Just Another Boy Without a Sharper Knife

Five.
Vic’s POV

Nikki is nice enough I guess, she stayed with me while the ‘medical’ doctor looked over me, it was only then I realised the scars I would be left with. The ferocity I had attacked my body with, the pressure and unforgiving nature I had used when slashing at my skin was going t leave horrendous reminders of my failure.

The ‘medical doctor’ was a youngish man, maybe around thirty five, with perfect hair and perfect teeth and perfect everything, he was the stereotype and it pissed me off. He was perfectly polite and kind but his existence annoyed me. He represented everything I wanted to be and have in life, I wanted to be normal, I wanted to be part of the socially acceptable category in life, but im not. And this guy fucking runs it.

When he asked me to move the covers back I was terrified, no one had ever seen me exposed, and no one had ever seen my scars. I had never let anybody close enough. The ones on my upper arms and wrists had been easy enough to cover without raising suspicion, I had never really worn tanks and I had always worn bracelets – it was easy, the ones on my stomach, hips and thighs however were the easiest to hide, therefore the most affected. Every night I would pull down my pants and slash at my thighs, cuts and scars going in all different directions of all different depths.

“Victor, please, I need to make sure everything is clean and they won’t get infected.” He said, his voice pleading with me to cooperate, it was obvious he wanted out of here as quickly as possible.

“Can uh, can everyone like leave?” I asked in a small voice, looking around at my family not really wanted to see the rejection that would be clear on their faces.

“of course hunny, come on guys, we’ll be back soon ok Vic?” my mom replied back ,immediately, presenting me a reaction I had not expected, she had stopped crying a while ago, Nikki and my dad stood to follow her but mike stayed sat where he was, refusing to budge.

“Michael, you heard your brother, give him some privacy.” My mother snapped at him, but still he didn’t move, he just stared down at the bandages on my wrists and it was beginning to make me feel uncomfortable.

“No. im the one who found you Vic, trust me nothing im going to see now could be worse than that, so im not leaving.” His eyes shot up to meet mine as he said it, and I could almost see the memory flashing before his eyes. Fuck what have I done to him, I can’t imagine what it would have been like to find me like that, if our roles had been reversed I don’t know what I would have done.

“Fine, stay.” I replied shortly refusing to meet his eyes again.

It hurt, badly, removing the bandages.

The wounds that hadn’t been deep enough to warrant stitches had continued to bleed, causing the gauze to stick to the drying blood. Taking each off had meant reopening the wounds by tearing away the hardened scabs, and it hurt like fuck. The deepest cuts, the ones on my wrists and the few on my thighs that had needed stitched were the easiest to clean and re-bandage but they were the ones that would scar the worst. There were around four stitched wounds on each of my wrists, all perfect horizontal slashes with a single vertical one splitting them down the middle, almost like a tick-tack-toe board.

Mikes breath caught in his throat when they were shown, it was horrible, I couldn’t stop the tears that flowed from my eyes, I had really had failed, I had gone to extreme measures to ensure I finally died and I had failed; and look what was left.

“Why mike? Why did you have to find me? WHY DIDN’T YOU LET ME DIE??” I yelled at him, not even realising I was doing it until his face flushed red and he stood up and pointed a finger in my face.

“Are you fucking kidding me Vic?? You are my fucking brother, I wasn’t going to let you fucking die. Are you stupid Vic? Do you really think I would be okay without you? Why didn’t I let you die? Because I couldn’t fucking deal without you Vic, how could you even contemplate leaving me? Leaving this family? Your friends behind? We have done nothing but try and make things easier for you, we have always been here for you, were here if you need us, no matter fucking what. You could always have come to us but you didn’t, instead you kept everything to yourself telling us you were fucking fine until you clearly couldn’t take it anymore so you tried to fucking kill your self. Do you know what that feels like Vic?”

His words only made me sob harder, causing the doctor who had just stood there looking lost to call Nikkei back in, quickly explaining what had happened and running out the room as quickly as he could, followed closely by mike who had tears in his eyes as well.

*~**~*

Its half eight on the first Friday morning of summer and here I am, sitting in my car outside a mental health clinic. I have been out hospital for almost two days now and i am panicking. It’s hot out, like 80 degrees hot and I hate it. I can wear shorts of course, but im wearing a jumper and im melting, the panic I am feeling making me sweat even more.

