THIS BOOK WILL KILL YOU

6_finger_

I spend the rest of the afternoon thinking about _pinch_ and thinking about her, the dead girl. I think about her so much that I feel almost like I see her, a flash of a smile in the corner of my eye every time I turn my head. It's just screen burn, and exhaustion, but even so it scares me downstairs pretty quick.

"You okay?" mom asks as I walk into the kitchen. Not because of this morning, but because it's the same thing she asks me at the start of every conversation. She worries a lot, my mom.

I nod, sitting on a bar stool and pressing my thumb down on the crumbs that still lie on the island. Mom doesn't seem to be doing anything other than standing by the sink. She's tracing the plug hole with one finger, tracing it in tight circles. The faucet's running like a firehose.

"What are you doing?" I ask, and she shrugs, lifting her hand and staring at her finger. There's something on the end of it.

"I was speaking to somebody. She told me that Cara girl was a bad kid, into all kids of horrible stuff."

"Yeah?" I say.

"Cut herself, all up and down her arms, legs too. Used to skip classes with her boyfriend and tramp across town to god only knows where. She was on the edge of getting kicked out altogether, only the fact her father donated so much money kept her in."

I nod again. I can't decide if this makes me feel better or worse. Cara didn't look like a bad kid, but then again all I had to go on was a bunch of Facebook photos.

"She killed herself," mom says, and I flinch so hard my stool scrapes across the floor.

"Mom," I say, but I've got nothing to follow it with. I knew it anyway, right? But it sounds different coming from her mouth, it sounds different when you say it like that.

"But they don't know how. They say they've never seen a body like hers before. It was like somebody had taken a bat to her."

It's like somebody has taken a bat to me too, my gut a clenched fist. Mom's still standing there, staring at her finger. She hasn't even looked at me, and I know it's because somehow, in her head, she's conflated me with this whole thing. I'm linked to a dead girl, and now it's me who skipped classes, me who hangs out with my boyfriend slicing up my arms with a cheap razor. It's how her brain works.

"They say they didn't find all of her," mom says. "They searched that room a hundred times and they didn't find all of her."

I swallow the image down, compacting the crumbs between my fingers and thumb, feeling the little implosions as they cave in to the pressure. I feel like I'm about to implode too, because the kitchen feels too hot, the walls too close, and my head is pounding. I stick the same finger into the collar of my shirt and pull it away from my neck. I'm about to change the conversation when something occurs to me.

"Why do they think she did it herself then? I mean, nobody beats herself up, cuts pieces off or whatever, then, you know." I mime the action, because it's easier than saying it. "That doesn't make any sense."

"I didn't say she committed suicide," mom says, and she slides her finger, the same one she's just been using to wipe the sink, into her mouth like it's a popsicle. It's in there for a full thirty seconds before it pulls free, as wet as a slug. She stares at it, lost somewhere.

"Mom?" I say.

"I didn't say that," she says. "I didn't say she committed suicide."

"You..." I get off the stool because it suddenly feels like it's lost three of its legs. Even the ground feels as if it's tilted, and I cling to the edge of the island to stop myself rolling downhill, rolling into that weird rotting stain on the wall. "You said she killed herself. You just said it."