Destroy Me by Tahereh Mafi Read Free Book Online Page A

bed. She was here and I let her get away.
    I failed.
    I lost her.
    I don’t even realize I’ve tugged her notebook out of my pocket until I’m holding it in front of my face. Staring at it. Studying the faded cover in an attempt to understand where she might’ve acquired such a thing. She must’ve stolen it from somewhere, though I can’t imagine where.
    There are so many things I want to ask her. So many things I wish I could say to her.
    Instead, I open her journal, and read.
     
    Sometimes I close my eyes and paint these walls a different color.
    I imagine I’m wearing warm socks and sitting by a fire. I imagine someone’s given me a book to read, a story to take me away from the torture of my own mind. I want to be someone else somewhere else with something else to fill my mind. I want to run, to feel the wind tug at my hair. I want to pretend that this is just a story within a story. That this cell is just a scene, that these hands don’t belong to me, that this window leads to somewhere beautiful if only I could break it. I pretend this pillow is clean, I pretend this bed is soft. I pretend and pretend and pretend until the world becomes so breathtaking behind my eyelids that I can no longer contain it. But then my eyes fly open and I’m caught around the throat by a pair of hands that won’t stop suffocating suffocating suffocating
    My thoughts, I think, will soon be sound.
    My mind, I hope, will soon be found.
     
    The journal drops out of my hand and onto my chest. I run my only free hand across my face, through my hair. I rub the back of my neck and haul myself up so fast that my head hits the headboard and I’m actually grateful. I take a moment to appreciate the pain.
    And then I pick up the book.
    And turn the page.
     
    I wonder what they’re thinking. My parents. I wonder where they are. I wonder if they’re okay now, if they’re happy now, if they finally got what they wanted . I wonder if my mother will ever have another child. I wonder if someone will ever be kind enough to kill me, and I wonder if hell is better than here. I wonder what my face looks like now. I wonder if I’ll ever breathe fresh air again.
    I wonder about so many things.
    Sometimes I’ll stay awake for days just counting everything I can find. I count the walls, the cracks in the walls, my fingers and toes. I count the springs in the bed, the threads in the blanket, the steps it takes to cross the room and back. I count my teeth and the individual hairs on my head and the number of seconds I can hold my breath.
    But sometimes I get so tired that I forget I’m not allowed to wish for things anymore, and I find myself wishing for the one thing I’ve always wanted. The only thing I’ve always dreamt about.
    I wish all the time for a friend.
    I dream about it. I imagine what it would be like. To smile and be smiled upon. To have a person to confide in; someone who wouldn’t throw things at me or stick my hands in the fire or beat me for being born. Someone who would hear that I’d been thrown away and would try to find me, who would never be afraid of me.
    Someone who’d know I’d never try to hurt them.
    I fold myself into a corner of this room and bury my head in my knees and rock back and forth and back and forth and back and forth and I wish and I wish and I wish and I dream of impossible things until I’ve cried myself to sleep.
    I wonder what it would be like to have a friend.
    And then I wonder who else is locked in this asylum. I wonder where the other screams are coming from.
    I wonder if they’re coming from me.
     
    I’m trying to focus, telling myself these are just empty words, but I’m lying. Because somehow, just reading these words is too much; and the thought of her in pain is causing me an unbearable amount of agony.
    To know that she experienced this.
    She was thrown into this by her own parents, cast off and abused her entire life. Empathy is not an emotion I’ve ever known, but now it’s