Sometimes, I hold a razor just above my eyes.
"—they didn't even eat the rice! But that's because it was used for preservation of the fish, and got all grody after—"
I can't tear my eyes off of you. It's painful. I wonder what I did to deserve this. Deserve you. I don't think I've done anything. No, I know I haven't. So why did you ask me?
"—still don't eat the rice, as traditional with nare-zushi, but that's not what we serve at Jimmy Fugu—"
Why did I agree?
"—you there, Wally?"
"Huh?"
Sunset stops waving her hand in front of my eyes. She looks concerned. "You're spacing out again."
"S-Sorry." I reach for my arm, but I stop. Promised I would. It hangs there. I'm a loser. I put it back on the table and poke at the half-eaten pseudo-Chinese popcorn chicken with gloopy rice I bought from the school cafeteria. She finished already. I'm not supposed to say sorry so much. "S-Sorry, again, uhm, about saying—"
I want to dig in.
"Don't be." She smiles at me. It hurts. "I guess it was getting boring, huh?"
The stitches there on the sleeve are amateur. They might re-open if I dig. I want to dig. Dig until I find something. Proof I'm not empty.
"No, uhm, it wasn't. You were talking about how sushi chefs worked at pickling... things?"
How badly would it hurt if I sawed one eyeball? If I swiped across both? I crumple, the unpleasantness a secret pleasure. It would mean I wouldn't have to see her ever again. Wouldn't that be a relief? Never to be burned by radiance, shaded against those piteous eyes picking me apart, knowing me. Now that someone wants to know me, I don't want to be known. Coward.
Sunset mistakes this for embarrassment. She's kept her distance. She won't touch me. Not because I'm filth. I am, but not because of that. "Tsuke-ba, 'pickling place.' Because the rice would naturally pickle the fish, which preserved it—they didn't have refrigerators back then! While pickled is good, it was really Edo that brought sushi to the forefront with their fresh seafood—"
I've kept my promise. She hasn't touched me. There aren't even scabs to pick at any more. It's overwhelming, you know? Not letting it out. But that's my life. Need to eat. Need to look like I'm eating. Need to make her think that everything is fine, that I'm getting better, I need to keep her, I need to please her, she's the only good thing in my life and I hate her.
I hate how she controls me.
She made me promise to stop, you know? Promise to stop expressing myself. She didn't say it like that. She wasn't happy. She was crying. I wasn't crying, because everything had scabbed over by that point, but she was, and it hollowed me out, like I was wood and she was the knife and the hand that saw something in me and wanted to carve it out. Wood shouldn't cut itself. Its place is to be shaped by another. A project.
I'm a project.
Her project.
Sick little twisted beautiful mind embracing, engraving, enslaving, a dog, kenneled, I hurt her and she wants me to stop, it's selfish, why am I hurting her, she's perfect, I don't deserve to—
"Wally?"
I'm bloated with maggots, flushed and hot, decomposers seeking sustenance my wooden frame can't provide traveling stomach lungs heart throat oozing mouth sleeve hand face sigh "I'm fine."
"... No, you aren't." Of course you know better than me I'm too fucked up to even think myself about objective judgement external pessimism observer fog worry silence drowning hate drowning in hate waterlogged hate myself hate the way I make you feel hate that I'm your hull's hole hate this softwood mockery of li—
"I am."
"You promised."
How am I supposed to handle that? How am I supposed to meet your expectations when I don't even have any for myself? How am I supposed to take your love when I have none for myself? I don't even love you. I worship you. I idolize you and flagellate myself in penance for the sin of even thinking I'm worth the time I take out of your day when you see me in the hallway, let alone spending time alone with you after school, walking home together, used to hold hands but now we don't anymore because I promised. I haven't broken my promise.
"I haven't."
"Talk to me." She's so close she can smell me. Her breath is on my face. Ear. Blowing hair, dirty hair, oily tangled network of gnarled roots and splintering twigs with branches wrapping around and choking the other out like me and you.
"Later, okay?"