I know that sitting here delaying and wasting time isn’t going to make it go away, me sitting here isn’t going to magically make the fact that I have to go therapy disappear. Sitting here isn’t going to go back in time and find some way to ensure it worked, sitting here isn’t going to kill me.

What if I go in there and people laugh, what if I go in there and am judged? What is going to happen to me when I go back to school? But what if I go in there and it works, what happens if going to therapy actually helps me? What if going in there and sitting in a room of people who are suffering in some way that may even be the same or similar to how I am will do me good? What if by going in there and doing this I won’t want to die anymore?

Because, the truth is, I don’t want to want to die. I don’t want to be like this, but this is the way I am. I want to die but I don’t want to think like this I don’t want to feel like this, I don’t want to feel and believe that suicide is my only option left. This is not the life I wanted growing up, this is not how I imagined living my teenage life, this is not what I want now either. If going in there and doing this, even though im fucking terrified is really going to help me, then fuck it, im doing it.

Taking a few more second to gather and mentally prepare myself for this I get out the car, locking the door behind me on instinct, and walk into the clinic. The first thing that hits me is the smell; it smells pleasant, like fresh coffee and air fresheners, its unexpected. I don’t know what I was expecting but it wasn’t it this. It wasn’t going to welcoming and refreshing and well, nice.

The second thing I notice is Kellin. Kellin fucking Bowstick is standing behind the desk right in front of me. Fuck. What is he doing here? Does he work here or something or is he a patient as well?

"Hi." he said, looking up at me and locking eyes with me as I approached sheepishly. "Um, I'm Kellin.” Yeah I know you name, your Kellin fucking Bowstick, “This is Tay." He pointed towards the small girl beside him that, unsurprising, I hadn’t really noticed until now, maybe because she was shying away slightly, however she did look up at me and she waved at me.

"Vic." I replied quickly and in a small voice, my voice didn’t even sound like my own anymore, it was quiet and timid and broken.

"Are you here for the group session?" He asked after a few seconds of unnecessary awkward silence.

"Um yeah." I replied awkwardly, god I hate how uncomfortable people make me now, I never used to be like this. He handed me a sheet of paper that I recognised as a sign up sheet so I quickly wrote me name and followed the directions Kellin gave me, stopping quickly to turn around giving him a small smile and thanking him.

Walking through the door of the room Kellin had directed me to I took a deep breath and naturally, with the way I think, prepared myself for the worst. I was wrong to of course, because when I walked in I was once again greeted with the smell of fresh coffee, but instead of seeing Kellin standing in front of me I saw Nikki sitting on a chair in a circle along with seven or eight other people. They all turned to look at me when I opened the door, but there was not one look of disgust or loathing or even judgment.

“Hey Vic! Come on, take a seat,” Nikki beamed at me, how could she be so smiley in here, yes the smell and room its self was comforting but the people were giving off the aura he knew only too well. It was the same vibe Vic knew he himself gave off, it was the feeling you got when you walked into Vic’s own bedroom, it was the suffocation atmosphere you were immersed in when you entered his en suit bathroom. Vic looked around the circle again and realised he saw one or two familiar faces. They were faces I had seen in passing, around town, in the music store, but none, thankfully, were from his school. Others were unfamiliar but welcoming, and welcoming was something I did not often receive from strangers.

“Ok guys, now that we are all here, I would like to welcome you all, this is the first time any of you have been in group. Some of you have been seeing me privately for a while, some of you not quite so long,” Nikki paused, glancing at me and smiling supportively, “so this is a new experience for you all, but I want you all to embrace it. There will be no judgment in the room, ever. Everyone is here to feel accepted and like they have somewhere they feel safe and welcomed, where you feel like you can be honest and actually talk about why you are here, because there is a reason for every single one of you being here. You are going to learn to trust each other and to trust me, to do this you all have to promise right now that nothing said or discussed in this room when we are together reaches ANYONES ears outside of these sessions ok? No body, not even the best friend you tell everything because you know trust them blah blah, not a single soul.”

There was a round of murmurs and agreements from all of us, it was comforting and really encouraging to here Nikki say all of those things, especially the last one.

