Page 3 of Tortured Whispers
Fuck them.
They didn’t understand the relief it brought me to cut. Cutting helped me breathe again. Maybe it was wrong but it soothed me the same way a pacifier calmed a baby.
“Miss Powers, good morning,” Mr. Fontroy my homeroom teacher smiled at me and I smiled back. “Ah, ah. I’m not letting you walk into this classroom your senior year without speaking.”
“Hi, Mr. Fontwoy,” I whispered and tucked away wisps of my hair that had fallen from my ponytail. My books slipped from my grasp a little because my palms were slick. I hated speaking and I hated when I mispronounced something so simple.
I could say it in my head a million times.
Mr. Fontroy.
Mr. Fontroy.
Mr. Fontroy.
It sounded fine but the minute I opened my mouth to speak, it was like talking underwater. My lips and tongue betrayed me every damn time.
“Very good, Miss Powers. Take your seat.” He gestured to the front of the class but I went straight for the back. Being in the back meant you were less likely to get called on to speak or read out loud.
Once, in tenth grade, my teacher made me read an entire chapter out loud and I stumbled the whole way through. I cut for a week straight after that because each time I replayed the incident my lungs got tight and I felt water swallowing me.
The interaction with Mr. Fontroy wasn’t that bad though. I could deal with that. I steadied my breathing and went on about my day.
At lunch, I sat at a table near the back door. I stared down at my phone with the heel of my hand resting on my mouth while I tugged on the fabric of my sleeve with my lips. “Hey, Brooklyn,” Pia McClain sat in front of me like she always did. I don’t know when she attached herself to my side at lunch but she’d been coming to sit with me for at least two years.
Every day was the same. She said hi and sat down, then she talked to me off and on the entire lunch period about stuff she found on her phone. I spoke very little and she seemed fine with it. Pia was the closest thing to a friend I had.
“Hey, you seen this new challenge? It’s called Live Stream the Loser. It’s some stupid shit where extremely beautiful and popular people prank losers. God. We’re like sitting ducks,” she scoffed.
I shook my head and pulled my sleeve from between my lips to glance at her phone. I was glad we were seniors and we’d be graduating soon. Kids were getting stupider by the minute. Everything was a goddamn challenge.
I was born in the wrong era, I swear.
I hated mumble rap, trap music, and shitty pop songs. I lived for the days of Hall and Oates and Phil Collins. I’d choose sitting my room, on the floor with a stack of cassette tapes and a boombox any day over overpriced headphones and Apple Music.
Sure, the quality was amazing but sometimes perfection isn’t perfect. The hiss, crack and pop that came from forty-fives and cassette tapes gave me goosebumps. They were raw and flawed.
They were like me.
After school, I went home and pulled out my vintage Sony boombox. I’d found it in a thrift store underneath some toasters and VCR’s and only paid six bucks for it. It worked like a charm. I pulled out my tape box and sat cross-legged on the floor, letting my knees fall to the side.
I stared at the box decorated with music notes and vinyl records then pulled the top off. Inside were rows and rows of tapes. I pulled out Big Bam Boom by Hall and Oates. I shut my eyes and put the tape in, letting the familiar clicks ease my anxious mind.
School always made me anxious and jittery once I got home. My head filled with water and in order to stop myself from cutting, I needed to hear music.
Music cut through the water in my head.
It sliced through the liquid.
Cut.
Slice.
Before the first song got started good I was rummaging through my nightstand drawer looking for a razor. I checked between the pages of my blank journal and didn’t see it in my usual hiding spot. I moved to the top of my nightstand and tipped my lamp over on its side.
Fuck.
That one was gone too.
