Free Kiss of Broken Glass by Madeleine Kuderick Page A

booth
    and change from Piglet to Superman.
    They just act the same way they always do,
    and before long Roger is smiling and shaking hands
    and giving them a bunch of papers to sign.
    And that’s when I start thinking about the ride home,
    squished next to Avery, with her elbow in my ribs.
    And I imagine Sean, craning in his seat, asking where
    I’ve been until I bury him in an avalanche of white lies.
    I wish I had the calming jar,
    or a watermelon to throw off the roof,
    or a baby beagle to hug.
    But I don’t.
    The only things I have
    are in my pocket.

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It All Comes down to This
    I wonder how long it takes to sterilize
    a silver stud with hot tap water.
    I don’t want to be gross or anything
    but I don’t have much time before
    Bullhorn checks on me in the bathroom.
    Two minutes, I guess.
    That’s probably clean enough.
    I close the unlockable door
    and listen for the magnet to click
    before I unzip my pants.
    The hip would be easiest to hide.
    Unless they make me undress.
    Roger never told me what happens
    after the family meeting.
    What if they make me strip
    and mark up another one of those
    naked paper dolls and compare it
    to the first one?
    Like a Before and After.
    Then I’d be screwed.
    I should probably do it below the bikini
    line since they didn’t make me take off
    my underwear in the ER.
    That would be the perfect spot.
    And it can be small, too.
    I don’t have to cut that much.
    The family meeting was only halfway sucky
    and I just need a little calm to last the ride home.
    I’m kind of worried about the stud though,
    because it’s not very sharp and I hate the
    ripping feeling, which is why I quit using
    glass and switched to Feather stainless,
    but that blade’s still in my cell phone,
    so this will have to do.
    I pinch the stud between my fingers
    and draw a light test line three times,
    which is part of my ritual,
    don’t ask me why,
    and by the time I get to line three,
    I feel static electricity racing through my chest
    and every beat of my heart growing bigger
    and more expectant, like it knows something
    amazing is about to happen, and then there’s this
    swirl in the air like my body is separating from reality
    and just as I’m about to plunge the point in—
    BAM!
    I hear the freaking Disney Channel playing
    in Spanish on the other side of the wall.
    And a little boy.
    Laughing.
    And it’s not like some miracle connect-the-dots
    where I think about the pencil stabber, and then
    my brother Sean, and then the butterfly on my arm,
    and I’m so swept up by the Right-Thing-to-Do
    that the silver stud floats out of my fingers,
    and all my desire disappears like magic.
    That’s not how it works.
    It takes every heaving breath in my body
    to pull that point away from my skin.
    And when I do, it doesn’t feel
    like I crushed a monster.
    Or dodged a bullet.
    Or did something to be proud of.
    It feels like a freaking train wreck.
    And I have to flush the stud down the toilet
    just to make sure I don’t pick it back up again.
    But then I hear that laughing,
    and I look at my arm
    where I wrote
    Sean
    by the butterfly wing,
    in caring big-sister cursive
    and suddenly I’m overcome
    with a gladness that the butterfly
    is still alive on my arm
    and not in butterfly heaven,
    or wherever it is that dead
    permanent marker goes.
    And that’s when I admit it.
    Just in my head.
    To myself.
    One inaudible breath.
    I need help.
    And I wouldn’t say it feels
    like a huge first step.
    Not in the Mount Everest way
    that Skylar said it would.
    But it definitely feels
    like something.
    And just for a second,
    a swirl of promise
    tickles up inside me.
    And I feel calm.
    Without the guilt.

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    HarperCollins Publishers
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Friday 3:22 p.m.
    So here’s the thing about being