Ella

Ella:  “I’m so angry, I could spit!”  is what my grandmother used to say.

I say it to myself:  I’M SO ANGRY I COULD SPIT!

Only, it doesn’t work.  I mean, I don’t want to spit.  Spit?! 

I’m so angry, I could cry is more like it. I am crying.  I always cry when I’m this mad.

It doesn’t even matter anymore what I’m mad at, or what I was mad at.  Now I’m mad at myself.  For being mad?  For being me.  And the worst part is, I can’t go back, I can’t ever be unangry.  I can’t NOT have told my boyfriend that I never want him to talk to Jayla again, and I don’t care if they’ve been friends forever, and if it doesn’t mean anything like we’re going to break up, or anything to do with me at all – that’s what he said, but I didn’t – don’t – believe him.  Still, I shouldn’t have said anything.  Then he wouldn’t have gotten mad, and we wouldn’t have had the fight we had and he wouldn’t have left all pissed and maybe going to break up with me, I don’t know…

All I can think about is scraping a piece of glass up my arm.  Slashing thin lines of blood.  I know where to cut to really hurt myself, I slash up by the crook of my elbow instead of my wrist.

The broken glass works.  A flap of skin is free, hanging, and blood is running down my arm, and I feel better.

Meghan

Meghan:  He touches me, and I expect more.  I mean, where’s the thrill, the shiver down deep, the roller coaster ride, stomach in my mouth, rush through my crotch?

When my mother was drinking, she and I used to have these great talks.  I was ten when I asked her what was so great about sex, why did people do it?

She told me that it’s all about the orgasm, which feels like when you’re careening down the tall slope of a rollercoaster, that feeling in your gut that goes through your crotch.

Well, so here I am, and I’m not getting it.  I mean, if eventually I’m supposed to feel the rush of going down so fast you can’t breathe except to scream… shouldn’t I be feeling that tension of slowly rising up the coaster?  That, “it’s gonna happen, something’s gonna happen, something’s gonna feel good, feel better than anything” – like that?

Now his hand moves over my shirt, rubbing circles over my nipples. 

Okay, that’s not bad.

I’m starting to get it, starting to feel it, but then –

Not.

I shut down.

I get off the ride, metaphorically speaking.

I remember asking my mother what the big deal was about putting your privates together with a boy’s.  She said – besides the rollercoaster part – she said, you know the emptiness you feel inside sometimes?

I did and I didn’t.

She said, well, when a man puts his penis inside you, it makes you feel whole.

I want to feel whole even more than I want to feel the rollercoaster rush.

But all I feel is Mathias’s random groping.  Reaching lower, but I get nothing.

What is wrong with me?

Jayla

Jayla:  The story spread.

My story!

I found out after I got my lunch of a bagel with nothing on it and a bottle of water.  As I passed the jock table on my way to the theater table, this guy, this jerk-off, he got in front of me and mimed unzipping his you-know-what.  He mimed holding out something huge, when his is probably all shrunken and small, pinky-sized, not zuchinni –sized like he was pretending.

I only noticed because I was trying not to.

Then the cheerleaders, well not all of them, they’re not all evil, but a bunch of them, they started pretending to suck dick.

Swallowing back my tears, I hope they don’t see me gulp, but it’s too late.

“Swallow!  Swallow!”  they chant. 

Turning red, I don’t even have to swallow my own spit, my mouth is so dry.  I hurry past.  When I get to my table, not really my table, but the theater-geek table I’ve adopted… I find a place at the end, across from my friend Lauren.  She looks at me with sad eyes.

So, she knows too.

They all know, I swallow.  I suck dick, and I swallow.  That’s what they’re going to call me for the next four years, right?  Right?  Swallow.

Because it’s not like I’m smart and get all A’s, even in honors math and English, it’s not like I’m the youngest reporter for the school paper, and it’s not like I got this cute haircut that cost me a week of babysitting money, and at home I take care of ‘lissa and Mikey, and I bake fresh cheddar cheese bread which I slather with butter and toast in a pan – making the best Goddamned grilled cheese sandwiches in the whole fucking world.  It’s not like I wasn’t Miss Petite Westie, then L’il Miss Westie, and finally, last year, Miss Westie, riding in my own float in the Memorial Day parade and again this year, in the Labor Day parade.

It’s not like I’m all that, not to them.

To these kids I’m mostly meeting for the first time, I’m only my reputation as a girl who swallows.

Juliet

Juliet:  I don’t want to do it.

     I have to do it.

     I don’t want to—

     Have to--

I can’t breathe, I can’t breathe.

I can.  Juliet, you can do it, you’ll be okay, I tell myself.

You’re not dying, it just feels that way.  It’s just a panic attack. 

Wiping cool sweat from my brow, I hit the space bar on my laptop, waking it up.  Open Safari, sign in to Youtube.  Open iMovie, and I’m almost ready to record. 

I don’t want to do this, but I have to because I can’t breathe and it helps when I’m someone else, performing, playing to my fans but also revealing something from deep inside, my voice--

I am a star, I whisper inside, afraid of what I might say if I dare to speak -- that it might be the wrong thing, that someone’ll get hurt if I even breathe.

Pulling my hair back, I stuff it into the piece of black stocking I use so no one will recognize me.  Sometimes, all I wear is the stocking.  Sometimes I pull it down over my forehead, eyes and nose. 

