Damage - A. M. Jenkins [38]
You turn off the engine. Get out of the truck. Shut the driver’s side door and lean back against it. Take on deep breath. And another.
And another.
Your arms are folded; you unfold them and they fall immediately to your sides. The keys drop with a jangle into the gravel. Wind plays in the treetops along the fence. You just stand there letting the truck hold you up.
Far across the yard at the Hightowers’ house, a screen door screeches, then slams. Like some sick animal crawling out of sight, you start moving blindly toward your home.
You’ve dropped your keys somewhere, don’t where. Becky’s rubber boots aren’t in their place on t porch; she must be out in the barn feeding her calve That means the back door is unlocked, so you walk head through the kitchen. Go down the hall, past the doorway of your room, which is still and silent, and dark like a cave. Your arms are dangling at your sides, your heart is beating in uneven little scratches at the inside your chest.
You thought everything was okay. You thought you were okay.
Wrong—it took only one slight shift to break you into pieces.
Your feet carry you into the bathroom. When they stop, you are stranded in front of the sink. You don’t bother to look at the reflection. You know what he looks like, eyes flat and muddy. Everything twisted.
“Oh, God,” you hear the guy in the mirror whisper. He sounds like he’s being squeezed.
You wait for the squeezed feeling to pass. It holds firm, coiled around you like a python. You’d like to slide down to the floor, lay your head down on the white tile and just quit feeling, totally. You don’t ever want to feel anything again.
So you lock the bathroom door. Watch your own hand open the medicine cabinet. And take out the box holding your dad’s razor.
The house is quiet. In the refrigerator, the ice maker kicks on with a lurch. You can even hear the faint trickle of water along the copper tubing—it scrapes you as you’re one long raw nerve.
You open the wooden box. The golden razor lies in state on red velvet. It is telling you to wind down, come an end.
If you pick up the razor, all you have to do is twist the end to open up the head. And then you can extract the blade.
Somewhere far off, a phone rings. It rasps away into the silence while you notice how translucent the skin over your wrist is, and how, close up, it’s infinitesimally wrinkled, like you’re a ninety-year-old man. The veins are buried blue but not so deep.
It wouldn’t surprise you if you didn’t bleed at all, you were dry inside. If you didn’t feel a thing.
“Austy!” Becky bellows.
The phone has stopped ringing. You’re floating somewhere between intention and reality.
Socked feet pad down the hall. “Phone,” Becky calls from outside the door. When you don’t answer, she bangs on it. “Austy? Hey. You in there?”
The doorknob turns tentatively—but hits the invisible barrier of the lock, and stops.
“I know it’s you.” A rustling sound. “I see your feet under the door, you faker. I’m not going to fall for that stupid burglar routine again.” A light tap on the door. “C’mon, I know you’re in there.”
The words fall into silence. You can feel this dark thing still bubbled up inside you, trying to burst loose.
“Austin?”
You blink. Becky always makes a point of calling Austy, because it annoys you. Curtis is the only allowed to call you Austy.
“If you scare me, I’m going to call Mom.” Her voice quavers a little.
You look down at the razor. You’re not stupid, you know it’d hurt. It’d burn sharp and clear, like digging with an icicle.
“I’m not going to scare you,” you tell Becky, but comes out sounding strange, as if your throat has rusted shut.
“Are you sick? You don’t sound too good.”
“I’m okay.”
“Heather wants to talk to you.”
“Tell her I’m busy.”
You hear a couple of muffled words.
“She says to tell you it’s really important.”
It’s like clutching at the edge of a cliff. You can give up, let go, and drop completely.
Or you can keep hanging on.