Girl in Pieces Read Online Free PDF Page A

kind of thin. Ellis would say,
You have to accentuate.
Take my chin in her fingers, press the cool lipstick to my mouth. But it never worked. It never looked right on me. I didn’t see someone with a beautiful mouth. I saw someone who had lipstick on the skin of her face.
    My brain starts to circle, circle, even as I keep drawing Blue. There are things happening that I don’t want to think about, not right now. Words happening, like
sorry
and
attic
and
underpass
and
hurting me.
    Sasha sniffles. Francie clears her throat.
    My pen writes
OUT. GET IT OUT. CUT IT ALL OUT.
I put a big red X over the drawing of Blue’s face, crumple up the paper, shove it under my thigh.
    “Isis.” Casper folds her hands, waits for Isis to read from her paper.
    Isis picks at her nostrils, her face reddening. “Okay,” she says finally. She says, so softly it’s almost a whisper, “Why can’t you ever just fucking learn? This will teach you.” She squeezes her eyes shut.
    Francie says, “Nobody. Blank. Who cares.” Rips her paper in half.
    Sasha’s body is so warm from crying a weird heat shimmers off her and I shift my chair a little away. I can feel Blue’s eyes on me.
    Sasha looks down at her paper and chokes out, “You. Fat. Ass. Fuck.”
    Bird-quick, Blue is up and across the circle, yanking the paper from beneath my thigh. She glares at me from the middle of the circle.
    Casper looks at her evenly. “Blue.” A warning.
    Blue uncrumples the paper, smooths it flat. As she scrutinizes it, a smile spreads across her face, slowly. “Is this me? This is pretty good, Silent Sue. I like that you Xed me out.”
    She shows the paper to the group. “She erased me.” She crumples the paper back up and tosses it in my lap. I let it fall to the floor. On her way back to her seat, she tells Casper, “She said it better than I could. That’s pretty much what goes through my head when I
self-harm.
Erase me.”
    Casper turns to Sasha, but before she can start, Blue interrupts her. “You know, Doctor, it’s very unfair.”
    “What’s unfair?” Casper regards Blue. My face starts to heat up. I look at the clock. Just a few minutes to go before I can get up and leave, get these clubs off.
    “She never has to say anything. We all have to talk, spill our fucking guts out, and she doesn’t have to say shit. Maybe we’re like a little comedy show for her.”
    “Group is voluntary, Blue. If a member doesn’t want to speak, she doesn’t have to. In Char—”
    “Tell everybody what you wrote on your paper, there, Silent Sue,” Blue says. “No? Okay, I will. She wrote,
Out. Out, cut it all out.
Cut what out, Sue? Pony up. It’s time to pay the piper.”
    Fucking Frank wore heavy silver rings, malevolent-looking skulls he was forever buffing across his shirt until they gleamed with perfection. His fingers were stained and singed from lighters and they dug into my neck, lifting me off the attic floor. Evan and Dump made kitten sounds behind him, but they were just boys who needed drugs. It was freezing outside. April had dropped a surprise snow that turned into freezing sleet. That was the worst kind of weather to be outside in: icy water that froze your bare face and turned your fingers to stiff husks of bone.
    I should’ve known when Fucking Frank greeted us at the door that he wouldn’t let me stay for free. I should’ve looked closer at the faces of the girls on the ripped couch as Evan and Dump carried me in. In my stupor, my lungs like cement, my eyes blurry, I thought they were just stoned, their eyes gone hazy. I know, now, that their eyes were dead.
    Just do it,
Fucking Frank said that night, my breath disappearing in the tightness of his fingers.
Do it, like the other girls. Or I’ll do you myself.
    If you were a girl, and you were at Seed House, and you wanted to stay at Seed House, there was a room downstairs with only mattresses. Frank put girls in the room. Men came to the house and paid Frank, and then went into the