This Song Will Save Your Life Read Online Free Page B

realized also that this would make things even worse between him and Mom. I knew exactly how she was, and she would blame him for my death, even though it wasn’t his fault. She would blame him because I was at his house, and she blamed him for everything that happened to me at his house, even things he couldn’t control, like the time I was staying with him and got strep throat.
    So, okay. Look. This was getting complicated. I wanted to die, but I wanted to make sure Dad didn’t get in trouble for it, and I wanted to make sure all those bitches at school did get in trouble for it, and this was going to require a detailed suicide note and also probably a location that wasn’t Dad’s house. Plus I had spent so long on my playlist that it was already nearly five o’clock. So, realistically, this wasn’t a great day for dying. Which was a disappointment, but also sort of a relief.
    Since I already had the X-Acto knife, though, and I already had the playlist, I decided to go into the bathroom to practice a little. To practice cutting myself, I mean. Just a little, so that when the time came to do it for real, it wouldn’t be scary. It would just be the logical next step.
    I brought my laptop into the bathroom with me. I set it down on the floor and turned on “Hallelujah,” the Jeff Buckley version. I pulled a bottle of rubbing alcohol out of the cabinet and poured it over the X-Acto, to sterilize the blade. I wanted to hurt myself, yes, but I didn’t want to get an infection, too.
    I sat down on the lid of the toilet. I held the X-Acto blade to the inside of my left arm. I stood up, walked out of the bathroom and back to my bedroom, and I picked up my teddy bear from my unmade bed. I carried him back down the hall to the bathroom, locked the door behind me, sat back down on the toilet seat, put my teddy in my lap, and started the song over from the beginning.
    I again placed the X-Acto against the inside of my left forearm, but this time I pressed down. I drew a line straight across.
    It didn’t hurt. It just felt numb.
    So I cut a second line, just a little bit closer to my wrist. That didn’t hurt either. So I pressed down harder the third time, and I held it.
    That hurt.
    For a moment, I watched the blood bubble out of those thin slits through my arm. In Bio last year, I learned that blood is actually a dark maroon when it’s inside your body. It’s the exposure to oxygen that turns it bright red. And there must have been a lot of oxygen in my bathroom, because that blood was bright, bright red.
    I stood up and turned the sink faucet on high. I held my arm under it to wash away the blood, but more blood kept coming out and kept coming out. Every time I tried to take it out from under the faucet, it just started bleeding harder.
    You need to apply pressure in this sort of situation. Everyone knows that. So I kept my left arm still under the spray of the faucet while, with my right hand, I rooted around in the medicine cabinet for a bandage that would be big enough to cover my forearm. I finally found one wedged behind the bottles of rose hips and garlic pills.
    I took my arm out from the sink and immediately pressed the bandage onto it. So that was good. That looked fine. I would wear long-sleeved shirts for a couple days and no one would ever know.
    I grabbed my laptop in my right hand and my teddy in my left, and I unlocked the bathroom door and walked back to my bedroom. “Hallelujah” was just drawing to a close. That hadn’t taken long at all. I felt like I had been in the bathroom forever, but “Hallelujah” isn’t that long of a song.
    I sat down at my desk and pulled out the Glendale High directory. It was in pristine condition. Because I never called anyone. Who would I have called?
    I looked down at my arms, resting on my desk. Both of my hands were shaking. And blood was starting to seep through the bandage, dyeing it from gauzy white to bruised-apple red.
    I stood up from my desk chair and