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any way we can fix this? Stop
    Caleb from pressing charges? You know, if he does, Kayden’s
    going to get suspended from the team. He’ll probably never play
    again. And he’ll probably get suspended from school. Plus, he
    might have to go to jail or pay a huge fucking fine that he can’t
    afford without his father’s help.” He pauses, deliberating with his
    forehead bunched. “I just really want to make sure that
    everything’s okay with him… Sometimes when people hit bottom,
    they give up…” His voice grows softer, like the weight of a fall leaf.
    “Kind of like my sister.”

    The gravity of the situation pushes on my chest as I hop out,
    grabbing the door for support. I remember that Luke had a sister.
    He never said how she died, but after what he just said, I wonder if
    it was suicide.

    Pressing my palm to the nagging ache in the center of my
    heart, I turn around toward the cab. “I’m going to try. I just have to figure out how.” I already know how. The big question is, can I do
    it? Can I finally say it aloud, confront him, threaten him, make it so that he’s so terrified he’ll walk away from it. Can I tell my mother, father, and brother? Can I trust them to believe me and be on my
    side?

    Do I have that much power? Do I have that much courage?

    In the end, I know I’m going to have to answer those
    questions and make a decision that’s frightened me for the last six
    years of my life, but maybe it’s time to face it.

    Maybe it’s time to quit being so scared.

Chapter 3

    #46 Transform yourself
    Kayden

    I’ve been here six days, almost a week, but it seems so much
    longer. It’s just after lunch and I’m in the middle of my daily
    individual therapy session, which is better than group (I don’t
    bother talking in that one). I’m sitting in my room in an
    uncomfortable metal fold-up chair. My side hurts like hell and I
    can’t stop picking at the wounds underneath the bandage on my
    wrist. It’s cloudy outside and thunder and lightning keep snapping
    and booming, lighting up the room with a silver glow.

    “Tell me how you feel,” the therapist says.

    He says it every God damn time.

    And every God damn time I give him the same response.

    “I feel fine,” I reply and flick the rubber band on my wrist
    over and over again until the skin on the inside of my wrist stings.
    This is what they gave me to help my self-mutilation, like a tiny
    sting can replace a lifetime of cuts, stabs, broken bones, the raw
    pain of life.

    My therapist’s name is Dr. Montergrey, but he told me to call
    him Doug because using his professional name makes him feel
    old. But he is old, well into his sixties, with gray thinning hair and lots of wrinkles around his eyes.

    Doug puts his finger to the bridge of his nose and adjusts his
    square-framed glasses as he reads over the notes he has on me. I
    can only imagine what they say: a threat to himself, angry,
    irrational, uncooperative, self-damaging. He jots down some notes
    and then looks up at me. “Look, Kayden, I know sometimes it’s
    hard to talk about how we feel, especially when we have so much
    hate and rage going on inside, but you might find it helpful to talk
    about it.”

    I flick the rubber band again and the snap is covered up by
    the deafening clap of thunder. The room lights up and the rubber
    band breaks, the pieces falling to the floor. I stare at them as I rub my swollen wrist. I still have a bandage on one of them, the one
    that I made the deepest cuts on. The other one is starting to heal
    and soon there will only be scars. More scars. One day I wonder if
    I’ll be one big scar that will own every ounce of my skin.

    Doug reaches into the pocket of his brown tweed jacket and
    retrieves another rubber band, a thicker one that’s dark red. I take
    it, slip it onto my wrist, and begin flicking it again. Doug scribbles some notes down, closes the notebook, and then overlaps his
    hands and places them on top of the notebook.