How to lie to yourself and thereby to everyone else
How to keep smiling when you're thinking of killing yourself
How to numb a La holic to avoid going within
How to stay stuck in blue by blaming them for enerything
-8 Easy Steps, Alanis Morrisette
Phoenix woke up about an hour later, ringing a customer's cupcake up boredly. She ripped off a receipt for the whiny mother, bid her a good day, and sighed. She glared at her cyborg-like left arm. She remembered how she got it too well.
She was twelve years old. One of Keith's friends, Zack, had asked her to help him work. She followed him to an abandoned house. Soon, she was working in a Meth Lab. She worked there for two months before she realized what she was doing. She was being used. She was useless unless someone needed their quick fix.
She ran to the street and laid down in the middle, waiting for a car. Thank goodness she was petite. An SUV came speeding down the street. She realized that she wanted to live, curling up into a ball. Her left arm was a second too late, and soon her forearm had completely disappeared.
She screamed, standing and running to her Seven Eleven as quickly as her long legs could go. She was losing blood fast. She dizzily waltzed in, walking to Keith. She blacked out when he helped her into the ambulance.
Maybe two hours later, she woke up, surrounded by surgeons. They all looked down at the drowsy patient, mumbling things that she didn't understand. Finally, one doctor bent down to speak to her.
"I'm sorry. We had to give you a prosthetic arm. On the plus side, it is removable. Your guardian is outside, awaiting your safe return. The medication should wear off any minute now."
After about fifteen minutes, she got up and walked out of the room. She glared at the fake, metal and plastic arm that clung to her skin. She took it off, looking at the nub underneath it. She had lost almost all of her forearm, there being just about two and a half inches left. She put the prosthetic back on, glancing over the realistic, flesh-like arm. She could modify the metal skeleton arm to make it move.
Keith hadn't yelled at her or made her feel worse about it. He had looked at it through her eyes for the two hours that she had been under the knife, and if he were used in the same way, he'd have done the same thing. He took her to Dairy Queen to get a dark chocolate Blizzard.
That was a year ago. She had attempted suicide on her birthday. It still stung every once in a while, but being able to admit that she screwed up really bad was a pretty good thing to do. She took out a pink piece of paper with tally marks on it. She added one, adding up to twenty-three tally marks telling her that she was healing. Her angelic smile brightened the room before she heard the store phone ringing.
"What the hell were you two thinking? Do you both have death wishes? Answers, Ellis! I want answers!" Phoenix shouted for the entire hospital to hear clearly.