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YOU SEE, FROM SCHOOL, DON'T READ THIS!!!!!!!!!!!! SIMPLE AS THAT.
Chapter ten.
The soft pages curl around my fingers, twisting at the tight grip I have on the cover. Maybe I shouldn’t be reading this, but my Mum is in Sydney for the week and my dad doesn’t know what I’m reading. Girl In Pieces age rating: 15+. I looked it up. It is not appropriate for an eleven-year-old girl lying in bed. It is not appropriate for a girl like me.
But I understand it. I understand when I mentions blood and Frank and that room in his basement filled with mattresses. I understand when it says cut and blood and glass, and oh, so much glass. I am glass too, shattered glass that’s been glued back together but some pieces of me are still missing and jagged and sharp. And no matter how hard anyone will ever try, they will never be able to find my broken heart and glue that back together, too.
Because I lost my heart a long time ago.
Glass. That’s it. Glass.
The answer has been here all along. Written in the pages of my book, there it is, glass. The main character uses broken shards of glass to cut herself, tear her arms to pieces. So maybe I can too. Maybe I can be like Charlotte. I just need glass.
My Dad is out. Dropping my little sister’s little friend back at her house, gone for the next ten minutes or longer. Not shorter. And my Mum is still in Sydney, probably on some long walking tour. Without me.
I am home alone.
Maybe that was a mistake because now I am running downstairs and bursting into the garage without even flicking the light on. I know where I’m going, reaching straight away for the black tubs piled onto the cupboard. I pull the top one up and feel my feet leave the floor for a moment when I hear the crashing of the radio against the varnished floor.
My mind is deep inside the midnight of the garage, roaming outside my body. I look down at me. What am I doing? My hand is reaching into the other black tub and pulling out a green-tinted empty beer bottle. I grip it as I pull the radio off the floor and balance it precariously between the tubs. Dad will find that later, I think. It’s his problem. It’s his.
I’m a comet flying down the hallway with a glass bottle in my hand, bursting into the kitchen. My eyes fling around wildly, looking for a space to smash the bottle into a million wrecked pieces, just like the world did to me. I’m running back towards the study, down the bright, bright hall lit by the sun flying through the window from a fairytale world. But this world isn’t fairytale, there’s no Prince Charming to save me. No one will climb up the side of my castle, no one will kiss me awake.
Fairytales lie.
The black carpet tickles the bottom of my feet planted on the mat in the study. Both my palms grip the neck of the bottle. I’m posed and about to swing, swing the glass into the desk chair in front of me. And I will see the explosion, a shower diamonds upon the room. There’s a count in numbers glowing white in my head,
3…
2…
1….
Bang! I swung, pulling my hands down and smashing the bottle against the metal. It clinks and sprays the room in snow, clear glass sitting on the floor. There’s a halo of shards around me, big pieces and small beads sparkling like fairy lights on a midnight street. The mat is coating in fragments of glass. I’m smiling and swearing at the same time. Shoot. I just broke something. And now I’m about to break me. If I’m not already broken, that is.
I leap back onto my knees, scraping the big pieces into a pile. But there are still tiny pieces littering the floor, strewn across the old black mat. Five minutes until my dad is back. I have time. I trip over my own feet as I dash to the pantry. My arms extend to pick up the vacuum sitting on the wall, and on my way out I grab a Ziplock bag. To put the other shards of glass. My hands are full when I get back to the study.
I swipe the bigger chips of glass into the bag and slide my fingers along the top. It’s closed but soon I will be open. I grab the half-bottle lying on the floor like a forgotten piece of the puzzle and put it on top of the bag. Glass. My automatic robot hands and pulling the vacuum back and forth across the room. When I’m done, I walk it back to the kitchen. Once it’s sitting back against the wall, I rush up to my room with the bag of shattered glass swinging from my hand.
When broken, glass becomes a metaphor. It is struggle laced with pain and suffering; love destroyed. Glass can be a lot of things. Broken or not, it is still glass. It is still sand that was melted at thousands of degrees, shaped and poured into what is. But glass is delicate. Glass is strong. Glass is me. Shattered into a thousand pieces.
Broken glass is the end of what was once. But broken glass can also be the start of something new. For me. This is a new chapter in my life. A new turn in the road.
I am glass. But I am also strong.
My iPad dings from next to me and I lift it up, to where I’m sitting on my bed. It’s Addy. Wretched Addy.
ADDY: HEY
SCARLETT: Glass.
ADDY: ?
SCARLETT: My dad’s beer bottles. I’ll smash them. It’ll go everywhere. Glass.
ADDY: Hehe??
SCARLETT: They will shatter. A million pieces of green tinted glass will fly everywhere.
ADDY: Yeah ur not mentally ok
SCARLETT: Just like Charlotte.
