When we were wintergirls

Little girls trapped inside glass coffins.

I wanted to be like her so badly. I started cutting more. Moved on from the elementary needles and fingernails, to broken pencil sharpeners, and razors. I began to hate my body. I wanted to cut all the fat off. I wanted to see my bones. I stopped eating too. I wanted to look like her. I wanted to BE her. I did everything she did. I told her about it too. We talked alone all through lunch, hating all the fatties that dared eat, but secretly envying that they could. I cut my hands so she would see. I didn't dare approach my inner wrists.

I'll never forget that day. I was so fucking sad for her. But I wanted to best her. I had to be better.

We were staying after school for choir. I had hesitantly agreed to enter the solo and ensemble again (last year was a disaster) and she was there as support. We were about halfway through with the practice auditions when Katelyn beckoned me over to her. She wanted me to go to the bathroom with her, she said. She didn't eat, so there was no way that she had to go to the bathroom, but I obliged. When we got there, she looked me in the eye and said

"I'll show you mine if you show me yours"

I knew what she meant. This wasn't your silly preschoolers comparing "private parts" so they could giggle at how different the other was.

We were comparing pain. A checkpoint in our never-ending race to the finish line.

Death.

She had to make sure I wasn't beating her.

We checked the bathroom to make sure that no one was inside, then we slipped into the big bathroom stall and locked the door. I slipped my pants down first, exposing my 20 or so cuts on my upper thigh. One of them reading "ignorance."

She glanced at them, then she pulled down her own pants, skinny jeans, how they must have hurt like hell on those cuts.

My eyes widened and my jaw fell as my heart fell deep into my stomach, a stone they will have to remove when they dissect me after death.

She had deep, swollen cuts from her waistline to her knees. Everywhere. Jagged, straight, some still bleeding. I felt a strange sensation, one that terrified me.

I was jealous.