Shelly looked ahead, at the neatly lined houses along the crescent. “I ran out. She was too boozy to drive. I was going to just put a bunch of toilet paper or something, but I forgot…” Her mouth screwed up and she looked at her knees. “That’s not even true. I saw it was bleeding and I didn’t care. Last night was so bad. It took so long for those braids. I woke up and couldn’t be home. I knew the blood would happen and you’d all see and I didn’t care.”
“Oh…” Julia didn’t know what to say to that. It didn’t make sense. Periods are mortifying. They’re giant, blood-soaked pads of shame. Julia spent at least ten minutes a day checking to see if her first had come, making sure there was no way, if it ever happened, that it would show. Nobody wants to get caught with a period. “Brooke Leonardis had it happen in school and nobody even talked about it. Sienna Muller saw it all over her lunch chair. You weren’t that bad. It’s deniable. I’ll deny it with you. We can just act like the people who say it are mental.”
“You don’t get it.”
“How do you mean?”
She was still looking at her knees, tufts of hair sticking up. “It’s like I see my life from far away. The real me’s stuck, and the rest of me, it’s just this body that walks and talks and screams at people. The real me’s dying.”
Julia felt her eyes go hot. She remembered how much she used to love Shelly. Right now, in this moment, she still loved her. “Please don’t talk like that.”
Shelly sniffled. “I think about a razor. I keep this Pain Box that has my proof. It’s got all the evidence. I’d leave a note on top.”
Julia blanched. Proof? What kind of proof? “Don’t talk about razors,” she said.
Shelly’s voice got low and steady as a wishful incantation. “It’d say: You made me do this. Now I’m dead just to get away from you. I hope you’re happy.”
Julia tried to be brave. To be firm, because maybe Shelly needed firm. “Stop it. You’re being a drama queen. You’ll make yourself sick.”
Shelly’s jaw opened like she was going to gag and her eyes got wide, and Julia could almost see a terrible nothing inside her, wasting and strangling, eating her up from the inside out. She dry-cried, no sound and no tears.
Julia took her friend in her arms. Squeezed as hard as she could.
“Stop. It hurts.”
Alarm. A jolt of a thousand volts. Julia loosened.
“No one wants to hear it,” Shelly said. “If I told them, they wouldn’t believe. You were my best friend and I couldn’t tell you anything. You still don’t want to know. How can Miss PTA be anything except perfect? I’m the one they don’t like. I’m the one who’s mean. Unstable. There’s nobody to back me up. Even my family, they don’t see it. Or if they do, they pretend not to. I just, I’m all broken and nobody else is broken. Nobody else is in this.”
The words jumped and bounced, and Julia kept trying to fit them together differently, so they’d tell a kinder story. But there wasn’t one. “What’s happening to you?” Julia asked.
Shelly’s lips trembled. “She’s killing me,” she whispered.
“She?” Julia asked.
“Her,” Shelly answered.
Tears burned Julia’s eyes and she stanched them, trying as hard as she could to be strong. If this was true, it was bigger than too many rules. Bigger than getting yelled at or not being allowed on playdates unless you got straight As. It was even bigger than getting slapped around when you didn’t deserve it. It was marrow deep.
“Your mom,” Julia said.
Shelly’s voice broke. “Don’t tell anyone.”
Julia looked across the hot, empty park, and the hole behind them, which kept getting bigger. Nothing made sense. Nothing was how it was supposed to be because the world was upside down. All the grown-ups were kids, and the kids were on their own, and maybe that’s how it had been all along.
“Show me your hurt,” Julia said. “I have to see.”
Shelly’s eyes watered. “You won’t think of me the same.”
“That’s not true. I know you exactly. We played Truth or Dare a thousand times. I know you.”
Shelly leaned forward and slid her shirt up her back. Her skin wasn’t pale but bruised yellow. Every part was marked by pinprick bruises aligned into oval shapes. Most were in a state of healing—just blended shadows. There were four recent ones. Bright red with trapped blood, like the hickey Dave Harrison had given her last year behind the 7-Eleven as a joke but not a joke.
Julia touched the center one very gently. Index and middle finger, tracing a soft line down Shelly’s spine. Shelly eased at Julia’s touch. She sighed out. Happy, almost.
Shelly let her expensive Free People shirt fall back down. “I wanted this special French twist. You know, with braids all around. For my thirteenth birthday party.” Shelly looked to Julia. “September? Was it that long ago?”