Kiss of Broken Glass (11 page)

Dad—

Counting the floor tiles.

Raising his head.

Forcing a smile that looks like it hurts.

Me—

Closing my eyes.

Forgetting to breathe.

Thinking of what’s in my pocket.

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So don’t be disappointed,

but there isn’t a big blow-out

with screaming and finger pointing

and a gallon of guilty tears.

And there isn’t some kind

of miraculous healing either.

Mom doesn’t admit how she favors

Avery because Avery has the same

ghost-blue eyes as her dead first husband.

Avery doesn’t come clean about all

the nasty things she says to me

behind closed doors.

Dad doesn’t jump into a phone booth

and change from Piglet to Superman.

They just act the same way they always do,

and before long Roger is smiling and shaking hands

and giving them a bunch of papers to sign.

And that’s when I start thinking about the ride home,

squished next to Avery, with her elbow in my ribs.

And I imagine Sean, craning in his seat, asking where

I’ve been until I bury him in an avalanche of white lies.

I wish I had the calming jar,

or a watermelon to throw off the roof,

or a baby beagle to hug.

But I don’t.

The only things I have

are in my pocket.

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I wonder how long it takes to sterilize

a silver stud with hot tap water.

I don’t want to be gross or anything

but I don’t have much time before

Bullhorn checks on me in the bathroom.

Two minutes, I guess.

That’s probably clean enough.

I close the unlockable door

and listen for the magnet to click

before I unzip my pants.

The hip would be easiest to hide.

Unless they make me undress.

Roger never told me what happens

after the family meeting.

What if they make me strip

and mark up another one of those

naked paper dolls and compare it

to the first one?

Like a Before and After.

Then I’d be screwed.

I should probably do it below the bikini

line since they didn’t make me take off

my underwear in the ER.

That would be the perfect spot.

And it can be small, too.

I don’t have to cut that much.

The family meeting was only halfway sucky

and I just need a little calm to last the ride home.

I’m kind of worried about the stud though,

because it’s not very sharp and I hate the

ripping feeling, which is why I quit using

glass and switched to Feather stainless,

but that blade’s still in my cell phone,

so this will have to do.

I pinch the stud between my fingers

and draw a light test line three times,

which is part of my ritual,

don’t ask me why,

and by the time I get to line three,

I feel static electricity racing through my chest

and every beat of my heart growing bigger

and more expectant, like it knows something

amazing is about to happen, and then there’s this

swirl in the air like my body is separating from reality

and just as I’m about to plunge the point in—

BAM!

I hear the freaking Disney Channel playing

in Spanish on the other side of the wall.

And a little boy.

Laughing.

And it’s not like some miracle connect-the-dots

where I think about the pencil stabber, and then

my brother Sean, and then the butterfly on my arm,

and I’m so swept up by the Right-Thing-to-Do

that the silver stud floats out of my fingers,

and all my desire disappears like magic.

That’s not how it works.

It takes every heaving breath in my body

to pull that point away from my skin.

And when I do, it doesn’t feel

like I crushed a monster.

Or dodged a bullet.

Or did something to be proud of.

It feels like a freaking train wreck.

And I have to flush the stud down the toilet

just to make sure I don’t pick it back up again.

But then I hear that laughing,

and I look at my arm

where I wrote

Sean

by the butterfly wing,

in caring big-sister cursive

and suddenly I’m overcome

with a gladness that the butterfly

is still alive on my arm

and not in butterfly heaven,

or wherever it is that dead

permanent marker goes.

And that’s when I admit it.

Just in my head.

To myself.

One inaudible breath.

I need help.

And I wouldn’t say it feels

like a
huge
first step.

Not in the Mount Everest way

that Skylar said it would.

But it definitely feels

like
something.

And just for a second,

a swirl of promise

tickles up inside me.

And I feel calm.

Without the guilt.

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So here’s the thing about being Released.

You get back everything—

your belt,

your shoelaces,

the perfume bottles from your purse.

your wallet,

your cell phone,

the blade behind the battery.

And they give you

brochures,

and pamphlets,

and these useless psych referrals.

And then that’s it.

You open up the door and walk out.

And the world’s still the same sharp

trigger as when you left it.

So that makes you wonder

what’s gonna happen next.

Like was getting Baker Acted

enough of a wake-up call?

Or can a kiss really change you?

Or a butterfly make you strong?

I wonder that myself.

But like I said before, my life’s

not some riveting novel that’s

gonna tie up all neat at the end.

Not in 72 freaking hours.

The only thing I can say is that

when I walk out those doors,

I see Sean’s face shining

like that blue jellyfish,

bright enough to light the dark,

and that butterfly

still alive on my arm,

eager for another day,

and I feel my troubles

unzipped just a little,

and that seed of hope

budding in my pocket.