I don't cut myself anymore. I recently ordered a fifty-count box of platinum-coated hi-stainless Feather double-edged razor blades, ten blades per plastic box no bigger than my thumb, each one individually wrapped in wax paper patterned with their trademark blue feather. The package was small enough that I was able to take it from the mailbox without anyone at home knowing I had ordered it. I bought a gift card and made a private account. I hide the boxes very well, not that I've ever been caught, but because I'm afraid I will be. I thought it would be honoring the love Sunset showed for sushi. I have forty-one blades left. I don't cut myself with them. Instead, I hold them against my skin, the subdued washboards on my wrists where I first started cutting, first started wearing sweaters, the furious ridges along my inner thighs where I still won't let her touch or see even though I should be doing something, anything, to keep her, to pay her back, to make up for having to deal with this wreck. I don't press them, but I want to. I enjoy the initial chill and the sharp line and the way it flexes to conform against my skin, but the metal rapidly heats because my heart still beats and I lose everything except the pressure. It makes me want to create those eponymous lines that run hot, show that I am not a puppet, give me something worth crying about. I will pull the blade at a severe angle, irritating my skin, coming so close to breaking it, but never actually doing so, because I promised I wouldn't. When the urge to feel something is too strong, I throw them away. I threw one away at school once. There was no good place to keep the razor on my person, so I lit a scented candle she gave me that smelled how I revere her, a warm field, and let the flame mar black the glass of the jar like me her as I tilted it to peach coat the blade on a greased plate I stole from the kitchen and let it cool on one side then carefully broke it off to flip it and peach coat the other side and hid it underneath the base of the lamp on my dresser so I could discreetly tuck it between the gumline and cheek on the right side of my mouth the morning before starting another week of hell. The wax was thick, and didn't melt, but keeping it in my mouth all day was too much for me. I couldn't keep my mind from thinking about it, or my body from touching it, caressing it, delighting in the idea that I could, at a moment's whim, swallow it and let the wax rub off as I squeeze it down. It's so sharp that it would escape my esophagus and work its way through to my heart, causing irreparable damage and finally freeing me. I spat it out in the hallway as I walked past a garbage can, passing it off as gum. Recently, though, I've been holding it against my neck. Knowing that I can end it soothes me. It's always there. I have a choice. I can make the choice.
"Okay. Later." Sunset looks at me with worry, concern, something small, like a smile, but not. Reassurance? Trust?
We hadn't been dating for long when she found out. It was a bad night for both of us. She said it was an accident. I don't believe her. 'You have to promise me,' Sunset said at the end of it, 'if you don't want me to touch you, to find out like that, you have to promise me that you'll talk to me instead of doing... this. It doesn't matter when, okay? It can be at school. It can be when you first wake up, or at dinner, or at 3AM. It doesn't matter when. What matters is, when you get this urge, when you—when you need to do it, don't. Talk to me instead. Please. Promise.' And I said 'Okay.' She said again, 'Promise me, Wally.' And I said, 'I promise.' And she asked me, 'Promise what?' And I replied, 'I promise to talk to you when... it gets bad.' Then she hugged me. I've talked twice. Both times I felt awful for doing it. I told her the last time. I apologized for it, I told her I was sorry for wasting her time, that I shouldn't be bothering her, that she needs her sleep, she gets better grades than me, she has her future to worry about. She told me, 'You're in my future, Wallflower. I'll say it until you believe it, but you are in my future. You are my future. It's your choice if you want to be in it, but I want you to. I want you. I love you, and I hate seeing you go through this alone. I want to be there for you. I wish I was there for you earlier. I will be there for you from now on. Let me in. I'll wait, but please, let me in.'
I felt like crying. I couldn't. I can't, still can't, still can't feel anything, but I want to. I want to cry so badly it hurts. I know it's irrational, okay? I know it's harmful. But this is how I am. Do you think that, if I was strong enough, I would choose to be like this? This isn't my choice. This is the hand I've been dealt. If I could just talk to someone, do something so simple as talk to and trust and confide in someone to share my burden, and I know it's sharing my burden, intellectually I know I am supposed to do this, that I am supposed to get close to others and make friends and share both fortune and misfortune with them, but there's a block there preventing me from doing so and I feel so weak and powerless and nobody seems to understand that it isn't my choice. None of this is my choice. Who would choose misery over happiness? Who? I'm sick. I'm so sick of all of this. All I want to do is tell her and make her deal with this, give it to someone else, let me be calm and collected for one day, just to see what it's like to be normal. To not suffer. Not be invisible.
I'm going to do it. I'm going to do it. I'm going to tell her what I'm thinking, I'm going to tell her exactly what I'm thinking, what I'm feeling. I don't care if we're in the middle of school, surrounded by people, I'm sick and tired of all of this. I just want to breathe again. I'm breathing. I open my mouth. Sunset looks at me, expectant. Now, or never.
"Sunset?"
"Yes, Wally?"
I haven't been able to cry since the day we made that promise, and it's making me hate you.
"... Sorry."
Sunset leans towards me for a hug. I lean away.
We stay like that until the bell rings.
