Wristcutters: A Love Story

A Fiveshot by Desireé Lemmon

Disclaimer: We've been over this…

A/N: No, this isn't based off the movie. I just loved the title and the idea popped into my head a little while back. This is a slightly different side story, something I'll write when I'm stuck on Poster Child. Hope you enjoy it! It's a little somber… Come on, angst is ah-ddicting! -love- Desireé

Part One, This and That

Of course I didn't meant to be so rash. Honestly, some people are so judgmental, there are days where I could just grab them by the shoulders and shake them. That is, if I had the strength. Lately, though, I was awfully delicate and extremely tired and, perhaps, unhealthily melancholy. Kelsi was the first to notice; Taylor had been too busy brooding after Chad had dumped her for Sharpay. That was quite a shock. The basketball oaf and drama queen, together? Never. But, alas, if reality was predictable I'm sure my mother could have seen my tragedy much sooner and saved me before it was too late.

I'm not exactly certain where I first got the notion that this was remotely safe. In the movies, or on television, you could see the pristine line across the character's wrist, perfected by the make-up artist. As I dragged my finger along the scarring mark that had formed on my arm, I realized that this was nothing close to what was in the movies. That was fictitious. This was clearly an actuality.

On some days, I would dig around the house for something sharp. My mother had gotten into a cooking phase, and it was lasting unusually long, thus making her culinary utensils a no-go. At one point, I found an exacto knife, and its blade was just honed enough to draw blood when I pressed it against my skin. Some idiot found it in my backpack when he was looking for a pencil in math class, and he asked me why it was red. I seized it from him angrily and hissed that he never mention it again. Next to me, Holly Blanche had overheard and, being the L-7 that she was, snitched to the teacher. Mr. Redmond talked to Principal Matsui, who immediately phoned my mother. Boy, was Theresa steamed. By then I had cleaned the blade, so there was no real proof of my 'dangerous activity', unless you counted the faint grooves that were appearing beneath my palm. She demanded I stop the 'foolish games I was playing' or she would 'send me away to a health center'. Silently, I hoped she would. Albuquerque was stale enough to put a girl to sleep.

After that, I realized I had to be much more careful. I wore long sleeves, even when it was hot, and whenever I was forced to show my arms, bracelets became my best friends. Of course, there would have been people who may have thought I was putting too much effort into something as useless to them as cutting, but to me, it was no longer an option. I was falling into the world of addiction.

Kelsi confronted me about it one day, about two months after the first incision had been made. She picked up my arm during the passing period between fourth and fifth period. My hand pointed toward the ceiling, my bracelets fell to my elbow. The skin-colored cloth showed two thin blood red strokes across the underside. She narrowed her eyes. "Don't do this to yourself" was the first thing to come out her mouth.

I ripped my arm out of her grasp. "I'm not doing anything to myself," I snapped, a little more angrily than I had wanted. She looked offended as I added, "And even if I was, it wouldn't be any of your business."

It was only probable that Kelsi, a usual follower of our group, would tell someone else about it, because she was 'concerned for my personal welfare'. That was a load of crap, and we all knew it. I had no problem vocalizing my thoughts on the matter of said crap until Taylor came up to me a few days later, sometime during the lunch hour. I was hovering over a sink in the bathroom with my forearms on either side, watching the water fill the basin, small air bubbles rising up from the plugged drain. "Gabriella," she spoke skeptically, and picked up my arm, just like Kelsi had. This time I didn't resist as she tugged the bracelets away. Her face fell. "Oh, Gabriella."

For someone like Taylor, it was safe to say she would have lectured me on the importance of guidance and the dangers of self-mutilation. Instead, she swallowed me into a hug, and I sank into her body, letting her absorb the ache I had carried for longer than I knew. "Gabriella, Gabriella," she whispered dotingly, "What are we going to do with you?"

It was a rhetorical question, of course. She knew, just as I did, that there was nothing to be done. It seemed Taylor was the only one who could accept this. Kelsi nagged at me for the weeks to come; sometimes Martha and a few other girls stared and whispered in the hallway as I tugged my jacket on a little tighter and walked a little faster. Chad and Zeke and Jason all muttered whenever I was around, as if hoping their low voices would stop me from hearing what they said. They weren't too bright, obviously, because I could hear perfectly well. They were murmuring all sorts of things, from my alleged drug abuse, to attempted suicide, and even my mythical quest for a greater glory in another dimension. Maybe the basketball oaf and his cronies all assumed I was under the impression that hauling a blade across my wrist wound send me to an alternate universe. As if.

One day, Troy came over. I wasn't sure why, but there must have been no surprise on my face when I answered the door because he simply pulled me toward him and kissed me. It wasn't our first kiss—we had been fooling around some time earlier in the year. But then we stopped, and he got around to meeting Francesca, some foreign exchange student. Troy was the Play Boy, and I remained alone, unless the exacto knife counted as a boyfriend. In my book, it didn't, so I was alone.

Our kiss was something special to me. His lips still tasted sweet, like he had just licked the caramel off of a candy apple. When we pulled away, I stared at him. "Why are you here?" I asked brazenly. Albeit I liked the way his mouth felt against mine, I wasn't so confident about exposing my vulnerability to him.

"I wanted to make sure you were still here," he said, with a slight terror in his voice. "God, Gabriella, I had to see you, just so I knew you weren't gone." I still meant something to him.