And it’s not like I get

all happy ending-ish

and ride off into the sunset

or some crap like that.

But I do feel like I have a choice.

Like a fork in the road or whatever.

I just hope 937 Things to Do Instead are enough.

Because to tell you the truth,

I could go either way.

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I knew from the very beginning that the question would come up eventually.

So where did you get the idea for your book?

And I knew when the time came, I’d have two choices. To give some vague, veiled answer. Or to tell the truth. But the truth doesn’t belong to me. It belongs to my daughter. And it is only with her blessing that I share it.

Like Kenna, my daughter found herself surrounded by cutting as early as the sixth grade. She tried it, experimentally at first, but was soon drawn into the strangely addictive allure of the blade. Eventually, she was caught cutting at school and involuntarily committed under Florida’s Baker Act.

I wrote this book in the year that followed.

I think it’s important to note that while this story has roots in a real-life event, it is ultimately a work of fiction. But it’s the kind of fiction that has a responsibility to tell the truth. So I spent hundreds of hours researching the blogs and Tumblr pages of countless teens struggling with self-harm. I sank into their stories, looked at their agonizing photos, and tried to understand. In the end, my characters and the events they experience in
Kiss of Broken Glass
are a fictionalized composite of all these brave and aching voices.

Waiting to be heard.

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If you or someone you care about is struggling with self-harm, you are not alone. There are resources and people who can help, and many different roads to recovery. These are just a few examples. Since I am not a clinical professional, I cannot endorse these specific resources or accept responsibility for any of the services they provide. But it is my hope that this information will help you begin exploring the power of support and treatment and that you will find your own path to healing.

www.selfinjury.com—S.A.F.E. Alternatives is a nationally recognized treatment approach, professional network, and educational resource base, which is committed to helping you and others achieve an end to self-injurious behavior.

1-800-DON’T-CUT—S.A.F.E Alternatives referral line.

www.twloha.com—To Write Love On Her Arms is a nonprofit movement dedicated to presenting hope and finding help for people struggling with depression, addiction, self-injury, and suicide.

www.recoveryourlife.com—Recover Your Life is one of the largest self-harm support communities on the internet, welcoming and supporting people who struggle with self-harm and other issues such as eating disorders, mental health issues, abuse, and more.

www.selfharm.net
—One of the most comprehensive sources of self-injury information on the web, including definitions, explanations of why, etiology and demographics, and an in-depth self-help section.

1-800-SUICIDE—National hotline for people contemplating suicide.

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I am thankful to my daughter, Jacquie, for sharing her story and lending her natural editorial instincts to this project, for making sure the words rang true, and for prying my most beloved and stupid metaphors out of the manuscript before I embarrassed myself.

To my son, Ben, for inspiring my earlier work, for opening up conference doors where I learned how to bring audiences to their feet, and for never letting me off the hook about actually finishing a book one day.

To my husband, Larry, for handling countless loads of laundry and dishes and dinners while I sank into my story, and for listening to my endless manuscript rants about how
I-love-it-I-hate-it-I-love-it-I-hate-it!
Even in the middle of a Michigan game.

To my parents, Jerry and Jacquie Frissell, for raising me to listen, learn, and love. And especially to my mom, for believing in me . . .
always
.

To my sister, Carolyn Schiffner, for a lifetime of closeness, for buckling up on this wild ride, and for creating my rockin’ website.

To my aunt, Madeleine Van Hecke, for being my sounding board even at the deep end.

To my friends Karen Hutto and Mark Snyder, for the precious gift of time.

To my mentors—

Lee Bennett Hopkins, who gave me heart.

Sonya Sones, who gave me courage.

Joyce Sweeney, who gave me brains.

To Charles Egita for his magical salad.

To my Sisters in Verse for their support at Highlights.

And to all my critique group partners who have made me a better writer, especially—

Karen Bachman, Susan Banghart, Nancy J. Cavanaugh, Michele Ivy Davis, Peggy Robbins Janousky, Sue LaNeve, Cristy Carrington Lewis, and Rob Sanders.

And finally—

To my legendary agent, George Nicholson, for his care.

To my brilliant editor Toni Markiet, for her trust.

And to the serendipity of Alex Flinn, for bringing us together.

But most of all—

To the slippery hand of God,

for touching my words.

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HarperTeen is an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.

KISS OF BROKEN GLASS
. Copyright © 2014 by Madeleine Kuderick. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

www.epicreads.com

ISBN 978-0-06-230656-2 (trade bdg.)

EPub Edition March 2014 ISBN 9780062340986

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