“You have to stop doing that,” Lonnie said, looking at me in the mirror. I was lying on the bed, my knees curled to my chest, revealing my underwear. I hadn’t realized that I was also scratching at the mosquito bites all along my legs. I paused for a moment, but only long enough to register how terribly I needed to continue. Lonnie turned, studying me.

“You don’t have any?” I asked.

“I’m too bitter.”

I shook my head at her, unable to stop. Lonnie grinned. “One,” she said, starting the same routine she used with William when he ignored her. “Two. Three.”

I kept scratching, because the bites were not yet at the stage of pain that would cover the itch, but also because I wanted to see what Lonnie would do. She made a dash at me, grabbing the hand closest to her. I relinquished it and continued scratching with the other. She struggled, laughing, to reach the hand she’d missed but I pulled it under my back when she came close so that she had to roll me over in order to reach it. She won, eventually; gripping both my wrists so tightly it hurt and I had to sit up, to follow her body, in order to avoid further pain.

“Look!” I screeched at her. “You don’t understand! You just have to scratch until they burn! There’s no other way!”

We stared at each other for a long moment and then she dropped my wrists, forcefully, so they hit my lap, and went to the bathroom for a bottle of alcohol and cotton balls. As she wiped the stinging stuff over where I’d broken open the skin she said, “If you’re going to hurt yourself you have to at least do it somewhere it doesn’t show.”

Her voice was strange and flat. I didn’t really think about what she was saying. I was too worried I’d actually angered her. I couldn’t afford to lose her affection, even for a moment.

“Okay,” I said, trying to meet her eyes again, but she was just looking at my broken bites.