Trying To Endure

Chapter Twenty-Nine

SONG: M83 - Midnight City

WARNING: Mentions of suicidal thoughts.

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April Levesque

The instant pulsations rocked my head and aroused dreary ripples of the banging-shut door. "How do you know?"

Naila unzips her bag, withdrawing the purple scissors. "I found this in a hallway where the fight happened." She lowers the scissors. "And Jasmine saw your scars when you punched Aashvi. Your sleeve—" She sadly eyes the long green sleeves, lengthened to the beginning of my fingers. "—was pulled down."

I hold out a hand. The scissors must have dropped.

She secures the purple scissors. "No."

"Naila—"

"Tell me what we can do," she begs desperately. "We want to help you."

"There's nothing you can do."

"There has to be. Please, April ... Let us help you. We genuinely do care about you."

"You don't know me at all!"

Hurt glints in her warm irises.

I swallow repellent qualms, a drumming pang to my ribs.

"I have known you long enough," she says, "to know you don't deserve this. I don't care if we didn't hang out that much in the past." She closes in on me. "I'm your friend. We're your friends. And we care, April." 

She glances down at the wrists pinned to my sides. "You don't have to tell me everything. I'm not going to force you. That's what we did with Derek: we kept asking. He hated it. He wanted to open up at the right time. From that experience, I know you want to speak up when you're ready. So, if you want, tell me when you are. And it doesn't have to be me. It can be anyone: your parents, brother, the boys, the girls. Heck, anyone—"

"I don't know why I do it." I can't be quiet anymore. Is this moment the answer to my prayers? "The first time I cut my skin as if it was paper was ... Do you remember Thiago?"

Naila nods.

"Remember when he gossiped about who's prettier all those months ago?"

"Yes. He made a list of all the girls he found 'ugly'."

"I was on it. It ruined me. I started cutting myself because I genuinely believed it. Mike found out and talked me out of it. I stopped for a couple of weeks. Then he died and ... I started again."

Naila sits us down on the bed, the blue sheet soft beneath, beckoning me to continue.

"And since his death—" I inhale a deep breath, fingers fidgeting the sleeve endings, "—I feel nothing but pain and emptiness. I do get happy but ... it feels foreign? I don't think I deserve it, and I don't know why. When I do feel happy, I expect it to tumble."

"The calm before the storm," she suggests.

"The calm before the storm," I agree. "The—the pain is too much to hold inside, so I just let it out on my body. I'm so used to it, I can't stop."

I subconsciously do it as if I've been programmed to — and that, presumably, is the only logical explanation I could give, whether it makes sense or not. Strangely, it has been helping me to forget about the rape.

Naila amicably flicks away a tear. "Do you ... Have you ever attempted suicide?"

"I thought about it," I admitted. "I never had the guts to but ... I don't mind."