Love & Monsters

& GRAY

I lunge forward and knock the razor out of her hand. She stares at me, reaches out, and knocks the pills from mine. 

The bell rings. Thank God. Redhead slides her wrist under running water. I pickup the scattered pills and toss them in the trash. She plucks the razor from the floor and tucks it in her backpack. She pulls down her sleeve. 

Red brings a single finger to her smile. Shhh. 

Her grin and gray eyes disappear behind the swinging bathroom door. A drop of her blood sits on the dirty porcelain of the sink. 

What the hell just happened? 

In truth, I admire a specific kind of bravery: the one that comes with invisible scars. The romantic struggle out of suffocating darkness. The kind only achievable when one's life turns to a tragedy. One who fill the emptiness with pain—if only to feel alive. But that? That's not bravery. That's escape. I take out my prescription bottles and shake out a new dose. The pills drag down my throat one by one, dry and resistant. I swallow hard, forcing the chalky capsules into my system. 

They sit heavy in my stomach. 

I slide into the empty desk next to Wren, the pills bubbling. In no more than sixty minutes, I'll be sedated. Living life medicated. 

"You'll never guess who just asked me to prom," Wren says. 

"Who?" 

"Kyle. Freaking. Flannigan." 

"Shut up!" Wren frequently finds trouble on purpose, hoping to spend a detention or two in the same silence with her long-term, monogamous crush: a tall, jet-black haired misfit who sports faded leather jackets and a light touch of eyeliner. He embodies the perfect picture of misunderstood bad boy. (Although to Wren's credit, she's liked him since we were eight and he rocked chubby cheeks and Power Ranger shirts.) 

"Did you scream? Faint? Die? Deets, Wren." We giggle like madmen. 

"I almost peed," Wren whispers. We erupt into cackles.

A mocking voice from the back of the room cuts through our celebration. "The pink light runs! The pink light runs!" Class chatter halts. Heads turn. Eyes flicker between the boy at the back of class and me. The memory of The Incident lurches to the surface. A hundred staring faces in the dark. The ringing absence of sound in my ears, like the aftermath of a bomb. I clutch the desk, white hot. Hearing my own words said out loud brings a cold, thoughtless shudder across my neck. 

Kill him. 

Wren yells at him to shut up.

Snicker, snicker, snicker from the back of the class. Insults like demented, nuts, psycho. 

Kill him. 

Wren stands, but I grab her arm. Don't.Snicker, snicker, snicker. Crack up, deranged, crazy chink bitch. 

SHUT HIM UP. 

I stand. I turn around slowly. (For purely dramatic purposes, of course.) My eyes connect with his, and fear flashes across his face. The interesting side effect of The Incident is how everyone acts around me now. In the hall, their eyes dart away before mine can reach them. They whisper behind hands and hair. They flee and scatter from my path. Nothing scares people more than crazy. I walk up to him. His friends take one step back. Leaning in close, until his eyes have nowhere else to look, until I am his entire peripheral world, I whisper.

"What did you say?" My words caress his face and he cringes. "Crazy chink bitch, was it?" 

He says nothing.