DEAD GIRLS ARE PRETTIER

one

  And so she tells me, lipstick staining her coffee cup and heavy pauses bleeding through the spaces between us. As her lips move, I slowly become more and more aware of the monsters, which I have silenced up until this point, trying to claw through my chest, of the walls trying to wrap their fingers around my throat, digging deeper and deeper until I can fight them no more.

  I can't listen anymore.

—

  "I didn't want you to learn about it at school itself. It might have been too much of a shock," my foster mother, Caroline, says, as if hearing it from her somehow turns the news into a total cakewalk. She pauses, taking a sip from her heavy mug brimming with dark, sugarless coffee. I know for a fact she'd rather die than add sugar to her coffee.

  I don't say anything. I look down, at my forgotten bowl of soggy cereal, at my hands, at the tablecloth with a rip Caroline covered up with a vase of flowers. The flowers wilted a long time ago, but she keeps forgetting to buy a new bunch.

  "Rose?"

  I look up to see Caroline's blue eyes narrowed, her dyed eyebrows furrowed. Her face is dripping with concern and warmth, and I can't bear to look at it after months of indifference.

  "Are you okay?"

Am I okay? My friend just died. She killed herself. She threw a razor into her wrists, or held her breath much too long under bathwater, or popped onetwothreefourfivetenfourteentwentytwo pills until they stole away her conscience, or hung from the pastel pink ceiling of her bedroom like a limp puppet with its strings sliced clean through.

Why?

  I nod, trying to keep down my few spoonfuls of cereal in my stomach. I feel dizzy and my head is flashing flashing flashing again, but I don't want to say anything in case she shoves me into a psychologist's office and makes me take a double dose of the garishly-colored pills she keeps in bottles hidden away in a drawer in the kitchen. I try to shovel more cereal down my throat in a seemingly futile attempt at filling the emptiness that is settling into me like a ravaged beast.

  She doesn't look like she's buying it. "You guys were close, Rose," she says quietly.

"Not anymore."

Another pause. Another sip of coffee.

I stand up, the scrape of the chair slicing through all the silence that was hanging in the air. It cuts through the resignation, the tension, the subtle confusion, expertly carving through the uncomfortably placed masks we wear, the ones we are trained to pretend not to see. I wonder if she can now see the blood in the air, the ink dripping down my wrists, the acidic mess of questions I am too afraid to ask injected into the insides. I wonder if she knows how I can see the cracks lining her body, all the things she wants to hide leaking out like water. I wonder if she can see it. I wonder if she can see me.

"I need to go to school," I say. I feel sick, and I need to get out of this room. It's suffocating me. I can't talk about this now.

Caroline sighs and downs the rest of her coffee. When she's done, I take a better look at her. Her eyes are bloodshot and lilac bags hold her eyes. She's not wearing any makeup except bright red lipstick, which makes her skin look strangely eerie. I wonder if she's been crying, or just been having constant nights of bad sleep.

How will I sleep with her empty eyes in my head?

Caroline passes me her large, heavy mug to wash in the sink alongside her plate of fruit and my bowl of cereal. I can't bear to finish it. I'm afraid my stomach won't be able to hold anything down.

I watch the water wrap around the plates like the harshest of silks, and as I do, I can't help but think the strangest of thoughts.

Was there any blood?

Did it hurt?

Why?

I switch the tap off.

I look outside, at the untouched scenery. At the laughing kids and cuddling couples and ice cream cones dripping onto grass and the sun and sky caressing each other like star-crossed lovers from some 15th century poem. Nothing has changed. How could I have expected it to? The universe doesn't listen to the cries of sad girls with poisoned heads at night, or watch as they slice their pretty little wrists in crimson bathwater, or stop the movement of perfectly-aligned stars and flowers and suns and moons and planets just because someone wrecked a little part of that perfection, that alignment. That's just how it is. Rivers will still flow and suns will still shine in this world – long after your own ends.

But as much as I try to convince myself, I know the truth. Nothing will ever be the same ever again. Not today, not tomorrow, not ever.

It's not nice when girls kill themselves.