A More Deserving Blackness by Angela Wolbert Page A

spots of blood on his shirt, and – I look down – small splotches on his jeans as well.  It’s still seeping from my wrist, and my opposite thumb is red, in the creases of my skin and caked under the nail.
                  Logan notices it too, of course, pulling my wrist up for closer inspection.  His expression gives nothing away but I feel the nausea return anyway.  He doesn’t do anything but stand and pull me easily to my feet, though, ushering me over to the sinks where he runs cool water over my hands and wrist, rinsing the blood away and tearing off a strip of paper towel, blotting it gently. 
                  “I called your name.  You didn’t hear me.”  He looks up at me.  “Even when I was right in front of you, you didn’t hear me.”
                  No, of course not.  I couldn’t hear him over the screaming.
                  Logan studies me for a second.  “Do you want to go back to class?”
                  My fierce headshake almost prompts a chuckle from him.  Almost.
                  “Okay.”
                  That’s it.  Just okay.  Okay, let’s hide out in the girls’ bathroom.  Okay, let’s hold hands with a girl who cuts herself with her own thumbnail just so she can hear something other than the horror show in her head.  Okay.
                  “Bree?”
                  I look up at him, not sure what to expect.
                  “Can you – will you do me a favor?”
                  Waiting, watching him.
                  “Text me.  Or call me, okay?  You don’t have to say anything, just dial the number.  I’ll know it’s you.”  I look at him quizzically and he nods his head toward the wrist he’s still holding a towel to. “Next time you feel like – like this.  Just call me, okay?”
                  I wish it was that easy.  Like it was a choice, like tying your shoes or getting your mail.  But I’m not always aware I’m doing it, not at first.  It’s just a reaction, a way to deal with the world falling out from under me.  It’s automatic.  Survival.
                  The bell signaling the end of class makes me flinch violently, my nerves still raw, and Logan squeezes my hands, steadying them.
                  He’s smart enough not to wait for an answer he knows he won’t receive, and tosses the soiled towel into the trash, bending to pick something up – my backpack – and hand it to me.  I thank him with my eyes and he takes my hand.
                  “You’re welcome,” he says, unfazed as a girl I don’t know comes around the corner and actually gasps, staring in abject horror at seeing Logan Brenner in the girls’ bathroom with blood on his clothes. 
                  I smile at his back as he leads me back into the world.
                  I want him to keep going, just lead me right out of the school and back to his car where it’s just me and him, where I can breathe, but there’s still almost a half of a day of school left so instead he walks me to my next class, sending me a quick apology before releasing my hand at the door.  He pauses just a second, presumably to be sure I won’t melt into a trembling, psychotic puddle right there in the hall, and then he’s gone.
                  It’s just after French that it happens again.
                  It doesn’t take much.  A few words, really.  But then it never does take much to get down to blood, does it?
                  “Hey, Bree.  Nice jacket.”
                  I look over from my locker at the beautiful blonde girl and realize, absurdly, that I don’t even know her.  Obviously.  I don’t know anyone.  Except for Logan.  And Erik, of course.  But after that little revelation in health he’d found me in