Free Diamond Girl by Kathleen Hewtson Page A

big impulse, just a little one to go to sleep and hopefully make my mother feel like shit at the same time.
    I picked up my toothbrush and sat down on the toilet. I had seen a prison movie with Milan and Christy and I knew what to do. I took out Jeff’s lighter and held it to the end of the toothbrush. It took a while because I kept burning my fingers, but eventually I got it right and, when the end of the toothbrush was a sharp point, I took it into the shower with me.
    There are no locks on the doors at rehab, and if there had been, I don’t know if I would have locked it anyway since I wasn’t totally committed to being dead, just to making a statement of some kind. I squeezed my eyes shut and pressed down deep on my left wrist until I opened it up. It hurt like fucking hell, a lot more than I had been expecting, so I turned the cold water on and held my wrist under it.
    It felt better and the sight of my bright red blood running in pink streams down the drain made me happy in a weird way, made me feel real. In therapy speak, cutting yourself open is a proactive way of handling internal pain.
    I guess that could be true.
    I don’t know but it didn’t turn me into a cutter or anything. It was a one-time deal. I don’t like scars and, since that time, I have had to wear bracelets and oversized watches.
    It was easier with my right wrist, and after that I got dizzy and slid down the wall and rolled over onto my side.
    My stupid insulin beeper started going off. I guess all my defective blood leaking out made my sugar levels really low. Anyhow, it was my beeper that alerted the nurse in the hallway.
    There is a lot of irony in being me and I try to roll with it. So, finding out the next day that they had been planning on releasing me, but were now keeping me for a thirty day psychiatric review, was kind of funny.
    As long as they kept the Klonopin rolling, I could even laugh about it.
    Later on it became part of my madcap 'heir head' legend, the crazy blond Carey whose mother accidentally locked her up in rehab, and she tried to kill herself and ended locked up for real. I made sure no one laughed harder than me when the story got told and retold at school, and was later leaked into the papers.
    The whole sliced wrist thing ended up working out okay because, since I was officially crazy and had the bandaged wrists to prove it, I could share honestly in group and hold my head up with the other crazies.
    Jeff eyed me with new interest. I think he felt like maybe he had contributed to my actions, and every guy loves thinking he has that kind of power over a girl, so he paid me a ton of attention and our asshole counselor even assigned him as my ward buddy, someone to teach me the ropes.
    Nobody thought it was weird when we would meet in the lounge at night to sit side-by-side watching old movies and holding hands. The nurses even thought it was cute how he would walk me back to my room late at night. “Ahh, isn’t he a little gentleman?” After a few nights of this, they were relaxed enough to stop watching us closely and, one night, Jeff just followed me right back into my room.
    I loved having him lying beside me on the bed, holding me and telling me I was pretty. When his hand moved down my back and strayed to the top of my panties, and the hated blood pack, I grabbed his wrist and put it on my small breasts instead and started frantically kissing him.
    Understandably, he mistook my embarrassment for passion, and in a few seconds flat had shoved my panties to my knees and wriggled around with his face all twisted up, and shoved on a little further until he was inside me. It hurt, not as bad as tooth brushing my wrists had, but it still hurt. I tried to shift away and he pressed down harder and, about two seconds later, panted out my name. His breath in my face was rank and I turned my head, so he kissed my ear, and rolled off me.
    I hadn’t liked it very much, but I did know from reading books and seeing movies and