Page 45 of Make Me Pretty
“Oh, that’s Gabriel Avalos,” another girl responds. I don’t even spare her a glance as I watchGabrielwalk away. He’s tall with dark, curly hair, brown skin, and a pretty fucking mouth.
I curl my lips inward, running my tongue along the dry skin as I watch his biceps flex, arms reaching out to catch the ball launched in his direction.
Ms. B says something to my left, but it’s nothing more than fog as the basketball team takes their positions, and the coach blows the whistle. People move around me, forming their three long lines, pushing me toward the back. I lean against the padded wall, behind the backboard, with my hands shoved in my front pockets.
Someone lurches, shoes squeak, feet hammer down the court. And all the while, I watch Peris’s friend. The way his long legs turn, moving with blinding speed as he chases after the hoop, his curls flopping all the while. His fingers curl over leather, arms lifting. The ball soars through the air and sinks into the net.
It bounces across the floor, right toward me. I bite back a grin as I step forward and reach for it. My skin prickles with the intensity of various gazes. “Hey,” I say softly as I drop the ball into Gabriel’s awaiting hands. His eyes are so dark and so pretty as they flick between mine before he glances back—toward Peris, presumably.
“Uh, hi?” he responds, like it’s a question. My face splits into a grin.
“I’ll see ya.” I wrinkle my nose with a wink before turning back to the practice I’msupposedto be focused on.
Two hours pass in a blur of repeated chants and hand movements. By the time it’s over and everyone starts to disperse, I’m edging on a migraine, and my arms ache.
All I wanted was to wear the skirt at one of Peris’s games.
This is alotof work and only dayone.“Better be fucking worth it,” I grumble as I grab my bag and start the walk home, now in the dark with the early setting sun.
The house is quiet as I step over the threshold. Elise already left for work according to a text sent thirty minutes ago, so I have the house to myself—which isn’t out of the ordinary, but it still feels strange. In a way that’swrong.Like if I’m left to my own devices, I’ll somehow fuck everything up.
The feeling squirms in my veins, thick and sludgy. I hastily make my way to my room, not releasing my breath until the door is closed behind me, lock turned. Dropping my bag to the floor, I rifle through the second drawer in my dresser until I find one of my lighters.
Fitting it into the curve of my palm, I take a change of clothes as I pad softly across the carpet to the bathroom, holding my breath once more until this door is also shut and locked behind me.
I’ve never been able to lock a door before in my life.
The relief I find with such a simple action quells part of the small, broken kid inside of me, but this… swell inside of me is unbearably intrusive. It’s been quiet for a while. Feeling…safehas brought a new kind of stillness to the shadowy fingers grasping for atonement.
But they are still there.Always there.Twined around my veins, looped through my intestines, and burrowed into my spinal cord.
My head falls back between my shoulders, stilting my breath as it’s forced through a tighter tunnel. A sharp pain radiates in my left shoulder, up into my neck. I roll against it, gaze casting from the white ceiling down to the pink lighter still clenched tightly in my palm, now warm.
My breath comes out a little faster in anticipation as I tighten my fist against the glossy, smooth cylinder.
It’s been a long fucking time since I’ve felt the sting. Nearly two months—the longest I’ve ever gone without—and if that’s not unimaginable, I don’t know what is.
How has it been that long, and I—I didn’t even realize. Not until now. Not until?—
I rip my clothes off with haste and plop down on the toilet lid, hissing at the cold against my naked body. It creaks as I shift around, unsticking my skin, eyes unfocused, nerves fried.
I didn’t need it because I was in pain—and now, I’m not.I need it to breathe. To remind myself I’m really alive, that this is all happening.
A focus. A center.
Toes flexing for purchase against the tile floor, my thumb slides over the metal ridges, tracing each groove with my nail before I push down. There’s a sharp hiss, followed by a flicker of static and then a small wave of heat.
I watch the tiny flame flicker around, glowing in bright, blurred colors. I wave my hand around the flame, through it, above it as my mind flashes back to the very first time.
On. Off.
In. Out.
I time my breaths with the flick of the lighter, the sharp ridges on the wheel biting into my swollen thumb. My ears hone in on the fizz of the spark igniting the flame, and my nostrils flare with the scent of flint burning.
I want to close my eyes. They’re heavy with exhaustion—the bone-deep, itchy kind. Going on four days without a wink of sleep. But I know the moment I slip, I’ll sink into the deepest pits of unconsciousness, and this isn’t the type of home I can sleep soundly in.
None of them are, really.