ADDY: Hahahaha
SCARLETT: Glass.
Like the windows in churches.
ADDY: :/
SCARLETT: Filter the light.
ADDY: :-
SCARLETT: Until it is disoriented and shattered too.
ADDY: :)
SCARLETT: Glass.
And I’m going downstairs. To glass, tinted green.
And I just smashed a glass bottle against the metal of a desk chair. My breathing is heavy and everything seems so real.
Glass. And I pick it up and store it in a Ziplock bag in my drawer. I am running to the pantry to get the vacuum before my dad comes back home.
ADDY: Yep it’s from a book/yourimagination
SCARLETT: My glass. (PICTURE OF SMASHED GLASS)
ADDY: Eeeeeeehhhhhhh get me awayyyy
SCARLETT: Glass. And there is a steady stream of blood trickling down my palm. I have never been more alive.
ADDY: Mhhm this sounds like a book and I’m scared
SCARLETT: And I’m emailing my best friend. And I tell him glass.
Glass.
ADDY: HIM?????
SCARLETT: And my cat is staring at me. She sees the glass.
ADDY: Who is him????????
SCARLETT: My hand is reaching into the bag and I pull out the sharpest piece of glass. Tuck it under my pillow. Save it for later.
ADDY: SHUT UP
SCARLETT: Glass.
ADDY: I DON’T WANNA KNOW
SCARLETT: I am the glass bottle. Smashed. Jagged edges.
Glass.
My dad is back. So I slide the glass into my drawer. Out of sight. But I keep one piece. My glass.
Glass.
Tonight. Here comes the glass.
Glass.
Chapter eleven.
Everyone’s life is just waiting. Waiting in lines at the theme park. Waiting for the school day to end. Waiting, waiting, waiting. Watching time move forward and back, haunting us in front of our eyes. But I’m sick of waiting.
I turn around on the cold tile floor, to face the mirror. Staring into my eyes, I see the hurt. My brown hair cascades around my cheeks in a tangled mess, just like what’s in my head. A tangled mess of thoughts about what I’m about to do, what I have done. Because it’s eleven at night, and I am alone. In the light of the bathroom, door closed, eyes wide open. There is a shard of glass in my hands, and it shines, it reflects. Just like me.
I cut because I hurt. I hurt inside and sometimes, the best way to silence pain is to cause pain. It’s counterintuitive. I can rid myself of hurt by causing pain. Somehow things might work out. But now, I focus on the glass, pulling it along my arm. The skin separates, drops of blood seeping out. It hurts, but it feels right, like I was meant to do this. Maybe.
I can feel the cool shard digging into my arm, press in, drag along, pull out. The soft skin is down damaged, lined with red. Lined with blood, glowing in the light from the ceiling. My arm stings with a throbbing pain that ghosts me, but then comes back stronger to haunt me. I focus on it, breathing in and out in counts of four.
I remember shopping with Paige this morning. Eating lollies and macarons and sushi, feeling sick and pretending. My life is a lie. And then we went to the bookstore. Two book nerds looking for something to read. Or something to ruin their lives. To give us ideas. Just like Girl in Pieces has. But I’m done. I am done with myself. Maybe this will teach me. Maybe I will finally learn.
When my arm is full of scars from the glass, like a page filled with words, I stop. I stop writing my pain on my body, and stare at in. I am staring into what I created, aglow on my skin. Under my skin. I just hurt myself. Self-harm. Maybe it’s because my Mum isn’t here that I’m feeling brave. Maybe because it’s almost the middle of the night, and my city is asleep. I try to calm down, but I can’t. No matter how many breaths I try to regulate, I am still crying. My chest tightens. Non-suicidal self-harm, it’s called. NSSI.
It means I didn’t mean to die. Just then. But I still want to die, I want to die more than I want anything else. But want doesn’t mean you get. I won’t die, yet. Not now. I will keep going. For him. For everyone. And Addy won’t get what she wants. She wants me dead. She says that glass is s**t. And maybe, she’s right. Maybe everyone is right, saying that I shouldn’t be alive. They want me gone. One day, I will be.
I pick up the tissues next to me and run them under the water. It feels cold against my arm, cooling the heat that was burning so rapidly before. It stings as the water drips between the cuts, pain that I deserve. I flick the light switch and are plunged into darkness. My feet leave the cold tile floor and fall onto carpet, through the door that I don’t remember opening. My right hand is still holding the tissues to my cuts as I walk into my room. And the glass. Oh, the glass.
I have good days and bad days. Good days are when I don’t think, where there are no voices in my head telling me that the world would be better without me. Where I don’t cry myself to sleep, where I don’t dream of school. But then there are bad days. Days that might start out fine but become something more. It’s where I have this lingering feeling, like I’m trapped. Everything closes in on me, and the world has turned it’s back. It’s just me, and I am alone.
