My gaze slid quickly toward Sister Ernestine, who’d fortunately bustled into her office and was already on the phone, presumably with Becca’s parents.
“Nope,” I said, turning back to Becca. “Never heard of her.”
The girl dropped her voice so the nun couldn’t overhear us. “Yes, you are. Everyone says you knocked Father Serra’s head off with your bare hands during a fight, and that you had to work here in the office to pay to get the statue’s head soldered back on.” Her eyes widened. “Oh, my God. Are they still making you work here to pay it off? Didn’t you graduate, like, ten years ago?”
“Six. Six years ago. How old do people think I am, anyway? Arm, please.”
Reluctantly, the girl stretched her wrist toward me and I plucked the wad of paper towels from it . . . then inhaled almost as sharply as she did, but not for the same reason. Her blood had finally coagulated, and my ripping the paper towels from the wound had torn it open afresh, causing her to cry out in pain.
I gasped because now that I could finally see the injury, I could tell it hadn’t been the result of any accident, though it had definitely been done with a sharp instrument—maybe even like she said, a geometry compass. Carved into the pale flesh of the back of her left wrist were the red letters:
STUP
Whoever—or whatever—had done it had been stopped before getting to what I had to assume were the last two letters, ID.
Stupid.
Someone—or something—had tried to carve the word stupid in the flesh of this girl’s arm.
cuatro
I looked from the scratches—which went from artificial cuts to deep gouges. The U would leave a scar if not properly attended to—to the girl’s face. She was glancing nervously in Sister Ernestine’s direction, then down at the wounds, then at me. Her lips were pale and chapped. She wore no makeup, though she was sixteen, and makeup isn’t against the dress code for high school girls at Junípero Serra Mission Academy.
Something made me doubt Becca had ever applied makeup to her face in her life, however. Her entire look—lank hair, oversize uniform, untidy skin—screamed, Don’t look at me, please.
“Who did this?” I demanded. My mind was awhirl. The NCDP? Had the ghost done it? Whoever it was, he or she was going to get the ass kicking I’d promised Paul earlier. “Who did this to you, Becca? There’s nothing to be afraid of. I won’t hurt them.”
Much.
“What? Who—?” Her eyes filled with tears behind the lenses of her glasses, and she shook her head. “No. Oh, no. No one did this to me. I did it . . . I did it to myself.”
“What?” The word came bursting out of my mouth before I could stop it. But I should have known. We’d covered self-injury in my courses on juvenile and adolescent psychology. But seeing it in real life was entirely different from seeing it in photos, and I couldn’t hold back my second question, either. “Why?”
“I . . . I don’t know,” Becca whispered. I could tell by the color rushing into her cheeks—and the fact that she wouldn’t meet my gaze—that she was telling the truth. Liars—such as Paul—usually have no problem looking you in the eye. “I just . . . I just hate myself sometimes. This is the first time I’ve ever done anything like this, though, I swear.”
Now she was lying. She looked me full in the face, sweet as pie, lying for all she was worth.
“I’ll never do it again, I promise. Please, please don’t tell. My dad will be so disappointed in me, and my stepmother . . . well, my stepmother won’t like it, either. Please, I’m begging you—don’t tell. Come on. You know what it’s like.”
I did not. But apparently, because she’d heard I’d had troubles of my own in my day, she thought I did.
My kind of trouble had never involved gouging myself with sharp objects, though. Only other people trying to gouge me with them.
I tried to remember what I’d studied about individuals who self-harm. They don’t do it to get attention—in fact, they almost always try to keep their cutting a secret, and usually succeed, except in cases like Becca’s, where something goes wrong and they get caught. The brief release of endorphins from the physical pain serves as a balm for whatever emotional trauma or stress they’re suffering.
That’s why in the long run, cutting doesn’t work: the balm is temporary, lasting just as long as the pain itself. Only by getting to the root of the emotional pain (usually through talk therapy with a trained professional) can the patient truly begin to heal.
Obviously something was tormenting Becca. The pitiful ghost child clinging to her—the one that only I could see—was a pretty big clue, and one I could easily handle.
Self-harm, though? Way over my nonexistent pay grade.