Girl in Pieces

I think of Jen S. later, after the hall is quiet, after she’s been taken back to her room to pack, to wait. She’d been screwing Doc Dooley this whole time. Where did they go? Did they use the Care room, did they spread the crinkly paper on the floor? Did they do it on the table or always in the stairwell? Was it cold? What did they talk about? They’re both so tall and good-looking, clean-faced and sexy. I picture them pushing at each other and the insides of my thighs get warm. And then Mikey is in my head, his blond dreads soft and never gross-smelling, smiling at me and Ellis from the old lounger in his room, letting us get wild and play music as loud as we wanted. I was never with Mikey, but I would have tried, I mean, I wanted to, so much, but he loved Ellis. The boys I found smelled like burned glass and anger. Dirt streaked their skin, and tattoos, and acne. They lived in garages or cars. I knew those boys would never stick. They were oily; they would slither away after what we did in a dirty back room at a show or in the bathroom of someone’s basement at a party.

Ellis had a boy. He had wolf teeth and a long black coat and he fucked her in her parents’ basement on the spongy pink carpet while I listened from across the room, cocooned in a sleeping bag. He left her things: silver bracelets, filmy stockings, Russian nesting dolls filled with round blue pills. When he didn’t call, she cried until her throat was raw. When she mentioned his name, Mikey would look away, and you could see his jaw get tight, his face darken.

Thinking about bodies fitting together makes me sad and hungry for something. I roll over and press my face into the pillow, try to make my mind go blank, ignore the itching of my scars. Louisa sighs restlessly in her sleep.

I don’t want to believe she’s right.