Ka-Lide H2P1

"I’ll call you later." She kisses me again and leaves the kitchen. I don’t get up to see her out the door. I just wait for her to leave the kitchen and sigh. I take a big gulp of my drink and go to my room after Jewel is already gone.

I sit down on the bed, knowing full-well what I’m about to do—something I haven’t done in ages. I open my bedside table drawer and pull out an oh-so-familiar book. I open its worn covers and grab a pen.

I close my eyes and envision an Emo person. Black nail polish… pink nail polish? I’ll take the whole bag and paint each nail a different color. I quickly find another bag of makeup that has apparently never been used. There’s lots of black stuff in there, so I hurry down the hall with the bag and shut my door behind me as I duck into the safety of my room.

First, when digging through the bag, I pull out everything that looks like it could be eyeliner. After yanking out three pencil-looking things, I notice one is pink. I read the side. Lipliner. The other one is blue and the sides are colorful. Costume Eyeliner. I could wear this, I suppose. The last one is black. Eyeliner Pencil. That’s all it says. Perfect. I spread some on my eyelids, as close to my eyelashes as I possibly can. Doesn’t look bad. Luckily, the pencil has a tiny sponge eraser on the opposite end, and I can erase a little where I squiggled. I put on mascara, the one from Krista. I look… not like myself. I wonder how far I could take this. I paint all my nails yellow. Even though I planned on doing them multi-colored, my last-minute instincts told me yellow would be perfect. It is Jewel’s favorite color, after all.

I look in the mirror, once I figure my nails must be dry. I like it, and I think I’m going to take this all the way—I’m getting a haircut. That ought to make Mom happy [until she sees it]. I stop by the store where I buy all my CDs, when I actually have money to buy CDs with, and ask some of the people there, the ones with haircuts like I need, where they got it done. "I don’t remember what the place is called. Something about electric, but the sentence under it on the building is ‘Hardcore haircuts at lowcore prices’." Wow. That’s corny.

"Alright. Thanks." I wave to the guy who was kind enough to share, and I know what he’s talking about. There’s a place near the Smiley Nails place (where Jewel made me wait on her one day) where a gigantic electric guitar and a huge pair of scissors sit on top, crossed like an "X".

I get to the place, called Electric Hair and Music, and walk inside. Some My Chemical Romance song is playing. I think it’s "Famous Last Words". Everyone has really awesome hair, and the place is really wonderful. There’s a shelf with plastic boxes—like the kind people keep autographed baseballs in—lining the shelf. I’m too curious not to ask, because I can’t tell that there is something in each of the boxes at first. "Why are there so many plastic cases against this wall?"

The man who answers my question is wearing a British flag tank top, and I know immediately that he’s gay. To beat it all, his teeth are hideous and he has a British accent. I’m not one to stereotype people. Just look at me, but this guy is a modern British stereotype. "It’s loik this, roight. The most wondah-fuw Brit-ish musishans of oill toim ‘ave gotten their haircut roight ‘ere. This one roight ‘ere," he says pointing to a set of four boxes, "is the Beat-els ‘air. They came near ‘ere to a close boiy town to puh-form once and rumor is they got they hair cut ‘ere. They’s a signed sheet of pa-pah in every boix. No one loiks to believe that, but Oi know the troof.

"Some honowawy Brit-ish citizens: Moi Chemical Romance. This is their hair." He points to another set of four boxes. I can see which box is supposed to hold each band members’ hair, but I have a little trouble distinguishing between Frank’s and Gerard’s. "This roight ‘ere belongs to the mah-velus Sex Pistows. As you could teww, that moiti-cuwered ‘air belonged to Johnny Rotten ‘imsewf." I laugh just at the thought of Johnny Rotten himself.

I sit down in a chair nervously. I’m not doing this for Jewel. I’m doing this for myself. Those are the two sentences I keep rewinding and replaying in my head. I’m doing this to rebel against what my mother would want. That’s a new one. I breathe slowly and try to envision the new me.

"Have you ever had your hair cut here before?" the girl with the dreadlocks and a big pair of scissors asks, only out of curiosity as she snaps a protective cloth on me from the back of my neck.

"No," I tell her. "I just wanted to try something new."

"Let me guess, you want an Emo cut."

"Yeah," I say, trying to maintain a smile.

"Oh, my God! What have you done?"

