Free Recovery Road by Blake Nelson

wrists.
    “It’s okay,” I tell her.
    “I just wanna be dead,” she whispers into the carpet. “I do. It’s all I ever wanted. I don’t want to be here. I swear I don’t.”
    Then she jumps up and runs out the door. I watch her disappear. I have no idea where she’s going.
    I dig my phone out and text my mom that we might be a while.

10
    T wo days later I’m riding in Martin Farris’s car. We’re going to the mall. I have apparently decided to let him be my dork-replacement-friend.
    Martin parks in the underground parking lot and we go inside. He’s dressed up a bit. He’s wearing new, uncool Nikes, uncool jeans, and some sort of golf shirt.
    We walk along the main concourse. It’s a Friday night. Martin wanted to come on a weekend night because he thought weekend nights were probably the hardest for me.
    “That’s probably when you partied the most,” he said on the phone.
    “That’s right,” I said back, though in fact I “partied” about the same every night.
    We cruise the mall. There are other people milling around. People on dates. It’s pretty embarrassing, but I follow Martin around, like girls are supposed to. That’s how I live now. I do what I’m supposed to do.
    Martin steers us to the Cineplex. We look at the movie times and study the possibilities. One of the other movies finishes and a stream of people come out.
    Suddenly, all I can think of is Stewart. The two of us slouched in the back of The Carlton theater, our feet draped over the seats.
    And then I know I can’t do this. No movies. Not with Martin Farris.
    “I don’t think I want to see a movie,” I say.
    “You don’t? Why not?”
    “Because.”
    Martin is confused. And a little hurt. “I thought that’s why we came here?”
    I avoid meeting his eye.
    “Is it because you’re with me?” he asks. “Because this isn’t a date. I know that. Not at all.”
    “I just don’t want to,” I say. “I want to do something else. I want to go ice-skating.”
    “But you said you hated ice-skating.”
    “I want to try it,” I lie, “I think it sounds like fun.”
    Martin leads us down the escalator to the ice rink. I don’t know how to ice-skate. I’ve never even
thought
about ice-skating before.
    We rent skates. We sit together on a wood bench and put them on. Martin is not speaking to me now. I’ve hurt his feelings. I should probably apologize. Or maybe he just needs to get over himself. He is a geek, after all. He said so himself.
    With our skates on, we stand at the edge of the rink. I like the way the ice looks: perfectly flat, perfectly white. I like the bracing cold of it.
    Martin is smart enough to know I don’t want help, I don’t want any hand-holding or other physical contact. So he leaves me to fend for myself.
    I take my first cautious steps onto the ice. I think I’m going to take off and go flying around the rink like the other people, but in fact, the minute I step forward, I fall. And then I can’t get up. And when I do, I fall again.
    It’s the skate blades. They bend over to the side. I stand up and try again and I fall backward this time, hard, on my ass.
    Meanwhile, Martin has already glided off into the flow of the other people. He’s totally skating.
    I crawl to the wall and pull myself up. He completes a lap and comes up behind me.
    “Jesus, Martin,” I say. “How do you do this?”
    “You have to hold your ankles straight,” he says.
    “How do you do
that
?”
    “You have to flex your muscles a certain way.”
    He offers his arm and I hold on to it. I try again. I get a little speed going and then I fall again. I slide a few feet and then stop, sprawled on my back on the ice.
    “This isn’t fun,” I say. “Why do people think this is fun?”
    Martin helps me up and I try again, complaining bitterly the whole time, though the truth is, I don’t mind it that much: falling, sliding to a stop, lying there on the cold whiteness.
    It numbs me. Which I like.
    Afterward, we go back to