“ok so to start off with, lets just go around and say our names, our ages, and three facts about ourselves, but the trick is one of those three facts has to be a lie. This is called two truths one lie, so they have to random and convincing so the lie isn’t obvious ok? After you go the rest of us will try and figure out what was true and what was a lie ok?” another round of murmurs and ‘yes’s’, “ok ill go first.”

“My name is Nikki Quinn, I am 43 years old, I have met the president, I don’t know how to drive and the boy at the reception desk is my son.”

“There is no way you’ve met the president” a boy with swooshy brown hair and big eyebrows called out, before reclining in on himself and hiding behind his fringe.

“Yeah I agree,” a girl with bright orange hair said softly,

“He isn’t your son is he? You have different last names.” I said quietly, everyone turned to look at me, “its just yours is Quinn and his is Bowstick, ehm me and Kellin are in the same year at school, I only know his name, I don’t know him though.”

There were a few minor arguments over it before we all agreed that Kellin probably wasn’t her son. God I hoped not.

“You’re wrong, he is my son, and we have different last names because Quinn is my maiden name. I haven’t met the president guys, I wish but sadly not, come on that was totally easy. Right who wants to go next?”

WE continued playing the game for a while, I learnt that the boy with swooshy hairs name was Alex Gaskarth, he was 16, in the same year of school as me, he worked in the music store in town and has a boyfriend called Jack. The girl with the orange hair is Hayley Williams, her hair is not natural funnily enough, she is 18, a high school drop out and pursuing a music career, she also added at the end, saying she might as well get it out now that she was depressed and had tried to kill herself many times. There was a guy named Austin Carlile, 17, who had a lot of tattoos and was very tall and lanky, lankier than mike, he told us ‘the game was stupid’ for all three of his facts, very friendly. Darcy Mills, 15, was too skinny. Lucy Hale, 18, was sad apparently. Josh Franceshi, 16, moved from England and was in a band, he also told us he had post traumatic stress disorder, but didn’t tell us why. Katelyn told she was 16 and didn’t want to be here, that was pretty much it. Simon Neil, 19, well I’m almost 100% sure Simon was drunk, Nikki told him to stay behind after and speak to her, and we all oo’d like we were elementary kids and someone had just been called to the principle, it make us all and Nikki included laugh, Simon did too, but im not sure if he really knew what we were laughing at.

Eventually it was my turn, “ehm, my name Is Victor Fuentes, Vic for short please, I am 17. I uh, I was born in Mexico, I don’t know how to ride a bike and eh, I tried to kill myself roughly a week ago.”

“Well, the bandages poking out from under your sleeves make it pretty obvious the last on is true mate, if you’re trying to hide it your not doing a very good job are yah?” Josh replied pretty quickly after a short silence enveloped the door, raising an eye brow and nodding at my sleeves, I looked down to see they had shot up slightly and the blood stained bandages that covered my arms were on full display, I quickly pulled them down before dropping my head.

“I don’t think you can’t ride a bike, I mean come on who doesn’t know how to ride a bike!?” Katelyn asked in perfectly friendly and calm voice, it was completely different to how she has aced only minuets before. There was more argument and agreements, Alex even shouted out ‘well guys, just because is Hispanic doesn’t mean he was born in Mexico now does it,” which made me laugh considering that is actually the lie. He was disregarded however by everyone else’s insistence that I had to know how to ride a bike, I shot him a sneaky wink and a smirk to let him know he was right. He sat back in his chair and folded his arms triumphantly.

“You’re wrong guys, I wasn’t born in Mexico, and you should have listened to Alex! I was born here in sunny san Diego!”

It was amazing how we were all smiling and laughing, it didn’t feel like we were sitting in a therapy session, It felt like we were just new friends getting to know each other, even I was smiling a little, and laughing occasionally, it was like we were able to forget our problems because we surrounded by other people who understood, people who had problems themselves and knew exactly what you were feeling and what you needed. We were bonding.

“Guys, im sorry to say that is all we have time for today, obviously today was jus a fun kind of bonding session, from next week on we are going to get down to business ok?” we all just smiled and waved at her as we made our way of the room.

I smiled and said hi to Kellin on my way out, I don’t really know what came over me, and I was just in a pretty ok mood after that, maybe it would help after all.