"I got my haircut. That’s what you wanted, right Mom?"

"You look like a freakin’ fag!"

"I like it. Dad would’ve liked it."

"Your dad was an idiot. He liked anything that had to do with you, at least he pretended to, so you’d like him."
I walk out of the living room and into my room. It’s weird not being paid back for something like a haircut. That’s the whole reason I let my hair get so long for a while because I don’t like spending my own money on anything. That’s how it has been since Dad’s been gone, though.

Before, when I wanted something, I could just ask Dad, and he would just say yes. If I was out with friends (which didn’t happen often) or even alone and wanted something like food or a new shirt, I could just buy it, tell Dad, and he’d say, "Here. Shouldn’t have to spend your own money on clothes or food. That’s my job!" And we’d both laugh because we both knew I didn’t need the stuff I bought.

That was one thing I never understood about my mother and drugs. When my brother first told my mom that he liked a boy in his class, she got really depressed. I found out later that my parents were recreational marijuana users anyway, but Mother tried crack once a little after Daniel first tried to tell her about his feelings for boys. The drugs got harder as the parties did the same, and my dad knew it was getting out of control. This knowledge all came to me at 12 when I found her diary. That inspired me to start keeping my own, because God knows I needed someone to talk to.

Once I heard Daddy say, "Becca, you know good and well you’re just doing this because you are depressed. Neither of us knows why Daniel’s acting so damn funny, but it’s probably just a phase. Pot’s one thing, but you’re going crazy. I don’t want this to get out of hand. If you don’t quit, I’m gone, and I’m taking the boys!" I remember those exact words to this day, despite how young I was when I heard them.

I sit down on my bed and turn on my laptop. I play some music: Crossfade, no doubt. I pull up an empty document and start clacking away, as though it were my diary. Maybe one day I’ll sell it to Lifetime. I half-laugh because writing my life on my laptop makes me think of an episode I watched of "Sex and the City", which it’s funny in itself that I’ve seen an episode of "Sex and the City".

I delete my diary entry and shut my laptop wiping tears from my face with my shirt, which is already pretty wet. I stand up and pull off my damp shirt to reveal my skinny, white torso. I wipe my nose on my shirt and throw it in the floor. I look down at it and notice it has black stains on it. Must be from my makeup. I apply more eyeliner (because it makes me look how I feel), but my mascara, I leave faded.

I stand in front of my dresser mirror and keep saying the same words to myself out loud over and over. There’s no reason to do it. Jewel… you promised her. Don’t do it. I completely disregard my own advice and pick up a clear glass picture frame, one that used to have mine a Jewel’s picture in it, and throw it across the room. After it shatters, I realize that Mom might barge in, so I peak down the hall. She’s outside, because I can see the front door open, and the screen door is letting in sunlight. She couldn’t have heard it from out there. Besides, my music is pretty loud.

I shut my door, not bothering to lock it. Mom never comes in my room unless hastily provoked. She probably doesn’t even know there’s another half of the house. I grab a shard of the broken picture frame and have a seat on my bed with just my head resting on my headboard. I haven’t cut a lot lately, so there are a few primal spots on my wrist to pick from. I make sure the glass goes into my skin and slide it across my wrist, watching the blood pop up and pour out slowly like an overstuffed gym bag finally being unzipped.

Tears fall down my face and crash onto my chest, only to keep sliding and be absorbed by the top rim of my pants. That’s when I feel a vibration in my pocket and hear the screen door slam. "Shit!" I shout and painfully grab my blanket. I jump up and throw the blanket over the pile of glass at the foot of my closet door and try sticking my hand into my pillowcase (with the glass still in it).

My door opens and Jewel walks in, just missing the pile of glass. She looks even better than when she left my house. "I came to get my—oh my God! Your hair! It looks great. You got that done today? Well, obviously!" She laughs at her own dumb question. "This place is a mess!" She picks up my shirt. "This is wet. You’ve been crying." She drops my shirt back to its place on the floor. Why is your hand in the pillowcase?" I’m bleeding through it. "Oh my God. Pull your hand out." I don’t even have time before she rushes over and pulls it out for me. "What the hell? What are you doing? Oh my God! That looks horrible!" She begins crying.

I can’t speak full sentences, but I try anyway. "I… You don’t… If you could just-"

"If I could what? Understand? I don’t need to understand!" She’s sobbing, and she kisses my cut. There’s blood on her lips, but she keeps talking. "Ben, you can’t do this to yourself. I love you, and I can’t stand to lose you to yourself."

