When April first starts on heroin, she's not proud of it. She loves the feelings that come with it, gently drifting above everything, complete, happy. She especially loves the feeling of sex with Roger when the precious drug is flowing through her system, but all the same, knowing that she's addicted, knowing that she can't and doesn't really want to stop leaves an emptiness, one that hurts far more than anything else.
This is when she begins to cut herself. The first time is after she's shot up, waiting for Roger to get home from practice. She's sitting in his room, on his bed, belt lying next to her and an empty package of heroin on the floor, staring at the needle that she just slipped into the vein of her left arm, and then the needle's point is pressed against her left thumb, not doing anything, just sitting there. For a moment she isn't sure if she can do it, but then suddenly the needle is under her skin and she's trying to drag it along, finally throwing it against the wall and sitting there, watching the blood welling up, squeezing her thumb so that more of it will come.
Needles soon lose there fascination and are replaced by razors, because they're the sharpest thing that she can find. When she's in the shower, she'll turn her shaving razor just so, so that it presses into her pale skin and leaves a red line that shimmers and stings, filling her with something so that finally she can't feel the shame and pain from being a user and turning the only guy that's she's ever thought was perfect into an addict as well.
It feels good, to hurt like that, because then it draws her attention away from what a failure she's become.
Roger only comments one time. She's in the shower again, drawing the razor lightly along her knee, reveling in the pain that takes her away from her pain, when suddenly he's standing there, shower curtain in one hand, naked from his plans to join her, staring at the razor and the blood.
In an instant, mind racing, she jumps and says, "God, fuck Roger, you scared me. Look at this." As if it's his fault instead of her own that she's naked and bleeding and addicted to heroin, just trying to overpower the pain. But Roger apologizes and makes up for it.
This is why it is so easy. So incredibly easy to kill herself.
One moment April is standing in the clinic, hand over her mouth as she looks at the results of her tests. Positive. She can't get the word out of her mind. How can they tell her "positive" when things are so obviously negative right now? You're positive. No, nothing's positive, in fact. She can't pay rent because she's spending all of her money on her addiction, she can count each rib in her chest, there are track lines all over her arms and scars all over everywhere. Where the hell do they get off even saying the word "positive" in her presence? HIV and positive don't go together.
The next moment she's pushing through the door of the loft and Roger isn't there, where the hell is he to hold her and her face is streaked with tears and eyeliner, and she really doesn't remember the walk home at all. One minute she was in the clinic and the next she was here, standing in the kitchen with low T-cells and poison blood, and Roger not in sight because Collins is visiting and he and Mark and Collins are having a "boys' lunch" at the Life.
She makes it into the bathroom before she realizes that no one will understand, and when they're cleaning up her poisoned blood they might touch it, so she goes out to the couch where Roger's been working on the lyrics to a new song. She knows he's writing it for her, and he's only got a few lines written down, so there's plenty of room on the paper.
Roger, we've got AIDS.
I love you.
She means to write more, but what else can she write? She loved him and because of that she killed him, and there's no way of changing that. She can't undo that terrible wrong with just words. Instead, the pencil drops from her hands that are shaking too hard to grip it, and she's back in the bathroom, filling up their tub with water that's amazingly warm for once. She's really not sure if the water is warm because it's warm, or because she's so cold that she can't tell the difference.
April has cut herself a hundred times before, a thousand times, and this really isn't that different. It's easy—rip the blade away from the plastic entirely, just her wrists this time instead of her arms, just swipe the razor across the blue vein instead of her legs, quickly, so that she can make it to both wrists before her strength ebbs.
As the blood wells out and God, there's so much blood, she can't look away. It hurts, hurts so much, and April can't remember anything but this pain, but she vaguely knows that there's something she's trying to forget, so it's okay.
Very, very far away, the loft door is opening, but it's too late, it's far too late.
Her drug is already taken effect, and it was just so easy.