Slamming felt good. Felt like a way to wake up. To make noise. To make something out of that awful nothing that was swallowing her whole, that was invading her chest. That nothing that made her numb everywhere.

Imogen finally took off her helmet. She slammed that on the dresser that Jo—Wild Nights’ manager—had put inside the bathroom, next to the sink. She dropped her bag onto the floor. It landed with a satisfying thud.

Imogen needed all these noises, all these sounds. Because aside from the everlasting nothing that was invading her body, there was also a string of thoughts running through her mind. Telling her to give up. Telling her to give in. Telling her nothing was worth it anyway. Imogen needed the noise to break the sound inside her head. She needed the noise to know there was feeling, honestly any sensation outside of herself.

For a moment, Imogen couldn’t look at herself in the bathroom mirror. All she could do was hang on to both sides of the sink, propping herself up with the support of the cool porcelain. And then Imogen looked up, into the mirror. She saw her face, looked into her own eyes, assessing the resolve she saw there. She nodded at herself.

She needed this. Needed a clean break. Needed something new, something different.

She needed to feel cleansed, and there was only one thing she thought would work. And there, in the bathroom of the break room at Wild Nights, was the only place where Imogen could even imagine it would work.

Imogen picked her backpack up off the aged tile floor and leaned it against the yellowing porcelain sink. She dug into the bag and found the hair clippers—the ones she’d taken out of her father’s drawer, the ones that he used to trim his beard—and she stood back up, grabbing a handful of her dark hair in one hand and holding the clippers with no guard on in the other. She turned them on, feeling the weight of them, the buzzing vibration in her hand. They were heavier than she thought they would be. And for the first time, she felt something in her hands that wasn’t cold or numb. She felt cool plastic and a humming motor. She felt her hands shaking into life. As though the clippers could resuscitate her, could give her back what she thought she’d already lost for good.

Then she took a deep breath and began to shave her head.

She took smaller, half-inch-size chunks at first. But then she grew in confidence with every stroke of the clippers, and she began to shave larger clumps of hair. Every clip of hair that came off was a weight. A memory. A wince and then a piece of relief. That relief grew stronger, grew bolder. It took hold of the nothing inside her chest and made a tiny, tiny spark.