Free A Different Kind of Beauty by Alyssa Cooper Page B

things.” His voice trails, and I know that if I try to pursue it further, he’ll stop speaking to me.
    “Why do you do this to yourself?”
    He breathes into my hair. “I don’t know what you mean.”
    “You’re killing yourself.”
    “It’s alright, Linds.”
    “You always had such respect for life. Don’t you remember? We used to rescue moths. It was like we owned the world .” I don't sound angry when we have this conversation anymore. I sound sad. I sound lost. If I still got mad each time we argued, I’d die of exhaustion. “How can you do this to yourself?”
    “I’m not trying to kill myself.” Placating me.
    “Then what? You know what you’re doing. You know what’s happening to you. What are you trying to prove?”
    “Nothing,” he says quietly. “No one has anything to prove.”
    “You’re running away from what’s here,” I whisper bitterly. “You can’t stand the thought that not everyone can be perfect.”
    He is silent for a long time. Finally, he says, "I've made a lot of mistakes, Lindsay."
    "And you think this is going to fix them?"
    "It makes it easier," he says uncomfortably.
    "What?" I demand, unswayed by his agitation. "What does it make easier?"
    He shakes his head slowly, hopelessly, because we both know by now that I'll never understand. "Everything," he says . "The world."
    There have been times when I have wanted to hate him, but I couldn't. I never could. Not even now. So I say, “I wish I could understand you,” and I'm sure he can hear my misery hiding just under the surface.
    "I’m sorry, Lindsay," he says quietly. "I'm so sorry I hurt you."
    I wish I could comfort him, but I don't know how anymore. It's been so long. "I know you didn't mean to."
    "Good intentions don't mean shit, Lindsay. I guess no one ever told you that, but it's true. They're worthless."
    His bitterness shocks me. "Don't say that."
    "It's true. No one remembers how hard you try. They just remember the moment you fuck up. And they remember it forever."
    "Jesse..."
    He bores into me with eyes so sharp I'm sure they could tear through my flesh. I shrivel in the face of his power. After a moment, he says, "Maybe you should go."
    And like a coward, I take the chance he has given me.
    ***
    When we were children, we were best friends.
    I don't remember meeting Jesse. He simply was ; a constant presence in even my most time-clouded memories. We played together from the time we could take our first confident and yet tottering steps, and when he fell and scraped his knees, I wailed along with him as if my own flesh had been torn apart at his pain. Soon, we were running rampant around the block, our own private kingdom, screaming and leaping and insisting we were being chased by pirates. We baked in the wind and the sun until our faces were burnt and brown, and I wailed at the injustice that little boys could go shirtless in the heat when little girls could not. And sympathetically, a young, wide-eyed Jesse would pull his t-shirt back over his head. We discovered small copses of trees at the edges of our domain, and they seemed like deep, endless forests. Taking on animal instincts together, we howled like wolves and went tearing through the underbrush. We built ourselves a shelter in the dark depths of those trees, guarding it like a fortress and claiming the forest as our own.
    When the other children in our pack began to repel from the opposite sex, flustered and confused by the differences between us as they moved steadily towards adolescence, Jesse and I were somehow immune. We held fast to each other, frustrating the others, who could not comprehend a bond as powerful as ours.
    When puberty finally hit, taking us all over like a tide and carrying us into the halls of a frightening new school, those friends became sure that Jesse and I were having sex. And for a time, when the squawking flocks of young girls questioned me relentlessly, I bitterly denied their accusations. Jesse had offered me many