How to Save a Life(4)

“Yeah, I’m the editor,” Marnie said. “Your point?”

“I’d like to contribute,” I said. “I write poetry.”

Adam Lopez sniffed. “Honey, we’re a serious mag.”

“I don’t write fluffy shit.” I turned to Marnie. “If you want a sample first, I’m happy to provide.”

Adam looked inclined to protest but Marnie’s eyes were on me and the hair I kept over the left side of my face. She tapped her teeth with a black-chipped nail. “New content is never a bad thing.”

“How do we know she’s not just trying to get in to f*ck us up?” Adam said.

I snorted. It was cute they thought anyone cared enough about their ‘zine to crash the party. “Do I look like I’m running undercover for the pep squad? I said I write poetry. Much of it in bad taste.”

Marnie crossed her arms. “That’s cool. But we’re not interested in poems about purple clouds of sadness or how your life is a dark house with no doors.”

“We want art,” Adam said. “Not imitation Nick Cave lyrics.”

This was encouraging. Maybe Mo Vay Goo was up my alley after all. I glanced around at the table. Six other kids in black with jagged haircuts, some with chunks of chalk-coloring, all stared at me. My people. Or they would be once I initiated myself into their circle. Just do it, I thought. Like tearing off a Band-Aid.

I sat up straight and lifted the hair hiding half my face. The cool air hit my cheek, and I felt naked. Exposed. My left eye blinked at the sudden infusion of light. The whole table got a good look for three excruciating seconds, then I dropped the curtain.

Adam whistled low between his teeth. “Jesus. What happened, girl?”

“Car accident,” I said. “I was thirteen. Killed my mother, left me this beauty of a souvenir. I don’t talk about it. I write poems about it.” I looked to Marnie. “No fluffy shit.”

“Yeah.” She nodded, her eyes wide as she took in my cheek where my scar hid. “No fluffy shit.”

I was in. Insta-friends: just add tragedy.





That night I ate my dinner sitting cross-legged in one of the old Laz-Y-Boy chairs stationed in front of the TV. Gerry sat in the other, watching baseball with a bucket of KFC on his lap. He’d offered me some—thereby fulfilling his guardianship duties for the evening—but I wasn’t a fan of the greasy stuff. Only the best BPA-filled ramen and a Diet Coke for me.

“I’ve got a long haul coming up,” Gerry said, never taking his eyes off the tube. “Week and a half. Maybe two.”

“Okay.”

“You’ll be fine?”

“Sure.”

Like I had a choice, anyway.

That night, I stood at the mirror of my own bathroom and tied up my hair from my face. My scar stood out brilliantly under crappy fluorescent lighting. A ragged seam that started just under my left eye and stretched in a perfect, if shaky, line to my jaw. A lightning crack of shiny white.

I’d told the gang at school it was a car accident, and they bought it. And why not? I’d given no reason why they shouldn’t believe me. And ‘car accident’ was much more humane than telling them the truth: that I’d taken a three-inch long screw and carved that narrow trench myself. To stop my uncle’s thrice weekly nocturnal visits.

Jasper had told me not to tell—never to tell—so I showed them instead.

A horrible mistake. It stopped Jasper but it killed my mother. I cut my cheek with a screw, but I may as well have dragged it across my mother’s wrists for her. She took one look at that bloody rent in my cheek, heard why I’d put it there, and lost it. She wasn’t all that mentally strong to begin with. She held on for three days, wailing and crying behind her closed bedroom door, until my Uncle Jasper was hauled off to jail. Then my mom checked out.

I spread cold cream on the scar like I used to do with all kinds of “scar-diminishing” or “blemish-reducing” lotions they hawk on late-night infomercials. Nothing worked and unless I suddenly hit the lottery to afford some plastic surgery, nothing ever would. I had done a thorough job of wrecking my face. And destroying my mother. And ruining my life. All in one shot.

Ugly thoughts and memories. They always rose up when I showed anyone my scar. An aftereffect or PTSD, or something. My hands were shaking by the time I finished washing my face and brushing my teeth.

I lay on my bed and pretended I was floating on a lake somewhere remote, with beautiful, jagged mountains surrounding the water that was as placid as ice. It worked; my blackened and bloody thoughts began to scatter like oil over water, taking me to sleep.

Just before I slipped under, I thought of Evan Salinger.

We were back in Western Civ and he was doing that thing again, where it felt like a beam of warm light had fallen over me. I started to tell him to stop, but he faced me in his chair and looked at me with those sky blue eyes head-on. I felt my breath catch, suddenly wanting to be the object of their clear, warm gaze.

He smiled at me as if I weren’t ugly and carved up and ruined by my predatory uncle.

“Good night, Jo.”

I tried to say goodnight back, but I’d already slipped off to sleep.





The bell rang and my AP English class started clearing out. Ms. Politano called me back. She was a younger teacher, with her hair always in a messy bun and her clothes more bohemian than what I pictured for a teacher in Middle America. She looked like she belonged in a library in Seattle, always with a book under her arm and reading glasses sliding down her nose.