I laid in bed with the covers over me and my eyes wide open. I was cold, I always am. I rolled up my sweater sleeves and took out a teeny tiny razor and quickly slashed my wrist. I half smiled, half cried as I felt the cool metal on my skin and watched the little droplets of red start to form.
****
“Hey, honey!” Mom said cheerfully with a warm smile. She was making an omelet for herself.
“Hey, Mom,” I replied as I climbed down the stairs. I was wearing two thick, multi-colored sweaters and a million bracelets on my wrists to cover up the scars.
“Want some?” Mom asked as she started flipping the omelet. “I can make another one if you like.”
“No thanks, I’ll get breakfast at school.”
****
“Arden! Arden!” my friend Laura called out, I could her light footsteps behind me as I turned to look at her. Laura is my tall, blue-eyed, skinny friend. She’s half a foot taller than I am and has the figure of a model, which in reality isn’t that hard since I’m so fat and short.
“What?”I asked putting on a fake smile on my face almost immediately.
“Want to play volleyball with us?” Laura asked pointing to the park.
I thought about it. School starts in an hour if you include breakfast. Eh, I was going to skip that anyways. “Sure.”
When we got to the park, my group of friends were already there passing a ball back and forth to each other in the circle. I quickly joined but every time I would pass the ball, my sweaters would make it almost impossible to pass the ball where I wanted it to go. After the ball dropped for the fifth time because of me, my friends all said to take the sweaters off. I quickly thought about the cold and my scars. Wait, I have bracelets! So I took off the sweaters and rolled up the sleeves of my long sleeve shirt. After playing for a while, the ball already dropped a few times because of the bracelets.
“Take them off!” Laura exclaimed, clearly annoyed.
“No.”
“Come on! We can’t play volleyball like this!”
“Actually I’m pretty tired right now,” I replied making a big show of wiping the sweat off my forehead and then sitting on the park bench.
“Ok, fine by me.”
I put on my sweaters, packed my things and walked out of the park and to school.
When I got to school, there was still 10 minutes of breakfast left.
“Going to get anything to eat?” Megan asked. One thing about Megan, she’s my best, best friend. She’s an amazing listener and can tell what’s wrong almost immediately, but she doesn’t know anything about my “problems”. Sometimes I wonder why she doesn’t notice!
“Nope, I ate before I came,” I gave her a warm smile; she’s the only person that can do that to me.
Throughout the whole day, all I ate and drink was water and a piece of gum. I feel so successful, hunger pains are the best. I spend my lunch time with Megan and sometimes Laura. Usually we just stay in the library while I drink my water and Megan eats her avocados and cucumbers. No one suspects a thing. Before we go to class, we always, always go to the bathroom. I don’t know why, but it’s always been our routine. But we never go together.
