Girl in Pieces (10 page)

When I told Casper it felt ugly, do you know what she said? She said,
Does IT feel ugly or do YOU feel ugly, Charlie? Because there is a difference, and I want you to think about what that difference might be. It will be integral to your healing.

They really fucking ask a lot of you in this place.

In Group, Casper asks us, who are our friends? Do we have a community? Is there someone we can talk to, who makes us feel safe, on the outside?

She asks,
Who keeps your secrets?

You know, I know who I am. I mean, I don't
know
know, because I'm only seventeen, but I know, like, who I
am
when I'm with people, or when they're looking at me, and putting me into a slot in their mind. If you have one of your class photographs, I bet you can find me. It won't be hard. Who's the girl who's not smiling? Who, even if she's between two other kids, kind of still looks like she's standing alone, because they're standing a little apart from her? Are her clothes kind of…plain? Dirty? Loose? Kind of
nothing.
Do you even remember her name? You can spot the girls who will have it easy. I don't even have to describe them for you. You can spot the girls who will get by on smarts. You can spot the girls who will get by because they're tough, or athletic. And then there's me, that one, that disheveled kid (say it,
poor
) who never gets anything right, and sits alone in the cafeteria, and draws all the time, or gets shoved in the hallway, and called names, because that's her slot, and sometimes she gets mad, and punches, because what else is there? So when Casper says,
Who keeps your secrets?
I think,
Nobody.
Nobody until Ellis. She was my one and only chance and she chose
me.
You don't know what that feels like, probably, because you're used to having friends. You probably have a mom and a dad, or at least one who's not dead, and they don't hit you. Nobody moves away from
you
in the class picture. So you don't know what it feels like to every day, every fucking day, be so lonely that this black hole inside is going to swallow you down, until the one day this person, this really beautiful person? comes to your school and she just seems to not
care
that everyone is staring at her in her black velvet dress, her fishnets, her big black boots, wild purple hair, and red, red mouth. She comes to the door of the cafeteria on the first day and she doesn't even get in line for a tray, she just looks around the whole fucking zoo of second lunch period and suddenly she's walking toward you, that big red mouth smiling, her enormous black backpack swinging down on the table, and she's digging out Pixy Stix and Candy Buttons and sliding them to you,
you
(your pencil frozen in the air over your sketchbook because this could be a joke, some elaborate plan by the jocks, but
no
), and she's saying, “Christ on a crutch, you are the only fucking normal person
in
this hellhole. I'm dying to get high. Wanna come over after school and get high? God, I like your hair. And your T-shirt. Did you get that here or online?
What
are you drawing, that's fucking
angelic.
” That's what she called things she loved: angelic.
This pot is positively angelic. Charlie, this band is angelic.
And it was like the world was coated in gold from that moment on. It sparkled. I mean it was shit, still, but it was better shit, do you understand? And I learned secrets. I learned that underneath her heavy white makeup was a quilt of acne, and she cried about it. She showed me the bags of junk food in her closet and she showed me how she'd throw up after eating too much. She told me her father had had an affair with her aunt and that's why they moved and that her parents were
working on it.
And her name wasn't really Ellis, it was Eleanor, but she decided to try something new when she moved, but oh God, don't say it in front of her mother, because her grandmother's name was Eleanor and she had recently died, and her mother would have a
fit,
an absolute
fit,
and Oh, wow, Charlie, your arms. Did you do that? It's kind of beautiful. It makes me a little scared, but it's kind of beautiful. I met this guy named Mikey yesterday at Hymie's. The record store. You ever been there? Of
course
you have, look at you. He invited us over. You wanna go? He's got, like, these
angelic
blue eyes.

And in her room, with the wild blue walls and so many posters and solar system ceiling, I could tell her anything, and I did.
Charlie, Charlie, you're so beautiful, so fucking angelic.
Her hand in mine. She wore white flannel pajamas with black skulls on them.

And that was that. My secret keeper.

I did have this teacher once, in the fourth grade. She was totally nice, even to the bullies in class. She never yelled. She just let me be, really, she never made me go out to recess if I didn't want to go, or to gym. She'd let me stay in the classroom and draw while she worked on grading or looked out the big square windows. Once, she said, “Charlotte, I know things are so hard right now, but they'll get better. Sometimes it takes a while to find that special friend, but you will. Oh, gosh, I don't think I had a really good-good friend until I was in high school.” She fingered the little gold heart on a chain around her neck.

She was right. I did find my special friend. But nobody told me she was going to fucking kill herself.

Every night, Louisa scribbles away in one of her black-and-white composition books. When she's done, she caps the pen, closes the book, and bends over the side of the bed so that her hair tumbles over like a waterfall and I can see her neck, unscarred and pale, faintly dusted with down. She slides the book underneath the bed, says good night, and pulls the bedspread across her face. Tonight I wait until I hear her breathing flatten into sleep before I creep out of my bed and sink to my knees on the floor.

I peek under the edge of her bedspread. Underneath her bed are dozens and dozens of those composition books, all her secrets piled neatly into black-and-white rows.