Heroine(12)

Dad always insisted I was a force. He knew better than to call me cute, and rather than telling me that I would grow into my looks, he found ways to compliment me that weren’t lies. “You’ve got great teeth,” or, “Some girls would kill for that hair.” And yeah, both of those things were true, but then a never-ending vat of oil opened somewhere deep inside me.

“Don’t pick” became the words he said to me the most, whenever he caught me leaning over the bathroom counter, inspecting yet another eruption. Or when I flipped down the passenger’s seat visor right after practice to get a better idea of what it was that had begun to make its way into my peripheral vision an hour earlier. He’d turn off the bathroom light or flick the visor back up, warning me that acne goes away eventually but scars last forever.

Like I didn’t already know about scars.

We don’t talk about my birth parents. I don’t remember much from before the age of three, but there are some marks on my body that I don’t have stories for, and no memory of who put them there. Someone, at some point, taught me that punishment was how bad things were corrected. Mom told me once that not long after they got me she found me smacking a bloody scrape on my knee, telling it to go away.

I know better now. But it still makes its own kind of sense.

I hate these screws in my leg, the same way I hated those swelling pimples. And even though the rational part of me knows perfectly well that the reasons why I don’t get them anymore are because of some visits to a dermatologist and expensive treatments, there’s a small part that thinks maybe they’re gone because I beat them. Because I pinched and popped and dug and made them hurt so bad they decided not to come back.

So, yeah, I know it’s not helping, but there’s a weird satisfaction in feeling around deep inside my leg, past the bruises left behind from the last exploration, to find the head of each screw and give it a little pinch.

No one tells you that crutches hurt.

Hidden in the bodily alcove of the armpit lies a large bundle of nerves, and they do not appreciate having rubber and wood jammed into them. Leaving Helen W. at my bedside had felt great in the morning, and the simple act of driving had been liberating, the first few hours of school flying by as everyone congratulated me on my return.

People also kept asking if I was okay.

Even on my best days I’m not a talkative person, and by lunch there are no words that can come out of my mouth without me having to clamp down on the shriek that wants to follow them.

Everything hurts, and no, nothing is okay.

My upper back is sore from leaning forward on the crutches, my left knee hurts from all the weight I’m putting on that leg, and my right knee is stiff from having to be bent constantly. My upper arms are a holy mess from having to do more work than has been asked of them in a month of Sundays, and I’m very aware that the muscles that used to be defined can now only be seen if the light is falling just right.

At some point in time, I fell out of shape.

I am never out of shape. I lift with the other sports teams during the off-season, just to keep that from happening. I run with the cross-country team even though I’m not on it.

“Eat your vegetables,” Carolina says, pushing my tray back toward me.

“You eat my vegetables,” I say back. She shrugs and does exactly that, eyeing me over a plastic spoonful of lima beans. Carolina knows better than to ask if I’m okay, so instead she’s doing her best to acknowledge that I’m not, without saying it.

“You lifting tomorrow after school?” I ask Carolina, who carries both our trays in her one good hand, gracefully weaving through the crowd to return them. I follow in her wake, a lumbering beast.

“Leg day, yeah,” she says, pausing to check her phone even though I know it didn’t go off. She’s giving me a chance to catch my breath, and I realize that her little moments of kindness are what’s going to get me through today. That, and if Edith ever texts me back.

“Every day is leg day for now,” she says, lifting the arm that still sports a brace.

“I’ll be there,” I say, and Carolina shoots me a side-eye.

“That smart?”

“It’s not about being smart,” I tell her, as I feel my phone vibrate in my hoodie pocket. “It’s about being better.”





Chapter Nine


need: to be in want of; to lack; to require, as supply or relief Edith lives in a part of town where all the houses look the same: like someone with no imagination was given some boards and a box of nails and they went for it. Everything is squares and right angles, even the yards, perfectly segmented with a hedgerow or a picket fence running down the property line to ensure no one is confused about which blades of grass belong to who. I spot a tan Buick in the driveway, parked under a maple, one of its dangling, naked winter branches almost scraping the hood.

I find myself in the odd situation of not knowing whether to go to the front or the side door of my dealer’s house. Edith saves me by coming out the front door and waving me in, a steaming cup of something in her hand losing its warmth into the gray sky, which has just begun to spit tiny, perfectly formed snowflakes.

I don’t know how to buy drugs, don’t know what I’m supposed to say to her, or if there is bargaining involved. Carolina says that Americans in Puerto Rico are easy game because they don’t haggle, and she remembers her grandma telling stories about the tourists she just relieved of their chavos, parting with her goods as if it were an emotional moment, but actually garnering five or six times their worth.