Today, I put on a snarled Hannah Montana wig from when I was ten and loved Hannah Montana and loved to parade around pretending to be her and now I don’t know who I’m pretending to be anymore or if I’m pretending at all.

Next, a Mardi Gras feathered mask over the upper half of my face.  Then, get my wastebasket.  At last, with the tap of a key, I am recording.  Show’s on!

     Sticking a finger down my throat, I throw up for the camera.

Emily

  Emily:  Pills.

     They’re all over my house.  My Dad takes Vitamin D, a multivitamin, and right now, an antibiotic.  The dog takes doggie-profen and glucosamine.  My brother and I each take three vitamins a day, chewables because he’s only five, and me?  I won’t swallow a pill.  
     Drives my mother nuts.

     She easily swallows her pills, tiny handfuls of them.  She keeps them ordered and ready in one of those big, rectangular pill boxes, only she had to adapt hers, putting stickers over the pre-written days because she takes different combinations of pills on schedule, four times a day.  She keeps the bottles in a big basket in her room.  One day, I checked them out.  Just checked them out.  I wasn’t going to take any.  I won’t swallow a pill.

     Vitamin D, 2000 mg.

     Vitamin D, 1000 mg.

     Multivitamin

     Algaecal (?!)
     Women’s weight loss plus supplement

     Tramadol

     Trazodone

     Cyclobenzaprine

     Neurontin, 100 mg.

     Neurontin, 600 mg.

     Synthroid

     Abilify

     Lorazapam

    

 Me, I won’t swallow a pill.

     ...But I will snort them. ;)  

Liz

     Liz:  I hate my mother.  I hate my mother, hate my mother, hate my mother, hate HATE MY MOTHER, hate her.
     Because of her, I want to die.  No joke, I really do.  I can't go back to class.  I can't.  I can't, ever.
     I'm done for.  It's all her fault.
  
     It started in 6th grade, when I got my first period.  I mean, what happened, happened today of course, but it wouldn't have happened if my mother hadn't been crazy.  It wouldn't have happened if she let me use tampons like the rest of the freakin world.
     She said, no joke, that she didn't want me to lose my virginity so young.  In 6th grade.  When she gave me my first pad, and I said Anna used tampons.  My mother said if Anna's mother wanted her to grow up and be a slut, that was fine, but she wasn't going to let me, she didn't want me to lose my virginity... (to a tampon, OMG!)
     I mean, I didn't think that at the time.  It sounded hinky, but I was like, okay Mommy, because what did I know?  Maybe a tampon was just the same as a penis.
     That's a lie -- I knew it was different, even in 6th grade, I knew it wasn't the same, but even so, I wore the pad, and so on and so forth, until now.  Until today.
     And it had to be a big, white, diaper of a pad -- not one of those ultra thin, deodorized, with wings pads.  Which is why I could never wear pants when I had my period.  I was sure the outline of my pad would show.  I didn't want anyone to know I had my period, of course, but also I was embarrassed to be wearing a pad when everyone else I knew used tampons.
    So that's why I was wearing a skirt today.  That's how come I can't ever go back to class.  Why I'm going to sneak away as soon as the nurse leaves me alone, gonna sneak away out of school out of here, OUT OF HERE, thanks Mom.
    I'll just say it.  You probably figured it out, but I'll just say it.  I was in Social Studies class, and Mr. Lynch asked me to collect the homework, and I was walking up and down the rows when I felt it between my legs.  My pad!  Slipped, out of my underwear.  I clamped my legs shut.  I started to cry.  I couldn't move.  I said I had to go to the nurse, but I couldn't move and everyone thought I'd gone crazy or something, but it was worse than that.
     I don't know why I didn't just stay put, not move until the bell rang and everyone left and let them think I was crazy.  Maybe I thought the pad hadn't slipped all the way.  Maybe I thought if I ran fast enough I could outrun reality, outrun shame.
     You know what happened.  The pad landed on the floor.  I acted like it wasn't mine, and no one said anything, just their mouths dropped open and it was silent.  Silent as death.  My death.
     I can never go back.
     I will never go home.
     I hate my mother.
     Now you know why.

Nora

Nora:  I follow Gina into her room, and then freeze.  Maybe my mouth hangs open for a moment, but I quickly shut it and continue into the room – pretending I’m not humbled, awed, diminished? By the hundreds of pictures of supermodels.  Cut-outs from magazines paper the walls.  The dresser drawers.  The closet door.  Even the headboard of Gina’s bed is a rainbow of eyes, faces, bodies.

I guess I didn’t hide my surprise so well, because Gina says, “My mom and I cut out pictures of women we admire.  They’re for inspiration.”

For what?  I wonder.

As if she read my mind, Gina says, “It’s supposed to help me get thin.”

“Uh huh,” I say.  So lame. 

Gina crosses the floor, her corduroys swishing because of her thighs rubbing together.  That’s exactly why I never wear corduroys.  But if Gina is embarrassed, it doesn’t show.  Still, after patting down a curled corner on one of the pictures, she turns to me – a long way from supermodel thin.  A long way from any kind of thin – and she says, “I don’t think it’s working, and I don’t know why.  Don’t tell anyone, but I’m bulimic.”

I didn’t think I could feel any smaller than I already do, with all those beautiful eyes staring at me.  But I do feel smaller, less than.  And something burns in me – jealousy.