99 Ways to Save a Life

Call me Blaze.

Those three words seemed to spark more conversation than anything I’d ever said in my entire life. Everyone always wanted to know why I wanted to be called something other than the name on my birth certificate. “Blythe is such a pretty name,” they’d always say. But I hated it. Blaze was better. Much better.

“It says here that your name is Blythe,” Erin said. She was sitting on the other end of my bed, peering at a stack of papers clipped to a clipboard. Apparently, today was my lucky day. I’d spend the week holed up in my room, listening through the paper thin walls as she annoyed the living shit out of every person here. I’d hoped I wouldn’t be next, but of course here she was, prying for information I really didn’t want to give out.

“But you have Blaze written on your name tag,” she continued.

I didn’t answer.

“Blaze…” Erin seemed content talking to herself for the moment. “You mean…like fire?”

Yes, you idiot. Blaze, like fire. What else would I mean?

“Y-yeah,” I said, cursing myself for stuttering again. Why couldn’t I just speak normally?

“Is there any particular reason you like being called Blaze?”

“I-I like fire.” I held up my hand to show her the burn mark, and her eyes widened.

“Oh, my. How did you get that?”

Her question does something strange to my mind – or maybe it’s all this damn fresh air, who knows – but instead of answering, I’m suddenly reliving the day everything changed.

I’m stuck in a bathroom stall, listening to the fashion zombies drone on and on about the size of their pores and which mascara promises less clumping. I call them the zombies because they all look and act the same, right down to their, I’m-so-much-better-than-you smiles. My breathing is so quiet that I can barely hear it myself, but that’s not my major concern. My major concern is not being discovered. I can’t deal with them again.

“Did you see the pants Greg was wearing today?” one of them says. I can’t tell who; their voices all sound the same to me.

“Oh my God, they were so tight you could practically see the outline of his junk.”

“I know. It was kind of hot.”

I roll my eyes and glance at my watch. Ten minutes. They’ve been in here for ten minutes, and I’ve been gone from French class for twenty. My teacher is going to kill me.

“I think I’ll ask Greg to Homecoming. He looks like he could use a hand dealing with that bulge of his.”

Peals of laughter echo throughout the room. I slowly and quietly unclench myself from the position I was in – sitting on the toilet seat with my legs pulled up to my chest so my feet aren’t visible underneath the stall – and peer through the tiny crack in the door.

The lead zombie, Leandra, is perched on the bathroom counter, her eyes glued to the small, black mechanical device in her hands. She’s texting at the speed of light. The girls on either side of her are involved in their own activities: touching up an already flawless face, removing chipped nail polish.

Why won’t they leave?

“What time is it, Lee?” the zombie closest to the door says.

Leandra rattles off an answer without so much as pausing to glance up at her friend. “12:34.”

“Shit. I need a smoke before lunch or I’ll die.” The girl reaches into her purse, pulls out a package of cigarettes, and dives in again is search of something else – probably a lighter.

I sigh and move to return to my previous spot – it doesn’t look like they’re going anywhere anytime soon – but my foot slips on a bit of slippery floor, and before I can catch myself, I fall. I fall directly onto the ground, and a pained screech leaves my mouth as the back of my head connects with the toilet. Abruptly, the room goes silent.

The fashion zombies know they’re not alone.

“Who’s there?”

I scrambled to get to my feet before one of them comes to investigate. Maybe they’ll write it off as a noise from one of the school’s faulty pipes.

“I know someone’s in here. Stop being a fucking coward and show your face.”

Shit. Shit, shit, shit! I’ve got no other choice now. With shaking fingers, I unlock the door and let it swing open.

Leandra smiles as her eyes fall on me. She tucks her phone into her back pocket and hops off of the counter, sauntering towards me on long, perfect legs. I flinch and take a step backward, and she laughs.

“Spying on us, are you, Blythe?”

“N-no. I-I was just –”

My sentence is cut short as she shoves me backwards. I catch myself in time to avoid being knocked unconscious by the porcelain bowl, but now her intent has been made clear. I’ve got to get out of here.

She notices as my eyes flicker towards the door, and with a snap of her fingers, the other girls drop what they were doing and block my only entrance.

“You’re not going anywhere, you stupid little retard.”

White-hot fury flashes through my body. I’m seeing red, and I think nothing of the consequences as I lunge for her, pushing her so hard she falls to the ground. She’s on her feet in an instant, pushing me back towards her friends, and cold terror grips me as their hands hold me in place. I barely have time to blink before a fist connects with my face, followed by another blow, and another. By the time it’s over I can taste blood in my mouth, and there seems to be a steady stream of it flowing from my nose. My head is throbbing and it hurts to blink, but I can still see Leandra’s face, smiling at me from underneath a curtain of long silvery hair.

