While he slept, I touched the scars on his back. Nicholas’s scars came from concrete and pavement; they were proof of his prowess. They weren’t really scars to me. Scars were words cut with paper clips and X-Acto knives and razor blades. How could he think I was some innocent when I was the one who’d seen flowers burned into breasts, words cut into thighs? Mr. Champion, he’d fallen off a fifty-foot ramp and split in two, been sewn up, and now he was seamed like a teddy bear. I’d asked him if his fall hurt, thinking of Cassie and Amber. It feels really good. It feels like sex. Yeah, it hurt, he said, it fucking killed, but that’s OK ’cause they put me on the morphine drip.

Restless with lust, I crawled out of his bed and tiptoed over to the window.

I pulled the curtain back.

The lights of the Blue House were still on, and the woman in the black lace dress was there, lolling about on the lawn by herself, as if she was being felt up by some invisible embrace. She looked pretty ridiculous. He’s right, I thought, they’re all skanks over there. Just go to sleep.

And I did sleep. Until around five in the morning, when I was woken up by the desperate, drunken voice of a girl. Her voice was singsong, rough and sweet, so familiar I thought it was a dream.

Luce! the girl sang urgently, like she’d kill herself if he didn’t obey. Let me in, Luce!

I wrapped my arms around my boyfriend, hoping he might wake up and hold me back. In my dreams, I went to a funeral and Justine was no longer singing because she was dead.

In the morning, I was more determined than ever to be a nurse. My face in the mirror was pale white, Kabuki white, no longer flushed and fiery. And get this: he’d stolen me a nurse’s outfit from Goodwell Uniforms. White stockings and white-soled shoes. I’d screamed when he gave it to me, and he’d held me by my hips and twirled me around. I looked pretty, but I didn’t care. Secretly, I hoped the nurse outfit might turn him on.

I read of tourniquets and iodine.

A tourniquet is a wide band of cloth placed around an extremity. It is then tightened until the blood flow is cut off. The amount of pressure necessary typically causes vascular and nerve trauma. Thus a tourniquet should only be used to save a life at the expense of possibly sacrificing a limb.

I knew I’d make such a great nurse. Who else could handle all this gruesome stuff?

While I studied, Nicholas watched skate contest videos.

That’s Christian Hosoi, he said, do you know who he is?

Yeah, I know.

(Fast forward) That’s Steve Caballero. Sara, check out his frontside inverts.