4 Chapter 4

Beneath my hand, his bare arm was cold. His fingers had turned white where they gripped his elbows, as if he held on tighter than was necessary. With a sniffle, he raised his face toward mine and I saw the light from the stove shine in his dark eyes. “I can’t,” he sighed. “I just can’t.”

I didn’t ask for clarification. There on the coffee table behind me sat an open box of razor blades; I could see from the glimmer of metal inside the box that most of them were gone. Sure enough, a thin blade gleamed farther along the table, its sharp edge flecked with dark blood.

My heart jumped in my chest. Suddenly I was all over him, prying his hands from his elbows, unfurling his arms, stretching out his legs to search for where he might be bleeding. All I found were superficial cuts on his thumb and forefinger, already healing. As I scrutinized them, he explained, “I picked it up out of the box the wrong way. I didn’t mean…”