessness
    of zero worry.
    I’m floating on a smooth glass pond
    with bottle-nosed endorphins
    swimming all around,
    splashing their tails,
    smiling their perpetual smiles.
    And I want this feeling to last forever.
    Because if the feeling lasts,
    it won’t matter what Avery says,
    or what my mother doesn’t say,
    or how twisted I feel inside
    because I know for sure
    that on this calm, tranquil pond
    nothing and I mean nothing
    can ever make a ripple in my heart.
    But here’s the bad thing:
    The feeling doesn’t last forever.
    It never lasts forever.
    In fact, it barely lasts ten freaking minutes.
    Before the guilt sets in.

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I Guess That’s Why I Picked the Word
    Hope.
    Because part of me really hopes I can quit.
    So I can stop feeling guilty all the time.
    Like when I’m washing laundry in secret.
    Or wasting my allowance on sterile gauze.
    Or lying to my little brother, Sean, about
    why I can’t go swimming with him.
    Those are the times I fumble around
    looking for hope .
    I hope Rennie will still like