Today is a bad day.
I lie on the carpet, shivering. Not because it’s cold, but because of what I just did. My arms are tucked under me, my hands holding the glass. The glass that I just used to hurt myself. I remember breaking the bottle today, how the shards knocked against the metal and waited, like hesitated, before exploding around the room. I knew I would do this. Deep down, I knew.
Just end it, Scarlett. End your suffering, you can’t do anything. It’s a miracle you even managed to break that bottle.
Just end it.
I can’t listen to them. I can’t listen to myself. Right now, I need sleep. My hands search the floor for my jewellery box, the same on that my dad made and gave to me back when I was three. I remember getting it, seeing my name written on the front. I remember the joy when I realised that he made it for me. But not anymore. He is the reason I am here; he is the reason that I am doing what I am doing. And now, that jewellery box holds glass. My glass. I crawl into bed, wrapping the covers around me. I am safe from the world.
But I am not safe from me.
Chapter twelve.
I’m feeling daring. It’s the first day back at school for term three, and I’m happy beyond words to see Charlie again. I’m holding another sticky note, folded up neatly. You don’t know how much I missed you. And he doesn’t. He doesn’t know that I lay awake at night, thoughts consumed by him. He doesn’t know that his name was in my head all holidays, like my favourite song stuck on repeat. But maybe he does. Maybe he feels it too, this inexplainable connection between us, transcending time and space.
I rise from my seat and walk around the classroom to his table. My heart beats louder in my ears as I go, like I’m marching to the beat of an invisible drum. I take deep breaths as my shaking hands place the sticky note on his table. I pretend to be putting my pencil inside by tray, but glance backwards at Charlie. His head is bowed and there is the sticky note, curled up inside his hands. I turn towards the window, where the sky stretches in a vivid blue. The class rushes around me with their schoolbags piled carelessly upon their desks. I dodge Ben as I walk back to my table, avoiding Charlie’s eye. Slinging my bag on my back, I look up. To the people around the classroom, the people, all friends. The bell rings, and the class stands up. It’s just another day, another routine, but today feels different.
I walk out of the door, eyes searching the ground. They run over the cracks in the concrete, the names graffitied on the walls. I can feel Charlie’s eyes on my back as I walk down the corridor, burning into my back. The weight of unspoken words lingers, heavy on my mind. Everything I haven’t dared tell him, everything he already senses. The distance between me and the world stretches, widening with every heartbeat.
“Scarlett!”
A voice cut through the din from behind me. I turn around at the end of the hallway, crowds of people swirling around me. Their chatter falls over my body, like cold water splashing on my head. They talk to their friends, grateful to be out of the classroom. They catch up to each other, circling around me. Through the haze of it all, I see a familiar face making his way to me. Through the people, the bags, the noise, the lights, he’s here for me.
Right in front of me, wearing a smile that reaches to his eyes. In his hand, he holds out a lollipop that I take, turning my chin up to look into his eyes with a mix of longing and uncertainty. A smile tugs at my lips, a warm feeling flooding through my body. The world around us fades, like we’re caught in a moment suspended in time. I want to talk, to tell Charlie that when I’m around him I feel safe, like the world can’t touch me.
“See you tomorrow.” He says, soft voice barely audible in the chaos surrounding us. I glance up the set of stairs next me, checking for my sister’s presence. A silent swear of privacy.
“I love you.”
But he’s already gone, slipping through the crowds, leaving my words hanging in the air like a promise. One day I might have the courage to speak, to say those three words that feel so heavy on my chest. They weigh me down, getting more hopeful every day. The lollipop feels heavy in my hand, its bright colours contrasting with the greys coating the world, a bittersweet reminder of what isn’t.
But what could be.
Chapter thirteen.
I remember camp. How they split the grade in two because they couldn’t accommodate two hundred and fifty kids. How Charlie had to go on the other camp to me.
I was done by the third night. Ms Zilky called me sassy because I replied to her, and I lost it. I had packed a compass and put eighty dollars in my ripped scrunchy, just in case I needed to leave, and make my way back to Brisbane. In the end, I didn’t use it, because instead I sat outside the tent in the middle of the night. Gazing at the stars, through salty tears running down my face. The sky was the only witness I had, to the overwhelming sadness that crept up so silently behind me.
I stared up at the full moon, hoping that somewhere, Charlie was doing the same. The world above was a blanket over earth, twinkling with stars that reminded me how small my problems were. Yet, they seemed so big and close up, like the moon through a telescope. The sky listened to me. When I whispered my soul, it was there. And then, I spoke to it, hoping that he was doing the same.
“I love you, Charlie.”
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