Tessa Ellis waited until she heard the sound of slow rhythmic breathing coming from the adjoining hotel room. Then she waited another couple of minutes just to make sure.
Her grandparents-actually her stepdad’s parents-had at least gotten her a separate room at the hotel. She’d demanded that much. There was no way she was going to sleep in the same room with them. Uh-uh. No way.
“We’ll get a room with two beds,” Martha had offered as she picked up her car keys. “Patrick said it would be best.”
Patrick said? Oh, well if Patrick said it, then it must be true. If Patrick cares so much about what’s best for everyone, why isn’t he here?
“I’m staying home,” Tessa said. “And I don’t care what Patrick says!”
“Please,” Conor said gently. He’d always seemed to get along with her better than Martha did. “It’ll just be for tonight.” He sounded patient but tired.
“I need my privacy!”
And then he surprised her by agreeing. “Yes, yes. Of course you do, Tessa.”
She stopped yelling long enough to see what he would do.
Martha Bowers was staring at her husband. He handed her purse to her. “Of course she does, Martha. She needs her privacy. We’ll get two rooms. Won’t we?” And Martha had given in with a sigh.
The rooms were joined by a door that Conor had said needed to stay open “just a crack; just for safety’s sake. I know you understand.”
No, she didn’t, but what did that matter. “Fine. Whatever,” she said at last.
But it wasn’t necessary; it’s not like she was in any danger or anything. After all, there were two cops parked outside the hotel in an unmarked sedan. That was probably also the work of her stepdad, Patrick Bowers. Mr. FBI… Mr. Serial Killer Hunter… Mr. I’ll Be Gone Again This Weekend But You’ll Be Fine With My Parents… It would be just like him to call in two cops to help protect her but not do a thing to come back home himself.
She’d noticed them right away. Over the last year she’d gotten good at identifying cops. When Conor was leading her to the hotel she banged her fist on the window of the cops’ car. One of them was so startled he spilled his soda all over himself. That was great. She gave them both the finger. That was even better.
Tessa had listened to Martha and Conor talking in whispers for nearly an hour before they finally slipped into sleep. They’d probably been talking about her, but she couldn’t be sure. She couldn’t make out the words.
Now she listened again, straining against the darkness, but all she heard were the soft sounds of sleep coming from the adjoining hotel room.
Tessa sat up and slid the blanket to the side.
Pale streetlight seeped through the curtains, giving her just enough light to see.
From the other room, a light rustling sound. Someone rolling over in the night.
Tessa froze.
Waited.
Silence.
She slipped out of bed and padded over to the dresser, grabbed her purse, and pulled out the small case. Then, gently, softly, she slipped into the bathroom. Over the last ten months she’d become an expert at doing things soundlessly in the night, finding her way in the dark.
Tessa closed the bathroom door. Even if Martha or Conor did wake up and decide to check on her, they wouldn’t bother her in there. But she didn’t want to take any chances. So she locked it. Just in case.
She pulled up the sleeve of her pajamas and stared for a moment at the set of straight scars descending the inside of her right arm.
Last summer she’d thought her grandparents might ask her why she always wore long-sleeve pajamas and even long-sleeve T-shirts, but they hadn’t. They’d pretty much left her alone to dress the way she wanted to. So had Patrick. He was as clueless as they were.
She opened up the case and pulled out the razor blade.
At first, when she’d heard about self-inflicting, or “self-mutilation” as some people called it, she thought it sounded weird. Why would anyone purposely cut herself? What good could that possibly do? Then, one night when she was sleeping over at her best friend Cherise’s house-back when she used to live in New York City, of course-Tessa found out Cherise was into cutting and had been doing it for two months ever since breaking up with Adam Schoeneck, who’d dumped her for that sophomore cheerleader from East Side High. “It’s like, when you have all this pain inside you,” Cherise had told her, “it’s a way to let it out, you know?”
Tessa had no idea, but she’d said, “Yeah, I know.” What kind of pain could Cherise have? She was popular. She had both her parents. She had everything.
“The cut only stings for like a second, and then it’s over.” Cherise was watching herself brush her rich, cinnamon-colored hair in the mirror. “You have to be careful not to go too deep, though, or you’ll start leaving scars. Did you see that new guy at school? Oh! Totally gorgeous. Anyway, want some pizza? I’m starved.” Cherise had a way of making the most exotic things sound ordinary and the most commonplace things sound exciting.
Still, for a long time Tessa hadn’t even thought about cutting herself. Hadn’t even considered it. But then when her mom was first admitted to the hospital, she’d gotten scared and tried to figure out what to do. It all happened so fast. The doctors weren’t saying much, but she could tell it was serious. She never expected Mom to get sick, not like that. Things like that only happened to other people, not to people like her mom. Not to families like hers.
But then she found out that sometimes they did.
When the treatments didn’t help and Mom got weaker and weaker, Tessa had even tried to talk to Patrick-but that didn’t help much. It wasn’t that he was mean or anything, just distracted. Besides, they’d only known each other for like a year before that, and she’d grown up without a dad anyway, so it’d always been kind of hard for them to talk to each other-to really talk. Then when he got so wrapped up taking care of Mom, well, she had to do something on her own.
So the night her mom started chemo, Tessa had taken an X-acto knife and held it against the inside of her right thigh. Cherise told her the best spots to do it so no one would see, so no one could tell.
“Isn’t it kind of weird, hurting yourself like that?” Tessa had asked.
“It’s not like you want to hurt yourself or anything,” Cherise had explained. “It’s more like the opposite. You’re actually trying to find a way to let the pain out. Try it. You’ll see. It hurts more when you don’t do it.”
That first time had been the hardest. Tessa wasn’t even sure she’d be able to go through with it. Even now she could remember how nervous she was touching the cold steel to her skin, trembling a little, wondering if it would really help, if anything could really help-and then at last pressing the blade hard enough to draw blood and how it hurt more than she thought it would and how her leg twitched and she ended up dropping the knife, just barely missing her foot.
But somehow it did help. Yes. Somehow seeing that small streak of blood made the way she felt inside seem less out of control, less desperate, less awkwardly, gnawingly painful. Even if she couldn’t make her mom feel better, even if she couldn’t talk to Patrick, at least she could do something. At least she could do this.
Of course, it got worse after Mom died. That’s when she moved from her leg to her arm. Everything spun out of control then. Really bad for a while. But Tessa knew she was just doing it to cope. She could stop anytime she wanted to. She knew that much.
So now that she was alone again and her grandparents were asleep in the other room and she had that terrible roaring pain rising in her heart, Tessa fingered the blade and looked at the scars riding up her arm.
She saw her reflection, distorted and angular on the side of the razor blade.
Her heart was racing just like it always did.
How else were you supposed to deal with all this loneliness, this brokenness, this pain that you couldn’t put your finger on or hold back or control? You stuff it down, hoping it’ll all go away, but it doesn’t. It just gets bigger and uglier.
Cutting.
Like burrowing out of your own private little prison one slice at a time. But in this case the prison is you.
It was almost like crying or screaming but without all the tears and noise. That was the best way she could describe it, really. What was that phrase Cherise had used? Oh yeah. Crimson tears.
Crying your way out of prison, scar by scar.
When life spun out of control, you had to do something about it. Something. Even if it hurt for a little while. Even if it left scars.
Tessa pressed the razor blade against her skin and pulled.