Closing the bathroom door, I turned the lock. I hated this bathroom. I could still see the blood smeared across the tile, even though Mark had scrubbed and re-scrubbed every surface until his skin was raw. He'd done it for me, he'd done everything for me, and all I could do was close myself off from him.
Best friends didn't do things like that. What kind of a friend did that make me?
I climbed onto the ledge of the bathtub, pushing one of the cheap cardboard rectangles up to reach for a shoebox I'd hidden in the ceiling. As I sat on the toilet seat, I pulled it open. Inside, I kept April's old things. I'd memorized the contents, but still, I often took the box down to look at them. A t-shirt, her journal, ticket stubs. A small bottle of her perfume, and her razor.
Her razor..
Before she met me, she was a good person. She wanted to be an artist, and she had potential. Before she met me, I reminded myself. Before I ruined her. I forced myself to remember that it was me who'd pulled her down into a world made of mirrors. Yeah, mirrors that magnified self-disgust.
There was one scar on my body for every time I'd hurt someone. It had started with April, one scar for each of the times I'd caused her pain. And then I'd realized that I'd hurt others as well, and I decided that their suffering should not go unnoticed. That would be selfish of me.
When I was younger, I'd wanted to die a martyr. It sounded like a very grand way to die, I thought. Now, I knew that I didn't deserve to be remembered as a man who had suffered for anything. No, everyone else had suffered for me.
Stifling a sob, I raked the razor across my arms, getting closer and closer to my wrists.
April had always insisted that we share everything.
Best friends didn't do things like that. What kind of a friend did that make me?
I climbed onto the ledge of the bathtub, pushing one of the cheap cardboard rectangles up to reach for a shoebox I'd hidden in the ceiling. As I sat on the toilet seat, I pulled it open. Inside, I kept April's old things. I'd memorized the contents, but still, I often took the box down to look at them. A t-shirt, her journal, ticket stubs. A small bottle of her perfume, and her razor.
Her razor..
Before she met me, she was a good person. She wanted to be an artist, and she had potential. Before she met me, I reminded myself. Before I ruined her. I forced myself to remember that it was me who'd pulled her down into a world made of mirrors. Yeah, mirrors that magnified self-disgust.
There was one scar on my body for every time I'd hurt someone. It had started with April, one scar for each of the times I'd caused her pain. And then I'd realized that I'd hurt others as well, and I decided that their suffering should not go unnoticed. That would be selfish of me.
When I was younger, I'd wanted to die a martyr. It sounded like a very grand way to die, I thought. Now, I knew that I didn't deserve to be remembered as a man who had suffered for anything. No, everyone else had suffered for me.
Stifling a sob, I raked the razor across my arms, getting closer and closer to my wrists.
April had always insisted that we share everything.
