Flipped

Chapter 4- The Pattern of Torment

Rose

My brother and I invented Code Red in the fall of our seventh grade year. It was one of those days when both of us were feeling extremely dysphoric at the same time, which always made it really hard for either of us to help the other. It was already destined to be a bad day.

But then it happened, the event that made it the worst day of Sam's life up to that point.

We were in math class, Sam and me. We were doing our work quietly in the back of the room when all of a sudden I heard Sam gasp. I looked over to see my brother staring off into space, wide-eyed like a deer staring at the end of a rifle.

"What's wrong, Sam?" I asked, but he ignored me. He asked to be excused to the restroom.

This was my first clue that something was wrong, because we NEVER used the bathrooms at school if we could avoid it. It was so humiliating, not being able to use the right ones.

Five minutes passed. Ten. Fifteen. Sam didn't return. I texted him and he didn't respond.

I started to panic. Something was definitely wrong.

After asking to be excused myself, I began to hunt the school for my brother. I checked all the girls' bathrooms, telling any girls I encountered that I was "looking for my sister". Then I checked all the boys' bathrooms, and it was in the one by the science wing (the least-used one) that I heard the sobbing coming from the big stall at the end. I recognized the crying immediately.

I ran up to the door and pounded on it, begging Sam to let me in, but he ignored me. I finally had to crawl through the gap under the door to get in.

And what I saw nearly made me scream.

There, curled up in a ball next to the toilet, was my twin brother with his arms covered in cuts and a piece of glass from the broken mirror in his hand.

"Why did you make me this way, God?" he was sobbing. "Why the fuck did you do this to me? Just kill me why don't you? Please God just let me die!"

It didn't take me long to guess what had happened, but I knew better than to try to make him talk about it. I just cleaned up his arms (luckily, the cuts were fairly shallow) and then wrapped him in a hug and let him cry all over me, forgetting my own dysphoria because my brother had just gotten his first period.

That day was one of the few times in our lives when I was the strong one. It was me who snuck into the nurse's office and stole some sanitary pads out of her cabinet, because Sam was just too embarrassed to ask. It was me who told the rest of his teachers for the day that "she went home sick" when in reality HE spent the rest of the day in that same stall in the boys' bathroom, too scared to leave. 

And it was me who, at home later that day, told Sam that we ought to have a code for situations as severe as this, so that I could know to go find him. 

We agreed on Code Red. It was short and simple enough to remember, and it would keep him from having to describe what was happening and trigger himself even further. I made him promise to text those two words to me whenever he felt like cutting or killing himself, and I would always go straight to the big stall in the boys' bathroom by the science wing and help him. Ever since we agreed on this, he's only used Code Red twice.

Three times, counting today.

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Sam

It isn't until I get that text from Rose that I realize how long I've been hiding in this bathroom. I even ditched fourth period, I've been so busy crying.