Kylie is silent, and I look over at her. She’s crying.
I roll over toward her and force myself to sit up. “Hey. What’s wrong?”
She sniffs, wipes at her eyes. “What’s wrong? God, Oz. Just…god. You’ve been through so much. And you say it all like it’s no big deal.”
“But why are you crying?” I honestly don’t get it. “I don’t need your pity, Kylie.”
She sits up, eyes blazing. “It’s not pity, Oz! It’s called f**king compassion! There are people in this world capable of caring about you. Not everybody is going to beat you up and betray you and abandon you.”
“Yeah, well, that’s been my experience. So forgive me if I’m a little jaded, okay?” I can’t take it anymore.
I open my tin and thumb a nugget of weed into my little glass pipe. I don’t typically like smoking from a bowl, but I’m too impatient to roll right now. I flick the Bic, and the pot crackles, glows orange, and the smoke fills my lungs.
I hate myself for doing this in front of Kylie.
I hold the smoke in until my lungs protest, and then lie down, blow it out, toward the ceiling. Kylie is watching me intently.
“No. Don’t even ask.” I take another huge toke, and then set the pipe and lighter on my chest.
“I wasn’t gonna ask. It smells funny.” She glances at my bedroom door, which is open. “Won’t your mom smell it?”
“She knows.” I’m high now, and my eyes are heavy and the pain is distant. “She lost her f**king mind the first time she caught me smoking pot. Like, total meltdown. Hysterical. We fought about it for weeks. I wouldn’t stop, and she kept grounding me and shit, but I just ignored her. I kept going out whenever I felt like it, because what was she going to do, nail my door shut? Wrestle me into my room? Ground me again? Finally, she just gave up. Said if I wanted to destroy myself with drugs, go ahead. Sometimes, when she’s really upset, she’ll smoke with me. And when she does, I can tell she’s remembering….him.”
I’ve got the lighter in my hand, and I flick it to life. Flick the Bic. Flick the Bic. The flame is short and yellow, wavering and bright and hot and inviting. It’s not something I even think about—I’m just drawn to the flame, like a moth. My hand descends, palm an inch above the fire. It’s just hot at first. Heat on my skin. Nice. Easy and slow and warm. Then hotter. Feel it. It’s better than thinking about how Mom won’t tell me the truth, and that’s not something I can endure anymore. She’s got the secrets, the answers, but she won’t share them. And I get angry, hurt, filled with rage. Did he abandon us? Was he a criminal? Was he killed? Was he just a slacker douchebag who bolted as soon as he found out he’d knocked her up? Was he a good man who wanted to be a father and Mom’s the one running? Is that why we’ve moved so often? Is she running from him? Or is she looking for him? Following him? I don’t know, and I’ll never know. I think sometimes that my desire to burn myself is an attempt to burn the need to know out of my body. Trying to sear the questions from me. But that’s stupid. All I know is, the flame calls to me. I need it, and when it’s got me in its thrall, I can’t pull away.
The heat grows, turns to pain as I lift the lighter closer to my hand. I watch as the flame touches my skin, turns to searing agony.
“Oz!” Kylie smacks the lighter from my hand, shrieking, “WHAT THE FUCK!”
I’m startled to awareness, and I clench my hand into a fist, feeling the pain in my hand take over from my ribs and leg. It’s better. Familiar.
She grabs my hand and turns the palm face up, examines it. “You burned the shit out of your hand, Oz. What the hell was that?”
I tug my hand away, but she doesn’t let go. “It’s no big deal, Kylie. For real.”
And then she sees. Hand. Forearm. Fingers. “Oz?” Her voice is so small and hesitant, and hurt. Like each patch of shiny, burnt skin causes her pain. Her fingers drift out and touch each burned spot on my forearm. I close my eyes and let her touch. She understands now that these scars aren’t accidental. “Why?”
I jerk my arm away, fumble for the lighter, and take another toke. “You say that in the exact same tone of voice that Mom does. So I’ll tell you what I tell her. I don’t know. It just helps. I can’t explain it to her, so I can’t explain it to you. I can’t even explain it to myself.”
“This is a big deal.” She’s still tracing the contours of each scar, on my forearms, on my hands. On my fingers. God, the tenderness in the way she touches me is…fucking unbearable. “I don’t know how to deal with this.”
I make myself look at her. “Kylie. Eyes on mine, babe.” Her blue, blue gaze locks on me. Her tears well, unshed. I give her a sad smile. “Now you get it? Why you and me won’t work? You don’t get it. You don’t get me. You could’ve been raped, just by visiting my apartment complex. You watched me f**king brutalize your attackers. I’m…” I swallow hard, force the reality out. “I’m tainting you, Kylie. Making you dirty just by association. It wasn’t about you not being good enough. It’s not…it’s not even about me not being good enough. It’s about my world and my life and why I am not compatible with yours, with who you are. Who you could be. Compatible isn’t the right word. I’m f**ked up. I’ve got a shitload of issues. This burning thing? It’s not going away any time soon. I try not to burn. Mainly because it makes Mom lose her shit, and she’s got enough to deal with. But like today? Just now? I wasn’t even thinking about it. It just happened. And it should not have happened in front of you. I’ve let so much of my dark and dirty world taint you, and I hate myself for that.”
Kylie doesn’t answer for a very long time, and I let her have the silence, have the time to process, to think. She just stares at me, at my hands and arms, at my face, at the bed, at the pipe and lighter lying on my chest. I stuff the pipe and lighter into the tin, toss the tin into my backpack, shift to a sitting position. Kylie is sitting on her shins, hands on her thighs, head down, blinking away tears. I don’t know why she’s crying. No clue. Because I’m f**ked up? Because of what happened earlier? She was assaulted, threatened with rape, and witness to a hell of a fight. She has every right to feel traumatized, to be in a bit of shock. But that’s not it, I don’t think. It’s about me.