Scars (March 5, 2009. Issue 1)

She overheard while dressing after gym class that the first time stained. Lying in bed that night with bare arms brushing her belly, she thought about thin lines of pink on white cotton, a pain much deeper than she was able to give herself.

She had always inflicted her own pain so she could control taking it away. She couldn't cut; she didn't like to look inside. Burning, the threat but not assurance of her soft meat erupting at the flick of a lighter or the strike of a match, was usually enough. The idea that another could so easily bruise her soft, untouched creases left a dull thrill that kept her up half the night.

She had played around with boys but had never gone too far. She wasn't a tease. She didn't want them to want that from her, but it was harder to keep them content the older they got. The steady stream of attention she had received from boys since junior high was dwindling. No longer happy with gazing, rubbing, and touching, they stopped waiting for her after school in the parking lot. No more rough kisses over the consoles of suped up Javelins and Mustangs. No more groping on sofas in the glow of MTV's Liquid Television.

So on her third date with a man, not a boy, who picked her up in a car he owned and took her to dinner at a restaurant, not a buffet or pizza joint, she wore white cotton panties.

He was easy. He talked to her in words not intended to coerce. Loved her without saying he did. He never mentioned the rush to take her home by curfew. And afterward, he turned on the shower, scalding and steamy as if he knew, and washed the scent of sex out of her hair.

She wept quietly that night when he found her in the kitchen with a lighter in one hand and a screwdriver in the other. He kissed the burn, then smeared a glob of A & D ointment on her thigh before taking her home.