I'm sorry I don't update as much as I'd like. I'm really busy and I had this mega- huge-worth-half-your-grade-project due yesterday that I've been busy working on. But now that that's over I can focus more time on writing.
Chapter Four
CeCe had only left the room seconds before when Eli turned on his side and flung the drawer to his nightstand open. His hand rummaged around until he found what he was looking for. He closed his fist around the small pocket knife he had gotten from his dad when he joined Boy Scouts.
"Remember, buddy, this is for emergency purposes only." Bullfrog's voice echoed through his mind then. But this was an emergency. He needed the courage to go to Clare's funeral. He needed to be able to look at her dead body—to get accustomed to the fact that she was dead.
He quickly pulled his hand out of the drawer, still grasping the knife, and sat up leaning against the headboard of his bed. Eli moved the now open blade against the skin of his wrist. It was like a cloud of serenity had surrounded him, taken over his body, his soul. He knew he could do it. He could go to Clare's funeral. He could face her family.
Suddenly, he felt something warm and wet dripping on his leg. "Oh shit." Eli said and quickly but quietly scurried to the bathroom down the hall. He didn't want this parents to know about his "confidence boosts" when Julia died and he certainly didn't want them knowing now. CeCe would be sad—he had promised not to do it again—and Bullfrog would be stoic, but Eli knew he would be heartbroken on the inside. He hated hurting his parents like this, but he needed to. It wasn't like he was cutting himself for fun.
Funny, Eli thought. He had never actually said the word before, even to himself. It was always "self harm" or some scientific BS his old therapist used. But no one had ever used the word cutting before. That just made it too real. If what he was doing was cutting, it meant he had a legitimate problem. With the other terms, Eli could write it off as something else, some other word to fuel his denial. But he needed to come to terms with it. He was, and probably always would be, a cutter.
He tried to deny it. But there was too much evidence stacked against him: he liked to pain, he needed to slice his wrist open too feel control. And most of all, he couldn't stop. After Julia's death, when Eli began cutting for the first time, there was always that need, poking and prodding at him during the day. Like when you're counting down the days until your birthday. Eli would count down he minutes until he could be home again and open his wrists. He needed to see the blood, to smell the coppery scent, to know that he could get through the next day.
The warm water ran on his wrist, burning a little, but that pain felt good as well. The waster in the sink was tinged a pinkish color but Eli was too overcome with emotions to notice. There was guilt—after all he had promised no more cutting (for that was what he was doing). There was loss—he missed the sweet heaven that was denial. After all ignorance is bliss. But the most prevalent feeling, strange as it may be, was relief. Eli was relieved for two reasons. One, he hadn't been caught by his parents. And two, he now had the courage to go to Clare's funeral, look her family in the eye, to see the love of his life still and lifeless. To watch them lower her into the ground. He had to see her one last time before she was buried six feet under the earth, before her body started to decay…
No. He couldn't be thinking in this sick way. Eli didn't need to convince himself not to go. He owed it to her family, to his parents, to himself.
To Clare.
Would it be weird if I say I feel bad for Eli? It never feels right when I get emotional about my own writing because honestly I don't think it's good enough to get emotional over. But whatever.
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