My hand found his and I closed the door behind us as we walked upstairs. In my room, he sat on the edge of the bed, and I was beside him. He was observing my three square feet of privacy, which had become especially bare in recent times. There were two pictures altogether: one of me and a childhood playmate of whom I was quite fond, and the other of my mother and me. Neither of us seemed happy, which added to the list of ways we looked alike.

More kisses and more fooling around. My blouse had gotten thrown somewhere across the room at one point. I wasn't sure how it had happened, really, but soon I found myself fervently making out with Troy like our lives depended on it. I was unaware of it at the time, but in a way, they did. "Fuck," he whispered to the walls around us when we finally lay back down. I was picking at some lint on the elastic band of his boxers.

"Fuck," I whispered back. "It's a funny word."

"Gabriella?" he asked.

"Yes?" I replied.

"What are you doing?"

I laughed halfheartedly. "Lying here with you."

"No," he said quietly. "I'm talking about what you are doing to yourself."

He knew I knew what he was talking about. Any girl would know what he was talking about. I turned to him and reached up to brush away his bangs. His indigo eyes were sad and frightened, as if he had the premonition that where I lay now, in his arms, would be the last time I would ever be within reach. Maybe he was right.

"I have no idea," I sighed in an almost inaudible whisper. "But I can't help it."

"Gabriella," he began again, but I put a finger to his lips and shushed him.

My free hand combing through his hair, I said in a sultry tone, "I haven't had good sex in a long time. Have you had good sex recently?" He shook his head. "It's a curse. Senioritis, perhaps." I leaned up and our lips met, and the pulse in his fingers that urged him to examine my wrists died away.

…

My mother asked me if I still cut one afternoon following my first encounter with Troy. I was careful not to answer too quickly; that would seem prepared, as if I knew this question would come up, which I did. "No," I responded confidently, "I don't."

I couldn't figure out when I had become such a good liar. A month ago? A year ago? There were plenty of things that I couldn't understand anymore, as if the cutting was like a high. I didn't comprehend, or remember, what rambled through my brain as the first drops of blood shone through my skin. Self-mutilation. Not really.

At school, I found the inevitably to run into Troy was going at an extreme level. I seemed to bump into him in every passing period, and always twice at lunch, for the weeks that trailed along our evening of fooling around. He seemed embarrassed at first, but eventually the awkwardness abated. Any time I smacked into him while not paying attention or he tripped over a shoelace and collided with me, we acted like it was no big deal. To us, though, to two teenagers who were secretly in love but with whom exactly, we weren't sure, it was a big deal.

The second meeting with Troy happened at my house, again. My mother had invited his family over for dinner. There were six of us, if you counted Jack's mother, Sissy. She was a much older lady who Troy did not like, and vice versa, which led both of us to hide in the gazebo in the backyard after the main dinner (which wasn't too great either. My mom's cooking phase wasn't exactly paying off). We stared at the sky for a while, before Troy kissed me again. "I don't want you to go away," he mumbled.

My head on his shoulder, I smiled absentmindedly at the darkness around us. "I'm right here," I reassured him, "Brie's right here."

…

True, there was rehab and therapy and support groups that got people like me through the shit that we were dealt at the card table. I had a particularly crappy deck one afternoon, when I had been so angry (and for some dumb reason) that I slashed at my arm quite violently in the middle of the west wing girls' bathroom. Katie Leonard walked in and seemed to slip on the two small drops of water spilled on the tile floor. I could see the pain develop in her face when she landed right on her tailbone, but that didn't stop her from rushing back out the door again. "Pansy," I shouted after her. No one heard, I think.

Despite all the self-help books and the You-Can-Do-It motivational speaker crap, I found I was especially alone around that time. I hadn't spoken to Troy much, although he called more often than not. It was a sweet gesture, but until then at least, I didn't want to get involved. Now I was desperate for company. My mother, I suppose, deduced that I was honest when I told her I wasn't cutting anymore. "How ridiculous!" I had told the stuffed giraffe on my bed. "A mother should know teenagers lie!"

It was a Sunday when Troy called again, and I stupidly picked up. I just wanted to hear his voice. "You're killing me," he laughed. "Half the time I don't know if you even still live in this town and half the time I think you're dead. Answer the phone, will you?"

"Ah, sometimes I don't feel like talking," I replied nonchalantly. I leaned against the icy refrigerator and a chill ran down my spine. I guessed from temperature of the stainless steel.

"Do you feel like talking today?" he asked.

I knew it wouldn't be over a phone call. "Where?"

"The park, midnight tonight. Meet me." He chuckled slightly at my none-too-quick response. "Don't worry, it isn't an ambush. It'll be just me, so just you, okay?"

I agreed. "Uh huh." There was a pause. "Thanks, Troy."

"For what?" he asked, even if I knew he knew just what it was I liked so much that I would take the moment to thank him.

"You know," I answered. "For anything. I just think it's nice you stuck around." He mumbled something incoherent and I smiled into the receiver, strangely understanding every word. Finally, someone who spoke my language.

A/N: Okay, Gabriella is completely out of character here. I mean completely. I dearly apologize if the prompt (cutting) offends anyone—I just got the idea in my head while writing Poster. Now, REVIEW!!! You guys are love. :) -so totally happy- Desireé