“Well, Ana? Do you know the answer?” the teacher asks.

Ana snaps into the world. What was the question? Her mouth feels dry. She stutters something, not sure what. Her face is hot and her head feels like it’s being squeezed; like her eyes are going to pop. They’re all twisted in their seats, staring at her. She looks down, silent. Everyone’s looking at her, expecting an answer. She leans over her book as if she’s looking for the answer. She slowly hunches over more and more, her hair falling forwards to cover her face. If she doesn’t say anything, they’ll go away. The class sits there, silent, frozen, before the lesson springs back to life. The teacher pointedly doesn’t call on Ana again. Ana isn’t sure if it’s contempt or pity and she doesn’t care. Six hours until she can go home. She uncaps her black ballpoint pen and slowly etches one black line on the back of her hand, dark and bold. There. All gone. Six hours and she’s gone too.

And John turns in midstep, in midsentence, because a pretty blonde girl has something inconsequential to say. John’s like her brother, but that’s not the point. She doesn’t care how many blonde girls he talks to, because she understands how boring her conversation can be. She keeps walking to the next class. She sits down and bows her head and makes another thin black line on the back of her hand. Just a little one. She’s used to it. She understands. Four miserable hours to go.

John grabs her hand. “What’s this, Ana?”

He points to the dozens of parallel black lines on her hand. She does this every day, but she’s not surprised he hasn’t noticed yet. She knows how boring and depressing she can be.

“It’s a bar code!” she laughs.

“How much do you ring up for?”

“I’m a pack of bubble gum, ninety-nine cents!”

“Hey babe, you’re cheap!” he teases.

“For you, I’m free,” she purrs, sliding her leg closer to his. He’s like her brother but she doesn’t care because right now she has all his attention. Now he isn’t wishing she’d just go away.

They sit on the bouncing bus in unusual silence. He turns, opens his mouth say something, but she cuts him off.

“It’s alright.”

“What?” He’s confused.

“It’s really nice of you to pretend to be my friend- either that or brilliantly malicious- but either way you don’t have to bother if you don’t want to.”

He gets up and gets off the bus in stony silence. She notes that it isn’t his stop yet. She’s glad she finally said something. He seemed pretty eager to take advantage of it.

She gets home, dumps her stuff on the sofa, and goes back to her bathroom. She pulls out a little roll of bandages from where she hid it yesterday. Just like always, she rolls up the bottom of the left leg of her jeans, just past the knee, exposing a slender, pale calf, crisscrossed with red cuts and pink scabs and white scars. It reminds her of Valentine’s Day.

She looks at the back of her hand. She can feel the shame and nausea and helpless, impotent anger. She picks up the little razor blade. There we go.

One for math class, and one for the blonde girl. One for sitting alone at lunch and one because you couldn’t stop yourself from crying. One for being stupid and one for being ugly and one because you have no friends. One because you’re a burden on your- acquaintances. One because they’re just nice out of pity. One because your parents won’t be home till midnight. Two for all this self-pity and melodrama. One more- a baker’s dozen.

With each thought, she presses the razor into her skin and pulls it sharply. The first taughtness- the token resistance of the skin- and then it slides cleanly through. It goes white for a second, then the blood slowly wells up. There's a dizzy, disembodied second, when she can't believe what she's done, no matter how many times she's done it before. Then the pain comes, a little hot kick. Blood forming little berries on her skin, growing rounder and more lustrous before the droplet bursts and a hot red tear-track works its way down her leg.

She rolls the bandages around her leg, and hides the razor in the back of the drawer.

She limps to the couch and flicks the teevee on. She isn’t listening. Her skins feels like it’s on fire but it feels so good. She looks down at the lines on her hand, but none of it can hurt her. She’s floating, she’s flying, she’s a million miles away and nothing can touch her through the pain.

And she wakes up crying at three in the morning and she doesn’t know why.

She stumbles to the bathroom in the dark, muttering an apology to everyone for being who she is.

She lies on her bed in the dark, blanket discarded, flying away.