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removes the stitches, but my skin twinges, prickles, as he pulls the tweezers up and out.
    In a rush, it happens again, only this time it’s remembering what it’s like to cut, and cut
hard.
The way you have to dig the glass in, deeply, right away, to break the skin and then drag, and drag fiercely, to make a river worth drowning in.
    Oh, it hurts to make that river. The pain is sharp and bleary all at once; curtains part and shut over your eyes; bull breath from your nostrils.
    It fucking hurts, hurts, hurts. But when the blood comes, everything is warmer, and calmer.
    Vinnie catches my eye. I’m breathing too fast. He knows what’s happening.
    “Done.” He watches me carefully as I sit up. The delicate paper beneath me tears.
    Ladders. The scars on my thighs look like the rungs of ladders. Bump, bump, bump as I run my fingers from my knees to the top of my thighs. Vinnie’s creamy hands are very dark against my paleness. It feels nice. When he’s done with my thighs, he motions for me to pull up my shorts and hands me the blue-and-white tub of cream. “You apply this twice a day. That shit’s gonna itch real bad now that it’s out in the air. Gonna feel tight and kinda prickly.”
    I hug the tub to my chest. I can still feel his hands on my legs, the gentleness of his fingers on the ugliness of me. I kind of want his hands back, maybe curving around me this time. Maybe just being so light on me that my head could kind of fall against him, and I could stay there awhile, breathing him in, no big deal, heartbeat heartbeat heartbeat, like with my dad. Pressure builds behind my eyes.
    I wipe my face, ignoring my trembling hands. Hot. My body is starting to heat up. I feel afraid. Vinnie clears his throat.
    “Everybody’s in Crafts, girl. You want me to walk you there?”
    “Room.” I hug the warm tub to my chest. “Room.”
    Vinnie looks sad. “Okay, baby. Okay.”
    —
    Louisa is not in our room. They’re all at Crafts, bent over gluey Popsicle sticks, bags of buttons and yarn, reams of glittery star stickers.
    My eyes are fierce with water and I bury my head in my pillow so no one hears me. My body is so, so sore from my wounds. I want Ellis, the Ellis who would dab my cuts and steal wine from her dad so we could cry together in her room, sipping from the bottle and listening to our music, watching the solar system night-light rotate and glow on her ceiling. Because when you’re hurt, and someone loves you, they’re supposed to help you, right? When you’re hurt, and someone loves you, they kiss you tenderly, they hold the bottle to your mouth, they stroke your hair with their fingers, right? Casper would be proud of me for my rational thinking.
    I’m in a place filled with girls who are filled with longing and I want none of them. I want the one I can’t have, the one who is never coming back.
    —
    Where do I put them, these dead ones, these live ones, these people who hover about me like ghosts? Ellis once said, “You were too young to lose a dad.”
    A little over a year ago, Mikey cried on the phone to me, “She never cut, that wasn’t her thing. Why did she cut? You were
right there.
” But he was miles and states away at college and didn’t know what had happened between Ellis and me. It was the last time we talked; after that, I was on the street, becoming a ghost myself.
    My mother is alive, but she’s a ghost, too, her sunken eyes watching me from a distance, her body very still.
    There are so many people who are never coming back.

When I’m done, when my body gets that worn, washed-out feeling from crying too much, I get up and stumble back down the too-bright hall to the nurses’ station. Vinnie was right, my scars itch horribly.
    The outside of me is on fire and the inside of me is empty, empty. I can’t cut, but I need something taken away from me, I need relief.
    Vinnie gives me the gold smile from behind the nurses’ station. All of the nurses have photographs pinned to the