Free Beautiful by Amy Reed Page B

him.
    â€œOkay.”
    I don’t care if he thinks I wasn’t a virgin. I don’t care if he thinks I’m a slut, if he thinks I’ve fucked a million boys before. All I want is for him to stop talking about this. I want nothing, silence. I want no memory, no feeling, no one, nothing inside me.
    Ethan finishes dressing while I look out the window at the wall of green trees that separates us from the next apartment building. He hands me my clothes and I just look at them sitting in my lap. Getting dressed seems like the most difficult thing I will ever have to do. Then I hear my mom’s bedroom door open, her slippered feet padding across the living room floor, and I throw my clothes on and smooth down my hair, and Ethan is up and out of my room and I follow him to the front door and my mom is sitting on the couch and turning on the TV and she looks at us and says, “Oh, hello,” and I say, “Mom, this is Ethan,” and she says, “Nice to meet you, Ethan,” and he says, “You too,” and she says, “Ethan, would you like to stay for dinner?” and he says, “Thank you, but I gotta be someplace.” I walk him to the door and he kisses me on the cheek, lingering too long so I can smell his hot, stale breath.
    â€œYou’re my girl, right?” he says softly.
    â€œRight,” I say. What else would I be? You’re the most popular guy at school and I’m nobody. I will keep letting you fuck me until you get tired of it, until you find someone better to fuck.
    He backs out the door batting those eyelashes I thought were so sexy when I first met him. Now I want to pluck them out one by one. I close the door behind him and my skin feelslike spiders and snakes and every disgusting thing imaginable is crawling all over it, trying to get inside of me. If I make the shower hot enough, it will kill them and I won’t feel anything but the burning and stinging of the water, not the dull pain where Ethan was inside me, not the sickness, not the fragments of feelings like hiccups in my brain.
    â€œIs he your boyfriend?” Mom calls from the living room.
    â€œI guess so,” I say.
    â€œHe seems nice,” she says. “I bet your father would like to meet him.”
    â€œI’m going to take a shower,” I say, and do not wait for her response.
    I lock the door to the bathroom and turn on the water as hot as it will go. I take off my clothes, get in and feel the water like knives slicing through me. I close my eyes and clench my teeth and focus on the pain, welcome it, let it become part of me. I hold on to the wall as my back is pelted with water, burning through my skin and getting inside me, burning my veins and my muscles and fat and bones and thoughts and memories, burning me until I am nothing, until I am clean. I do not listen to the voice in my head screaming at me to get out.
    There are voices you can silence.

(NINE)
    It’s a strange kind of quiet under a freeway overpass on a rainy day. You can hear the cars above you, muted by layers of concrete. You can hear the rain pounding on asphalt, on the metal of abandoned cars, on the wood of abandoned buildings. You can hear the boys on skateboards, their crunchy rolling back and forth, the wood hitting concrete, the scraping. You can hear the boys when they fall, their soft bodies hitting the ground, the skateboards flying, crashing, the shits, the fucks, the goddammits. You can hear all these things, but they’re somehow small, like you’re only hearing their shadows. You’re aware of everything but none of it matters. You can see the boys’ mouths move but all you can hear is static. The loudest thing is your teethchattering. The loudest thing is the rain pounding, too wet and too heavy to be snow even though it’s freezing.
    Sarah’s lips are blue. I pass her the pipe and she can barely keep it in her mouth. I help her light it because her hands are