Shatter Me - Tahereh Mafi Page 0,3

its head. It will fly. There will be a—

His hand.

On me.

2 tips

of 2 fingers graze my cloth-covered shoulder for less than a second and every muscle every tendon in my body is fraught with tension and tied into knots that clench my spine. I stay very still. I don’t move. I don’t breathe. Maybe if I don’t move, this feeling will last forever.

No one has touched me in 264 days.

Sometimes I think the loneliness inside of me is going to explode through my skin and sometimes I’m not sure if crying or screaming or laughing through the hysteria will solve anything at all. Sometimes I’m so desperate to touch to be touched to feel that I’m almost certain I’m going to fall off a cliff in an alternate universe where no one will ever be able to find me.

It doesn’t seem impossible.

I’ve been screaming for years and no one has ever heard me.

“Aren’t you hungry?” His voice is lower now, a little worried now.

I’ve been starving for 264 days. “No.” The word is little more than a broken breath as it escapes my lips and I turn and I shouldn’t but I do and he’s staring at me. Studying me. His lips are only barely parted, his limbs limp at his side, his lashes blinking back confusion.

Something punches me in the stomach.

His eyes. Something about his eyes.

It’s not him not him not him not him not him.

I close the world away. Lock it up. Turn the key so tight.

Blackness buries me in its folds.

“Hey—”

My eyes break open. 2 shattered windows filling my mouth with glass.

“What is it?” His voice is a failed attempt at flatness, an anxious attempt at apathy.

Nothing.

I focus on the transparent square wedged between me and my freedom. I want to smash this concrete world into oblivion. I want to be bigger, better, stronger.

I want to be angry angry angry.

I want to be the bird that flies away.

“What are you writing?” Cellmate speaks again.

These words are vomit.

This shaky pen is my esophagus.

This sheet of paper is my porcelain bowl.

“Why won’t you answer me?” He’s too close too close too close.

No one is ever close enough.

I suck in my breath and wait for him to walk away like everyone else in my life. My eyes are focused on the window and the promise of what could be. The promise of something grander, something greater, some reason for the madness building in my bones, some explanation for my inability to do anything without ruining everything. There will be a bird. It will be white with streaks of gold like a crown atop its head. It will fly. There will be a bird. It will be—

“Hey—”

“You can’t touch me,” I whisper. I’m lying, is what I don’t tell him. He can touch me, is what I’ll never tell him.

Please touch me, is what I want to tell him.

But things happen when people touch me. Strange things. Bad things.

Dead things.

I can’t remember the warmth of any kind of embrace. My arms ache from the inescapable ice of isolation. My own mother couldn’t hold me in her arms. My father couldn’t warm my frozen hands. I live in a world of nothing.

Hello.

World.

You will forget me.

Knock knock.

Cellmate jumps to his feet.

It’s time to shower.

THREE

The door opens to an abyss.

There’s no color, no light, no promise of anything but horror on the other side. No words. No direction. Just an open door that means the same thing every time.

Cellmate has questions.

“What the hell?” He looks from me to the illusion of escape. “They’re letting us out?”

They’ll never let us out. “It’s time to shower.”

“Shower?” His voice loses inflection but it’s still threaded with curiosity.

“We don’t have much time,” I tell him. “We have to hurry.”

“Wait, what?” He reaches for my arm but I pull away.

“But there’s no light—we can’t even see where we’re going—”

“Quickly.” I focus my eyes on the floor. “Take the hem of my shirt.”

“What are you talking about—”

An alarm sounds in the distance. A buzzing hums closer by the second. Soon the entire cell is vibrating with the warning and the door is slipping back into place. I grab his shirt and pull him into the blackness beside me. “Don’t. Say. Anything.”

“Bu—”

“Nothing,” I hiss. I tug on his shirt and command him to follow me as I feel my way through the maze of the mental institution. It’s a home, a center for troubled youth, for neglected children from broken families, a safe house for the psychologically disturbed. It’s a prison.