Cut yourself, and bleed.

Bleed. Declan bled out too. I’d joked that he was the Gentle Californian Soul, but nothing about his death was gentle. I didn’t see much, but in my mind, he’s crouched in the corner of the shed, his head reduced to nothing but globs of flesh and shards of bone sprayed out onto the particleboard wall like a child’s excited finger painting. He reduced the shed to something so grotesque and irreparable that the only solution was for his father to burn the damn thing to the ground.

Declan never did anything half-assed. Go big or go home.

Me, however? I was always the wishy-washy one. The I don’t know, what do you want to do? type. I never had an opinion. The scars on my wrists have become chicken scratches, half-hearted cries for help.

Mrs. Wilbur calls everyone out to the gym. The others file out, their voices fading away, leaving me with the sounds of the whirring of the fans above me.

I finally pull open the lock and look at my hands. They’re white and trembling. I spy it on the ground. A flash of silver. Someone left a nail file. I pick it up. I feel like it’s here for a reason.

There is a reason for everything.

And that reason is still haunting me every damn day: Declan.

Using the faint, raised scar on my wrist as a guide, I watch the blood bubble up as I begin to slice.

514 Days Before

Once upon a time, my parents liked each other.

But I sure as hell couldn’t remember it. That’s why I spent most of my time outside, away from the demilitarized zone.

I got another splinter climbing up the pirate-ship playhouse in the giant swing set behind my house. The thing hadn’t been varnished in years. It was the part of summer that dips its foot into September, and when I wasn’t in school, I was milking the last of the warm weather, wearing short-shorts and going barefoot. Mosquito bites and scrapes riddled my body. I didn’t mind. I liked sitting up in the playhouse, feeling the breeze and watching the ducks play in the retention pond below me.

Tucked in the corner of the yard, at least I couldn’t hear the arguing. This time, my dad was getting it because he’d bought the wrong kind of taco meat at the store. Last time, my mom got it because she’d thrown away my dad’s favorite shirt, which was full of holes. It always started with something small, then escalated to all-out war.