I jerk back from his touch and almost fall on my butt. He chuckles and wraps his arm around my waist tighter.

“Easy now,” he says in a soothing tone, and starts to walk me down the gravel driveway to where a yellow car sits.

A cab.

“Where are you taking me?” I ask, my own voice sounding like a faraway echo.

“I’m taking you home. What’s your address?”

I give it to him, hoping he can understand what I say, because I can’t.

“You were great, baby. Want to do that again sometime, come back and ask for JT.”

“I didn’t like that,” I insist in a thick voice. I’m starting to feel nauseous again. It hurts really bad between my legs…my butt…

“Doesn’t matter,” he says arrogantly. “You won’t remember it tomorrow anyway.”

The back door of the cab opens and I’m lowered into the seat. My head, which feels like it weighs five hundred pounds, falls back until it presses into the foam cushion. I can hear my address being given to the driver.

I close my eyes and surrender to the darkness.

—
“Come on, honey…wake up.” A large hand shakes me by my shoulder. I peel my eyes open, my head now pounding. I push up from the cold vinyl seat and realize I’m in a car.

The backseat of a car.

“Get going.” Pushing my hair out of my face, I see a portly Indian man staring at me with dark brown eyes. “I’ve got another fare to collect.”

Swinging my legs out, I exit the backseat, realizing I don’t have my purse. Did I even have it tonight?

“I don’t have anything to pay you with,” I mumble as I pat my back jeans pockets, vaguely remembering I had a large purse with me tonight but no clue where it is right now.

“Already taken care of,” he says, and I wonder who paid him. I sort of remember someone helping me into the cab, but now I’m not sure.

I look over the top of the cab and see my house with the cheerful yellow light awaiting me on the front porch.

“Thank you,” I mutter, and walk around the back of the cab. When I reach the mailbox at the end of my driveway, I hold on to it with one hand as I lean to the side and remove first one high heel, then the other. I leave them lying there. Oddly, my feet don’t hurt, but that might be the only part of me that doesn’t. I immediately feel steadier as my bare feet traverse the concrete driveway up to the small sidewalk that cuts across the front yard to the porch.

I make it up the four small steps and manage to reach on top of the doorframe for the spare key. The house is quiet when I walk in, both of my parents presumably sound asleep.

I try to be as quiet as I can as I walk down the short hallway, periodically reaching my hand out to steady myself on the wall. At my desk, I pull the chair out and sit down heavily, a pained cry coming out as another sharp stab of pain reverberates through my bottom. Tears well up in my eyes and I grab clumsily at my journal.

Opening the small spiral notebook, I don’t bother trying to find the next available page. I just open it up somewhere around the middle and pick up my blue gel pen beside it. I write slowly, disregarding the drip of tears on the pages beside my words.

Today is my 16th birthday.

I was raped.

I think I deserved it.

The pen falls from my fingers as I push up from my desk. I close the notebook and stand from the chair, feeling beyond weary. My soul feels dank. My heart fragile like spun glass.

Red birds.

White hair.

Pain.

Spunk in my hair.

I walk back out of my room, down the hallway and through the living room. Into the darkened kitchen where I don’t even bother turning on a light. What I need is in the utility drawer right by the entrance, and there’s enough moonlight coming in through the windows over the sink so I can see well enough.

It takes but a moment to pull the drawer open and for me to grab it with surety.

Back down the hall and into the bathroom.

I turn the light on and immediately raise my face to the mirror over the small vanity.

Golden-blond hair tangled with white crust at my temple. Denim-blue eyes bloodshot with dark circles underneath. Purple marks on my throat and at my jaw.

“You’re a real mess, Sela,” I whisper to my reflection.

For a bizarre moment, I think she gives a sad nod of agreement back at me, but I blink hard. It’s just me…the girl who wanted the attention and got it in all the wrong ways.

I grip the box cutter in my right hand, lower my face, and stare at it. My eyes flick to my left wrist and I see the purple bruises there that match the ones on my right. Slowly, I turn my left hand over, resting the back of it on the vanity. The pale skin of my wrist is exposed, the blue veins providing me a road map.

Taking the box cutter, I press the tip of the razor into my skin and look up into the mirror once more.

“You’re a real mess,” I tell myself again.

Then I push down with the blade.

Chapter 1

Sela

“Bring me a beer, will you?” Mark calls out to me.

I roll my eyes, turn around in midstride, and head back to the refrigerator. I open it up, grab a Bud, and bump the door closed with my hip before starting back to the living room.

“And the Doritos,” he says. “I’ve got the munchies.”

Another eye roll and I turn back around. Snatch the half-eaten bag of Doritos off the counter and head into the living room. As I round the couch, I toss the bag at him, catching him square in the chest. As he grabs his snackage, I hand him his beer. He takes it without even looking over at me, his eyes glued to the TV. One of those cheesy entertainment shows doing a piece on a movie star, athlete, or maybe a reality-show contestant just out of rehab and hawking their new bestselling book on how you can overcome addiction.

I plop onto the couch beside him, lean forward, and grab the large book off my coffee table.

Human Cognition.

Ugh.

“Are you going to study or just watch TV?” I ask as I open the text and flip to chapter 22.

“Watch TV,” Mark says, his mouth full of Doritos and the air still sweetly perfumed from the bong he’d been smoking.

Mark’s cute and all. We met several months ago at Golden Gate University, as both of us were starting in the MA Counseling Psychology program and there was an instant attraction, but the four-year age difference wears thin sometimes.

It took me a while to get my bachelor’s degree. To say I was fucked in the head for quite a long time would be an understatement, what with my issues and all, plus a few psych hospitalizations. Add on my mom dying of an aneurysm three years ago, and I was the ripe age of twenty-five when I finally finished my bachelor’s and started my master’s last fall. I’m not exactly ancient now at twenty-six, but compared to Mark’s twenty-two years, the differences in our priorities are glaring. Partying is still a big part of his life, and he doesn’t take studying as seriously as I did. I clearly don’t take smoking pot as seriously as he does.