Bleed by Laurie Faria Stolarz Read Free Book Online

Sadie.
    “Why?” she asks, her eyes and thumbs still glued on the Game Boy. “If she’s not coming, why can’t we just do something?”
    “Go!” I choke out. I can feel my chest get tight, like someone’s tying it up in strings. Can feel my eyes fill up with tears.
    “Just another minute,” Sadie says, probably finishing up a level.
    “NO! NOW!”
    I think I’ve scared Sadie shitless. She pops the Game Boy back into her pocket, wrestles up from the beanbag chair, and walks toward the door without another look in my direction—a firm finger-clamp to the eyelashes; lips, rosebud tight; and cheeks, red like fireballs.
    When she leaves I tear the list of party ideas from my notebook and rip it up into a hundred tiny meaningless pieces. I open up my lunch box and take out a safety pin. I hold it between my teeth so I can take down the straps of my overalls, pull up on my T-shirt.
    And free up my belly.
    I rub my palm across the fuzzy tan skin. With the other hand I’m able to unhook the needle part from its fastener. I stare at the point. Then push it into the left side of my belly. Down, as far as I can bear to make it go. It stings so sharp; I almost have to close my eyes. But I can’t. I want to watch. I want to see everything.
    With gritted teeth and watery eyes, I glide the pin across my stomach, past my belly button, and to the other side. One long clean slit. The blood fills the crack and bubbles up at the seam. I have to pinch the flesh hard to get the blood to trickle down, toward my lap, in quick tiny teardrops.
    I sit there on the floor, squeezing, blotting, and re-squeezing, for as long as my belly will let me. Then I rip Nicole’s name tag up and toss the paper bits to the floor. Since she was never my real friend anyway.

S ATURDAY , A UGUST 12, 9:40 A.M . W EST C OAST TIME , 12:40 P.M . E AST C OAST TIME
    It was the way he talked about her. The way his eyes filled up, like the tears could drown you in just one blink. The way his dimpled chin trembled when he spoke. How his voice was all splintery, slivered into a million pieces—all about her, about how much he loved her and couldn’t accept that this had happened, that he had done it.
    The trial had lasted a little over two weeks. But I watched it a lot longer than that. Thanks to Court TV and my VCR, I watched every night before I went to bed and sometimes until the sky turned blue again. Some nights I just couldn’t say good-bye, couldn’t bring myself to look into those watery eyes or hear that broken voice and shut the power off. That would be like abandoning him in some way—leaving him all alone in that cold, impersonal courtroom, trapped in the TV.
    I’d play and replay the tape, noticing new things each time. Like that his hair was really dark, dark brown, rather than black like all the papers said. And that he had a Madonna-like mole on his bottom lip that moved with his mouth when he talked.
    The tape became fuzzy in parts. Parts where it was his turn to talk about Melanie. When he said how nothing else meant anything, including prison, or death, or whatever else they might do to him, if he couldn’t see her every day, if she couldn’t read him one of her poems.
    I just never knew someone could love that much.
    I look over at the armchair in the corner of my room. My clothes are already laid out. My yellow sundress—the short flowy one I’m wearing in the photo I sent him; the barbell necklace Maria made me when her tongue hole stretched and she upgraded to a size six (not the classiest piece of jewelry, but she said it was for luck and it looks kind of cool); my strappy black sandals with the two-inch heels (so I’ll be tall enough to talk to him and not feel like I’m five). The same heels that have the straps that cut into my skin and make blisters—a necessary sacrifice.
    And my new silky pink bra. I unravel it from the pink-and-white-striped paper the saleslady wrapped it in, and hold it up to my chest. They’re