34 Pieces of You Read Online Free PDF Page A

deep breath. “I just want to know if you miss her.”
    Tommy grabs me, pulls me close enough to hear his heart, so fragile beneath his skin. He kisses me, gently caresses my back, and says, “I miss her so much, you know.” Then he says it again: “You know that.” And I do know. And I feel bad for making him tell me, for putting this between us. And in my guilt, I wrap myself around him. I kiss him clean. I pray for his hands to transcend my disappearing skin to free what hides inside.
     
    * * *
     
    An hour later, we are on my bed—all tangled feet, messed-up sheets, and my head cradled on his chest. His hands trace the faint scars across my stomach—scars from a few years ago.
    The first time I caught Ellie cutting herself, she stood inthe supply closet of our middle school’s art room, pressing an X-ACTO knife to the pale flesh of her inner thigh.
    “It’s not a big deal,” she said when she saw my surprise.
    I stepped over the boxes of supplies and watched the blood trickle down her leg. “Why do it at all?”
    We were fourteen, and every month we became a greater danger to ourselves and each other.
    Ellie licked her index finger and used the tip to blend a streak of blood into her skin. “I don’t know. You tell me.” She held out the blade, still slick with her blood. “There’s time,” she said when I glanced anxiously at the door.
    I didn’t want there to be time. But I also didn’t want there to not be time. Ellie had this way of pushing me past what felt logical into some other realm of what felt good because it was so wrong. Like together we’d escape to a place that had nothing to do with being good or in control. A place where we could make mistakes and know that at least they were our own.
    I took the blade, feeling instantly light-headed, the room suddenly blurry around the edges. Slowly, I lifted my shirt, aware of her intense gaze, and found a spot below the lip of my panties.
    “It’ll be like we’re blood sisters,” Ellie said. She watched as I made that first incision, laughing softly when I gasped. My skingave way to a trickle of blood that seeped into my cotton underwear. Slowly the room came back into focus, but my breathing remained erratic. Ellie smiled and said, “Forever sisters.”
    It was the biggest lie she ever told me.
    Tommy burrows his chin into my messy hair, and I bring myself back to the present. “Your house is so quiet,” he says. And it’s true, the house is so quiet when my dad is away and my mom has taken my sisters out for an afternoon movie. That’s what Mom does when Tommy comes over on Sundays. She clears the house, hoping, I bet, that Tommy will perform a magic trick in her absence. That I’ll return to that other version of myself—that version that she didn’t exactly like but that is still better than the one she has now.
    Tommy wraps his arms around me, clears his throat nervously. “There’s something I want to tell you about Ellie.”
    “Okay . . .” I look up at him, take in his anxious expression. I give him some time, but after a few minutes I ask, “Are you going to tell me or what?”
    “Yeah, just give me a sec.”
    “What’s the big deal? Go on.”
    “Um, well.” He sighs. “Remember how you and I got into a fight a few days before . . .” He pauses. “You know, before . . . Ellie died?”
    “Yeah.” We were always going back and forth—never quite sure if we liked or hated each other—but our fight that night was the worst we’d had yet. And I was convinced we were finally done, but then everything happened with Ellie.
    “Well, after that, Ellie texted me and asked if we could hang out. She’d had a really bad fight with her stepdad.”
    “About what?”
    “She didn’t tell you?” He bites his lower lip.
    “No.”
    He sits up, all crossed legs and poofy hair. This is how he frequently looks after our make-out sessions. “It was weird. She didn’t really say anything. I mean, she came over around,