Never Said Read Free

anywhere until, from downstairs, I hear the grandfather clock calling out the time. Like I’m released from a spell, I retreat into my room and flick the light out, lie down on my bed, and just wait.

annie
    In the bathroom
I strip off my clothes and stare atme.
    I am disgusting
sickening
Fat
    fat like Mom says
as ugly as I know I look when Dad seesme.
    If the lights were on I
could see tears drip from my face
    the way I used to watch myself cry
when I was little
(when I thought I could be a movie starme).
    Instead, I pinch bruises
along my thighs
where my family
won’t see
them

sarah
    I stare at the ceiling, where leftover stars glow. Annie and I put some in my room, some in hers, years ago when we first moved here.
    Now, when I close my eyes, I see the stars still. Pale. Almost not there.
    I feel so not here. Like these failing stars. I am invisible and have been for years. Since Annie blossomed and I slipped out of sight.
    Thin, she’s a star herself. Fat, she still draws attention.
    I roll on my side. My sister’s crushed by our mom and I lie here thinking about me.
    Selfish. This is so selfish.
    But I can’t help it.

annie
    Left-handed anger
pushes down
spilling over
and free
Unacceptable thoughts.
Hurt
Kill
Now I lay me down to sleep
I pray I pray I pray
for
A place for people like me
The outcasts
The lepers
The untouchables.
All of us
The fat, too skinny
the gays, left-out straight
the awkward, the lonely, graceful.
The ones only Christ sees.

sarah
    T uesday morning dawns snowy cold. I lie in bed. Stretch.
    From where I am I can see the indigo sky.
    â€œBeautiful,” I whisper to the stars that don’t glow anymore. Maybe it’s time to remove those things.
    I stand. Stretch again. Think school, and my stomach falls near my heels. No snow days here unless ice covers everything (we’re winter stock, laughing when other parts of the country get a foot or two of snow and whine).
    How I’d love to stay home and play violin. Or linger in bed and read or make hot chocolate from Hershey candy bars and thick vanilla cream.
    School means I can’t stay home and wonder at nothing. I’ve got to go.
    Morning pushes at the window with its fingertips, like it wants in to warm up. The street lights are pumpkin bulbs. My room is the color of a black-and-white photo.
    I shiver, and then . . . then . . . I stand at the window and watch.
    This is the time Garret leaves for school.
    His house is settled on the corner opposite ours. I see his window from mine, and for a moment it’s like I’m in some scene from an old romantic novel where the girl gets the boy.
    I wrap my arms around myself. In almost all the books I read, the girl does get the boy. Except that doesn’t happen here. It won’t.
    He has the shades drawn, but I can see movement behind them, and I remember the afternoon (it feels so long ago!) he snuck me into his bedroom when his mother turned her back, and we watched movies on his flat screen.
    â€œGarret. It’s awfully quiet up there.” His mom. Her feet on the stairs, coming closer.
    Me tiptoeing to the bathroom, stepping into the tub, my heart pounding. Garret opening his door to her saying, “I’m sixteen, Mom. I can watch Raiders of the Lost Ark without making any noise.”
    Then his door shut. I didn’t move. Instead I stayed there, wanting to laugh, excitement coursing through every part of me.
    That was my first kiss. Standing in his tub. So weird that I would sneak over to a guy’s house and get my first kiss in his bathroom. It was all awkward and his lips were warm and he had to push the shower curtain out of the way and I felt silly and thrilled and not even afraid because this moment was worth it.
    Now his light goes out and I jump, then duck. Like he can see me.
    Does he even look this way? Does he ever think of me in the tub that day after his mother left, the two of us laughing without sound, staring at each other