Aiden sat on her bed, his flip-flops lying near the door, his sunglasses still resting on his face. Spencer sat in her desk chair, watching Aiden play with a thread on his cargo short’s pocket. He ripped it off, his fingers poised to drop it on the floor, and then decided that might be rude and shoved it into his pocket.

Spencer glanced down at herself, still in her wet clothes. She began to itch, the chlorine drying out her skin. She stood and stepped a few paces closer to Aid. He didn’t look up.

“I need to change.”

Turning, she grabbed some dry clothes from her dresser drawer and headed to the bathroom. The door shut, Spencer cautiously allowing the lock to click into place, her body beginning to take over, this procedure so regular that her brain performed it without any reminder or forethought.

The tears began to emerge, but Spencer sucked them back down. Behind her lay the mess; remnants from the night before, still in the same position as she had left them. The water on the tile near the toilet had still yet to evaporate, as if wanting her to see its resilience, its strength. She glanced back at the door, a barrier between herself and the outside world, between insanity and the world of the living, just a two inch thick piece of wood separating her from happiness, laughter, and undercooked pancakes.

She closed her eyes, the medicine cabinet whispering to her, reminding her that she was late. Spencer clenched her lips together in defiance, and began to remove her wet clothes. Her bottoms peeled away from her skin like the plastic covering of a TV. dinner, her battle scars sticking to the cotton, yanking them upwards, away from her body, only to bounce back as the cotton lost its grip.

She caught her reflection in the long mirror that hung on the bathroom door. Her skin was pale, lifeless. She could see the cuts even from this distance, the tiny red and faint pink jagged lines. The pattern was odd, as if an accident on purpose. It had been a few days since her last “encounter,” the cuts slowly beginning to heal; Spencer hoped to live by example and follow the wound’s lead.