"I’m sorry. I love you too." I start to feel light-headed, so I pull my wrist away and grab a bloodstained rag from my bedside table drawer and apply pressure. There’s blood on my pillowcase, my sheet, droplets I didn’t notice before on the floor and my chest. It almost looks as poetic as my blood on Jewel’s lips.

Jewel leans up and kisses my lips, and I taste my own blood, which makes me cringe. She leans further down and kisses my chest, and this gets rid of most of the rest of the blood from her lips. "I can’t lose you to yourself." Didn’t she just say that? I can’t remember. "Are you going to be okay?"

"Yeah. I’ve bled way worse than this and never been to the hospital."

"Well, you’re going to end up in the morgue one day, and I’m not going to be dating you then. In fact, I won’t be dating you tomorrow." Jewel turns and begins to storm out of my room. She steps on the blanket and slows down as she hears the crunch of glass under her step. She lifts up the blanket and rolls her eyes at the sight of the glass.

Suddenly remembering her cell phone in my pocket, she turns to get it. She reaches her hand, quickly, into my pocket and pulls out her cell phone. The close and sudden contact paralyzes me, and suddenly I wish I had taken her up on her offer last night. "Jewel, wait."

"For what? The end of time?"

"No, I swear." That’s all I can say.

"You swear what?"

"That this was the last time. I can’t stand to lose you to myself, either. I won’t do this anymore. I love you. I love you. I love you." I can’t make myself stop saying it.

Jewel’s crying. "Bullshit." She tries to walk away, and I don’t get up, I just grab her wrist with my bloody hand. She yanks it away and stands, just out of my reach, staring at me for a moment. There’s a thin layer of dried, pink blood just above her lip and fresh, red blood on her wrist in a ring where I’ve just grabbed her. The last time I see her, she’s walking out of my room with "Breathing Slowly" by Crossfade as her soundtrack.

The next day, I write the lyrics on the front of a notebook.

I plan the moment as carefully as if it were a proposal. I know exactly what I’ll say, what I’ll do, even though I’m nervous. I’m hoping this, if nothing else, can help Jewel see. I use my best penmanship to write the note.

"Dear Jewel,

Things didn’t exactly go like we’d planned. Things aren’t working out exactly well either—that is, with my life… Nothing since birth has.

When I was born, my mother was addicted to alcohol. I was put in a foster home with my brother until two years later when my father kicked her out and she went to rehab. When she had completed treatment, my father allowed her to move back in on the condition that there be no alcohol ever brought into our house again. She gladly agreed and obliged.

About two years later, my mother started having affairs. I don’t remember many of the guys she had over while Daddy was at work, but I remember her telling us not to tell Daddy about her "extra men". Once, though, she found this guy at the grocery store, and his name was Brennan. She brought him over, and he brought us stuff every time he’d come. Daniel and I loved him. Daniel was about seven, while I was four. Eventually, though, for some reason, Danny told Dad about the "extra men", and Mom’s second chance was up. Unfortunately, I believe, Daddy gave Mommy a third chance.

About one year later, Daniel came home from school and told mom (according to her diary) that he "liked a boy from his class". This caught her off-guard, and after explaining, to no avail, that boys like girls and girls like boys, Mom begged Dad into paying for counseling, even though he thought it was "just a phase".

During the first counseling session, Daniel revealed every painstaking detail of the abuse bestowed upon him by Brennan while the entire family, including me, sat and listened. I heard every horrible thing imaginable and saw my one and only idol fall that day. My big brother, the one I wanted to be, cried and squalled like a big baby, and I wanted Brennan to pay, but according to everyone, there was nothing they could do because no one knew where Brennan was, and no one could prove anything one year later.

Mom started to use drugs like crank and cocaine, and watched her son go through crushes on guys, while she could do nothing but watch. My dad, of course, had been pissed at her since the counseling session because she had let a strange man molest his son. Eventually, they did a blood test on Daniel to find that he had HIV in its latest stages.

No nine-year-old boy should have to hear that he’s probably not going to make it to his 10^th birthday. Well, he stuck it to the damn doctors and hung on till the day after his 10^th birthday. Those months of treatments and pain and crying and praying (to no one in particular) put the final wear and tear on Mom and Dad, and they called it quits. I watched (and felt) a divorce and the death of my best friend in the same year. Everything I had ever felt was stationary in my life was gone.

