Two or Three Things I Forgot to Tell You by Joyce Carol Oates Read Free Book Online

neurotic—to cut themselves with something sharp! It had seemed just too weird, like pulling out your hair a single strand at a time—why would anyone want to do such a thing?
    Eating disorders were so common, no one was particularly surprised or judgmental. In Merissa’s circle of friends whom she’d known since middle school, there were several girls, including Chloe, who had a tendency to be anorexic, and others who overate and induced vomiting. (Merissa wondered about Hannah, sometimes. And Nadia Stillinger, who looked so, well— soft .)
    Merissa could go without eating for hours—she never ate breakfast and often felt too restless to sit still to eat a meal, especially when it was just her mother and herself. Merissa’s metabolism burnt up calories in a sort of nervous combustion, and she supposed she was—just slightly—anorexic, or would be, except cutting was so much more thrilling, because it was so much more dangerous, and forbidden.
    It happened several days after she’d fallen down the stairs at school.
    It happened when the swollen bruise on her forehead was faded, and the little cut that had trickled blood down the side of her face had healed.
    It happened when Merissa was feeling so high-strung and tense—like the string of a bow pulled back, and back, and back, the arrow about to fly—and she knew she’d never be able to sleep.
    Preparing for midterm tests. Or maybe it was preparing to get the tests back, next day at school.
    She was in her bathroom, her hair wrapped in a towel. She’d just had a shower, and the room was fragrant with steam.
    And maybe she’d been thinking about Shaun Ryan—or maybe she’d been thinking about her father.
    Her father and her mother. Who seemed to have little in common any longer except her .
    As if a devil had nudged her, Merissa did a strange—unexpected—thing: She drew the inside of her wrist against the sharp edge of the medicine cabinet.
    As if she’d wanted to cut her wrist, and to cut into the little blue artery. But the edge of the cabinet wasn’t sharp enough and made only a red mark in her skin.
    Pulses were beating in Merissa’s head, in her ears—a terrible pressure was building up. In a drawer she rummaged for the little scissors she used to cut her finger- and toenails, and before she could think what she was doing, she drew the sharp points of the scissors along the tender inside of her left arm. At once a thin vein of blood emerged, delicate as a cobweb.
    â€œOh!”—the shock of it, the sensation of relief .
    The cuts were not deep, just scratches. But fascinating to Merissa, how rapidly she could alter her physical state.
    She’d been nervous, and she’d been fretful, and she’d been frustrated, and she’d been bored. But suddenly all that had vanished—now she felt pain .
    The strange sensation called pain . Since Merissa had caused it, and controlled it, and since it was secret, and no one could know—it made her very happy, in that instant.
    I can do this any time I want. And no one can stop me.
    Â 
    Merissa, my God! What have you done to yourself?
    Merissa! How could you?
    Merissa smiled, imagining her parents’ shock.
    â€œBut you’ll never know. No one will ever know.”

10.
    â€œPERFECT ONE”
    â€œMerissa? Can you help us out?”
    Help out —who? Fourth-period science, and Mr. Kessler was smiling at Merissa in his quizzical-teasing way, for evidently he’d asked a question that another student had failed to answer adequately—and so Mr. Kessler was calling on Merissa Carmichael, who could usually be relied on to supply correct answers.
    Merissa’s face pounded with blood. This was embarrassing!
    Guiltily Merissa confessed. She could see that Adrian Kessler was trying not to be disappointed in her.
    â€œI—I didn’t hear the question, Mr. Kessler.”
    (Was this happening more