The zombies release me and I fall to the ground, trying desperately to hold in the sobs that want to badly escape. I hear their footsteps as they go to join their beloved leader at the mirror, and as the water runs, I know she’s washing the blood off of her hands.

“You know, Blythe, you really shouldn’t eavesdrop on other people’s conversations. But maybe we’ll forgive you, since you already learned your lesson.”

She drops to her knees in front of me, holding out a cigarette and the lighter.

“Want a smoke?”

Not as much as I want to set you on fire, I think.

But I sit up and take the objects anyway, knowing that I might as well be dead if I refuse. She smiles at my acceptance and returns to her friends, laughing about something or other. My hands are shaking so badly that I can barely hold the cigarette, let alone light it. They’re not watching me at the moment, so I wipe a hand across my face to check out the extent of the damage. Sharp pains shoot through my nose, and when I look at my arm, the blue long-sleeved shirt is stained with red.

“What the fuck are you doing?”

The voice startles me, and I jump. Leandra is glaring at me, her eyes taking in the unlit cigarette in my hands.

“Are you really that retarded? We all know you can’t talk properly, but it doesn’t take that much skill to smoke.”

She laughs cruelly and snatches the things from me.

“Here. I’ll show you.”

I pay no attention to her demonstration. The fury is back again, pulsing through my mind like an angry vein. My eyes fall on the paper towels everywhere that are drenched with nail polish remover. Things click before I even realize it, and when Leandra hands me the cigarette and lighter again, I know what to do.

I hold the lighter like I’m about to use it for its intended purpose, and at the last second, I lower it to a paper towel instead.

The effect is instantaneous. The paper towels go up in flames, and the fashion zombies start screaming.

“You psycho bitch!” one of them yells.

“Save it, Olivia! We have to get out of here before someone blames us!” Leandra shouts.

A hysterical giggle slips from my lips as they hasten out of the door. The flames aren’t that threatening, so I blow on them, and I’m pleased when the fire grows. Yellow-orange shapes of doom consume the flimsy paper towels, and yet I’m not panicking. I’m calm, oddly comforted by the sound of flames licking at every available surface. Their light captivates me, and I reach out to touch one, only to withdraw my hand a second later. My eyes are watering, the palm of my hand stinging like no tomorrow.

Smoke is floating up near the sprinklers on the ceiling, and I decide it’s time to flee. I head into the nearest stall and stand on the toilet, unfazed to see that the window is locked. I waste no time with the silly metal contraption and instead break the glass with my fist, not even blinking as shards cut into my skin. I slip easily through the hole, and tumble to the grassy ground outside, right as the fire alarm begins to blare.

I giggle again and start running; running away from the building that had been my own personal hell for eleven years.

I don’t look back.

“Blythe? I mean, um, Blaze?”

Erin was looking at me like I was crazy. But I supposed she looked at everyone like that – weren’t all of us here crazy?

“You don’t have to tell me right now. But I am a bit concerned about you. You haven’t been to a group session yet. They’re required, you know that, right?”

I nodded. I knew perfectly well that they were required; the drive up here had taken for-freaking-ever, so I’d read the Camp Conquer pamphlet front to back so many times I could probably have recited it from memory. I knew the names of all the other crazies I was stuck here with. But that didn’t have any affect on me. I just didn’t care.

I wasn’t meant to be around people.

“Blaze…if you’re uncomfortable talking about your problems in front of others, you don’t have to worry. I’m sure some of the others share your fear.”

That’s nice. But I’m still not going.

“I r-really s-shouldn’t be around people,” I said. “I-I’m dangerous.”

“Why do you think you’re dangerous?”

I shrugged. She flipped through a few more pages on her clipboard and looked at me again.

“Is it because you think you’ll set someone on fire? Like you did in the school bathroom?” she asked.

I froze. She wasn’t supposed to know about that. No one was supposed to know about that. It was my dirty little secret, the skeleton in my closet. People were simply supposed to stay away from me. They didn’t need to know why.

“I’m sorry. Did I make you uncomfortable?”

A bit, yeah.

Erin sighed, but she didn’t seem frustrated by my lack of response. I guessed that she was used to those things.

“I know we don’t know each other very well, but I really do think you can handle this.”

I really do want to set you on fire right now.

She reached for my hand, I glared at her, and she withdrew her arm so fast it was almost comical.

“There’s a group session later today. I hope I’ll see you there,” she said with a sigh.

Then she tucked the clipboard under her arm and stood up, turning to leave.

Thank God. I flopped backwards on my bed and rolled over so I was facing the wall, watching a small spider work its way up towards the window. I wondered what would happen if I burned it. Would the fire start in the center of the body and work its way out, or would it simply burn off each of the spider’s legs one by one before finally devouring the rest of the bug?

“Blaze?” Erin said from the doorway.

I ignored her.

“You’re stronger than you know. Sometimes you just have to trust yourself.”