I was eight when the custody battle began, but during the whole thing, I just bounced around from Mom to Dad in two different states once every two weeks and listened to each of my parents castigate the other. When I was at Dad’s once when I was 10, my father asked me if I knew what my mother did for a living. "She’s a secretary!" I said it as though he should have known that.

"No, son. Your mother is a crackwhore! Your mom has sex for drugs!" I didn’t understand exactly what he meant, and I never asked, but that was the moment I knew my mother was bad news. Now, I’m not so sure.

At 12, I was watching an episode of Oprah where she talked to self-mutilators. They all said something about the pain going away or it "made them forget what was troubling them". I had to know more. Well-versed in Internet, I looked up everything I could. I wanted to know more. That was all fine, until the day I decided to try it. That was possibly the worst decision of my life.

I immediately began shaking as I saw what I had done. I was holding a razor blade over my wrist just staring at the blood coming out. I scrambled and grabbed the nearest towel to soak everything up with. It was horrifying, but the next time I was sad, I remembered it and still had the scar, and that was all I could think about—doing it again. I laid a towel on a small card table that was set up in my room at the time and laid out my wrist over it. I cut more carefully, and realized there is no greater feeling than relieving stress.

A few days before my 15^th birthday, I was still a major cutter. Dad finally got custody of me, and I began living full-time with him (after 9 years of arguing and fighting over me had taken place) and his new wife Karyll and her two kids, Krista (17) and Gina (8). Krista was a beautiful girl, and I always had a secret thing for her, but the whole stepsister thing was hard to surpass.

Karyll was a born-soccer mom. All smiles, cheer, and chocolate chip cookies—that was her. Eventually, she found out I wasn’t exactly the soccer (or anything else) type, and left me alone. She’s a smart woman for it. Within five months of my moving in, Dad was diagnosed with terminal cancer when they found a gigantic tumor on his brain. He had been living with unbearable headaches thinking they were just "migraines from putting up with my jackass coworkers", as he always said.

When dad died, custody went straight to Mother, as you know, and when I landed at the airport, I was sure she wouldn’t be waiting on me, because in her letters she had been telling me about her struggles… with crack. I knew she was Too Far Gone to even be responsible for picking her kid up.

Well, while I was at the airport "waiting", I met the most amazing person I’ve come in contact with. She was tall, taller than most girls I get crushes on, with the most beautiful and shiny dark hair I’ve ever seen. When she smiled, the shape of her lips went from pouty to sexy. There was absolutely nothing wrong with this girl… on the outside.

She ended up taking me to her house where she got a call from her boyfriend in which he abruptly dumped her for no good reason. That whole day I had been feeling a chemistry, so when we were together, I tried making charming little jokes, but she didn’t really seem to notice that much. She was too crushed by her ended relationship.

Throughout the course of our friendship, I learned everything that was wrong with this girl, and I still love everything about her.

1. She AWLAYS picks the wrong guy, and she never sees it until much after he breaks her heart.

2. She ALWAYS loves with all she has, even when she picks the wrong guy.

3. When she finds out that he’s not right, she ALWAYS goes completely insane and lies to herself to convince herself otherwise until she can’t stand it.

I’m no exception to the rule, Jewel. You picked wrong. All I’ll do is hurt you. I’m a jerk just like them, and it’s because of my past and who I have been. The reason you don’t want me hurting myself is because you always love the wrong guy with all your heart, and that voice inside your head right now is telling you otherwise, but it’s just as much of a liar as the jerks you’ve been with—even me. Never come back, Jewel. I’m no good for you."

I look down at the letter confused, yet strangely satisfied. I had planned to sit down, tell Jewel about my awful Lifetime Story, and make her feel guilty about leaving me. Where did my plans change? When I started talking about her. I realized that she deserves better than I (or most anyone) could ever give her. I’m not going to stand in her way anymore. I look up at the board and see that my teacher’s talking about quadratic functions. Not the least bit interested, I fold the note and stick it in an envelope and lick the instant adhesive.

I’ll shove it in the slats of her locker just before third block. I smile a crooked smile and shake my new-angled bangs from my eyes. Yes, I’ll do that right before third… and then I’ll go home and get high.