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At least, I used to think it was.

“Mom?” I say again, and I’m putting my hands up to my face because for some reason I seem to think that will make me feel better. But they’re shaking, and instead I end up pulling my hair, and she grabs my hands, yanks them down into her lap, tells me to breathe, tells me that it’s okay to cry.

And I want to. I want to release this horrible feeling, this emptiness. I want to spew out blackness and whatever this void is, this thing that has eaten all my desire and left me wanting nothing, feeling nothing. But when I open my mouth, nothing comes out.

Because nothing is all I have inside me.

Twenty-Nine

Micah

I tell Coach I can’t stay for practice because I’ve been puking and then prove it by doing exactly that on his shoes. He tells me to get the fuck off his fifty-yard line and to get my sickness the hell away from him and his players. But my sickness isn’t in my gut, and it’s not contagious. It’s in my brain, and now, I’m afraid, has spread to my heart.

When I get home, I crawl into bed, jam my head under my pillow, and scream into my mattress until I taste blood in my throat. The only thing I want to do is talk to burnedoutgirl, who has become one of the only outlets in my life that isn’t toxic, harmful, or just flat-out fucking mindless. I’ve shared things with her that I’ve said to no one; she’s closer to my real self than anyone in the world. And she’s Ava Germaine, someone who I—

My phone goes off with a text from Ethan, asking if I took care of Nickel and Dime today. What I do is far from care—I just keep them from dying—and at the moment, I wouldn’t extend that same favor to the person I used to think of as my best friend. I throw my phone against the wall in a rage, then immediately jump up and grab it, afraid that I’ve just obliterated my only avenue to connecting with burnedoutgirl.

The screen is sporting a fresh crack but seems to be functioning. I open the Rock Bottom app without thinking, the automatic lift in my chest overriding the warning bell that my brain rings half a second too late. I’m fixating, and I know it, something that was bad enough when she was just a stranger but is verging into unhealthy now that I know who burnedoutgirl is—and she can’t say the same about me.

DAD SAYS

Buck up

Cheer up

Pull yourself up

By your bootstraps.

As if there is

A switch to be

Flipped

To make this

Baby doll

Suddenly smile.

A string in my back

Perhaps,

To pull and then I

Will laugh on cue.

Why does this girl have to be so interesting and also be Ava Germaine at the same time? A message pops up in my inbox, and my heart leaps into my throat.

burnedoutgirl: Hey

averageamericanmale: Hey, what’s up?

burnedoutgirl: Just please talk to me

averageamericanmale: On the bathroom floor again?