Beast(61)

But I trust her.

I stare at the buzzing razor. “You know how to use one of those things?”

“Let’s just say the one I got for my thirteenth birthday is legs-only now.”

“Right. Okay.” I fumble with the buttons on my shirt and dump it in the hamper. Reaching behind my back, I grab my undershirt and pull it forward, folding it over the side of the tub. I look up at Jamie. This is the first time she’s seeing the full effect. Everything is thick. Dense. She flinches. I want to hide. “I told you it was bad,” I say.

“No, no. It’s all good. Friends help friends.” The razor comes down and cuts a swath from the back of my neck to my shoulder blade. “See? Going great.”

A disgusting blob of back hair falls on the floor. “Nope.” I reach for my shirt. “This is too gross, no way.”

“Don’t look.” She makes another pass. “It’ll be fine. We’ll get the Shop-Vac later.”

I pretend it’s completely normal to watch clumps trickle down like deformed little black snowflakes. That all kids our age do this when no one is home. It’s not sex, drugs, and rock and roll that teenagers seek in the abandoned dusk of twilight; it’s a guy sitting on the side of a tub while a girl kneels on a toilet and shaves his back.

Halfway through, Jamie sighs and drops her yellow scarf on the sink. “Getting hot in here,” she mutters, and taps the head of the razor clean. In the mirror, I see her wipe her brow and grimace. Determined to finish the job and attacking my shoulders, my arms, my sides, like I’m the biggest hedge in her yard. She dumps her jacket and steps out of her boots. Her hands skim the width of me. Gliding as she works. By the time Jamie’s done, she’s glowing and pink. Hands on hips and satisfied.

“Done,” she says, winded. “Honestly, I didn’t mind the way you looked before, but don’t mind it much now either.”

I stand up. She did a great job. Pivoting in the mirror, I nod my approval. This is way better than when I got waxed for Splish-Splash. Looks natural. Just the right amount of chest hair, arms no longer look like a flattened family of squirrels. On my back I have two distinct scapulas. Pretty cool. “It’s so much colder,” I say.

Jamie blots her forehead with the corner of her scarf. “Yeah, well, I’m a sweaty mess. Enjoy until we need to do it again.”

“You’d do that?”

“Sure. I’ll shave your back, and you can…Hmm. We’ll figure something out.”

I hold my hands out. There’s a freckle on the back of my hand I never knew was there before. The hand is topped by clean fingers and knuckles. They wiggle and I move my arms through space. Up and down, like I’m pushing something high above my head and pressing it low again. Bending my elbows, I twist side to side to check my biceps. Everything is bare. Air hits my skin like molecules of ice. Little goose bumps erupt and I shiver. When I look up, Jamie’s staring intently at me. “What?”

She swallows. “Just happy to be here.”

“I’m jealous.”

“Why?”

“Because you’re happy. I mean it when I say I think you’re a warrior. I don’t think I could just stomp through the world and be like, f*ck it, I’m taking a walk. I stomp because I am big and have nowhere to hide,” I say. “Can I tell you something?”

“Always.”

“There was no football,” I say. “Up on the roof. It was never there. I opened the window and got up on the roof and stepped off.” I look down because as much as I love her face, I hate seeing pity on it. It’s happened before; not in the mood to see it again now. Instead I fiddle with tossing off my one loafer. Easier said than done, and it ends up crammed sideways under the sink.

When I look up, there’s no pity. No sadness. Just Jamie. “I know.”

“You did?”

“It wasn’t written in stone or anything. But I knew,” she says. “You claimed you hate football, hate people thinking you’re a football player, but you were trying to get a football off the roof. Didn’t add up.”

“This doesn’t shock you?”

She comes near me and pulls up her sleeves. Raised thin scars line each arm, like razor-edged spiderwebs. “When I say I know, I know. This is me getting my football.” She tucks her arms back inside her sleeves and folds them around herself.

“You cut up your arms.”

“Well, I mean, it was more like, I don’t quite know what to do; maybe this will help,” she says. Jamie rubs her arms like she’s cold, stopping on one spot and sweeping it with her thumb. “Here’s where I thought about going all the way down, letting it all run loose, but I chickened out.”

“God, Jamie.” I hold my hands out and she rests the back of hers in my palms. My thumbs lightly run across the ragged lines. “I’m so sorry.”

“It’s okay. I didn’t want to be dead; I just didn’t want what life was offering at the time. It was like opening hundreds of tiny release valves with an X-Acto,” she says. “My mom found out. She walked in on me when I was getting dressed one morning. She saw the cuts. Some of them were fresh. It was not a pretty scene. She flipped.”

“Because she loves you.”

“It’s true, she does. My dad too. It was the worst, darkest time in my life, but they got me help immediately. We began talking about our family. What does it look like? Like they were worried it was going to change me forever, somehow. And I said it looks like every picture we ever took, the ones hanging on our walls in all these cheesy, shiny frames from HomeGoods. Me in the middle. Mom, Jamie, and Dad.”