My head is starting to hurt, and I reach up to pull the rubber band out of my hair, but it gets tangled, and I can’t get it out, I can’t even get a fucking rubber band out of my hair, and suddenly it’s too much, too fucking much.

I remember throwing up all over this hair in the snow after they woke me up under the angel, and Mae trying to hold it back, and I was so disgusting that night.

And I decide, right now: One of us has to go. Me or the hair.

A haircut is easier.

I go to the kitchen and grab the shears. For a while, they were hiding all the knives and such, but it’s been four months since I overdosed, and everyone thinks I’m okay now.

I’m not.

But if you tell people that, they never stop watching you and asking you stupid questions and using that pity-grief voice, so I don’t tell them. I mean, my aunt and uncle took off my bedroom door when I got back from rehab to make sure they could check on me all the time. And there are random drug tests each week, sometimes more than once, here and at school. I don’t know what else the adults in my life could do to me, but I don’t want to find out.

I sit in front of the mirror in my room, and I see my mother’s face. This is the thing no one thinks about. When you look like your dead mother, you stop wanting to see yourself. It hurts to look at you. It hurts everyone to look at you.

Aunt Nora calls me Lila sometimes, by accident. She doesn’t always realize it. One time she did, and her face got so sad. Because just looking at me reminded her of Mom.

I am tired of looking like my dead mother.

I am tired of seeing her when I brush my teeth, when I walk by clean windows.

I grab a chunk of my hair, but just as I’m about to cut, I remember Mom running her fingers through this hair. Braiding it. Helping me dye strips of it in funky Venice Beach colors: blue, pink, green. Putting those pink foam curlers in it when I was little. Bows, rubber bands, scarves. Twisting it idly around her finger when we had our long talks. I haven’t cut it since before the wave. It goes all the way to the middle of my back.

The scissors fall from my hands. I scratch at my arms, the monster inside me that wants more diamonds clawing at me from the inside out.

“I hate you.”

I don’t know who I’m talking to: myself, the monster inside, or Mom, for leaving me.