Everything That Makes You by Moriah McStay

Why can’t it be next year? Or ten years from now?”
    â€œIf you don’t do it soon, you will have to wait. The recovery time is four months, at least. It’s not like you can schedule it whenever you want it. If the donation is there, you’ve gotta be ready for it.”
    â€œI know.”
    â€œOnce you get up to Chicago, you won’t have that chunk of time again for four years. You’ve already got all the credits you need to graduate, you’re already set with college. It’s the perfect time.”
    â€œDid Mom pay you or something? What’s with the sales pitch?”
    â€œYou’re suspicious, because I want what’s best for you?”
    â€œHow do you know this is best for me?”
    â€œYou want to wallow every February twenty-seventh from now till you die?”
    â€œIt’s one day! Every other day I’m fine.”
    â€œYou’re burned every day, Fiona.”
    â€œYet you make a bigger deal about it than I do,” she snapped. “ You didn’t get burned, Ryan. I did.”
    Ryan looked at the table. “I know.”
    â€œSo you can’t be all high-and-mighty about what I should do.”
    â€œI’m not. I just want to help. I want to make it better.”
    Make me better, you mean. “Is it that hard to look at me?”
    It was a hateful thing to say. She was equally pleased and horrified as all expression melted off his face.
    She stood, picking up her Moleskine. “Tell Lucy and David I went home.”
    â€œI’ll drive you.”
    â€œI want to walk.”
    â€œNo, let me—”
    She held up her hand and walked out without a glance or a word to anyone else.
    It wasn’t a long walk home—maybe a mile—but it was cold and gray in that way that only Memphis in the winter can be. Not cold enough to justify buying a two hundred dollar puffy down coat, but never warm enough for the bulky sweatshirts everyone made do with instead. And the gray. She hadn’t seen actual sunlight in a month and a half. Maybe vitamin D withdrawal was the real reason she was so foul by the end of February.
    Tossing her hood over her head and pulling the drawstringtight, Fiona bundled against herself and began the trudge home. Gradually the walk warmed her. Cold, clean air filled up her lungs and scrubbed them clean. She unfolded slowly, each vertebra notching itself upright when good and ready. Twenty minutes later, her hood was down, her back straight, her good cheek flushed.
    At some point, Fiona found herself simply standing. A low wall edged the lawn just beside her. She was only a few blocks from home, but she walked over to sit on it. Not moving forward or backward, but sideways.
    She breathed, in and out. She felt the cold, hard stone poke into the cold, hard of her tailbone. She stared ahead at nothing in particular.
    Ryan was right, of course. Everything was horrible on February 27. She was horrible.
    On February 27, she was scarred. Every bit of her—face, heart, soul, brain—was mauled and mutilated. She was nothing but damage.
    She hated it all. Her scars, her self-pity, herself.
    She wanted to be whole.
    She pulled her Moleskine and pen from her pocket and began to write:
    Accidents and incidents / Freak twists in coincidence
    Build me up, like bones and skin
    I want love and sin
    Let me lure you in
    Let me begin again
    But this fate and skin / They trap me in.
    Well, she didn’t write it all at once. There were stops and starts, scratched-out lines, rearranged words. Countless breaths came in and out while the sun dipped away, and the night crept up. She only vaguely noticed the lost light and cold fingers, but this was a perfect kind of trance.
    She looked up when the car honked.
    Ryan screeched to a jerky stop at the curb in front of her and hopped out. “Where the hell have you been?!”
    â€œHere,” she said, looking at him with a groggy, afternoon-nap