Every Ugly Word

by Aimee L. Salter

As the psychiatrist enters the room, he offers me a patronizing smile. I return it in kind. He indicates for me to take a seat, then sinks into a worn leather chair, looking just like a doctor should: graying hair, well-trimmed beard, and wire-rimmed glasses I suspect he doesn’t actually need.

It was moments like these that always left me wondering why, when faced with someone who clearly despised me, I lost all ability to think.

“So why do these kids feel like they can do this? Why aren’t you on that phone giving it right back to them?” She indicated the phone and my jaw dropped. “You think I should send insulting texts to my classmates?” “Unless you want them to keep doing this.” Her face didn’t change. I stared at her, disbelieving. “You think I want this?” I stormed past her, headed for my room. “Ashley, I’m not finished!” “Well, I am.”

Art was cathartic, the only way to exorcise my demons. Using acrylic crayons, I rubbed Karyn into existence on a sheet of heavy cartridge paper.

“Ashley,” he says quietly. “I’m here to help you, no matter what else happens. You know that, right?” They are simple words, but a well of emotion springs up in their wake. I am suddenly hopeful and afraid in the same breath. No matter what. Does he mean it? No one’s ever said that to me before. Well, almost no one.

“Are you kidding me?” I raked my hands through my hair. “I’m getting texts that tell me to kill myself. How can that not get under my skin?” Older Me placed her hand on the mirror, as close as she could come to touching me. She kept her voice to a whisper. “I know. I do. But you have to keep going. You just have to. If you push through this, you’ll show them. You’ll show them you didn’t deserve this.”

People were my “thing.” Mrs. Driley encouraged me to use the human form in my portfolio as much as possible, because I was good at it. But I felt most vulnerable when I drew people I knew. Sure, I could get the curve of Matt’s dark lashes right, the shape of his cheekbone . . . but how could I communicate the warmth of his skin? I flipped back to the image of Finn and considered turning the idea into a painting—using a spatula for hard lines to depict the sharpness of his features, heavy thick paint for his rhinoceros skin, fat brush strokes for his brows, like caterpillars on his face, his long mouth a venomous red slash. For Karyn I’d use glossy pastels—waxy crayons that shone on the paper. I could layer red, white, beige, and cream to make her cheeks blush. Then, when everything was done, use a tool to scrape her eyes out of the heavy wax, holes in a poisonous blanket.

“Are you saying I brought this on myself?” I sputter. “No,” he says, emphatic. “I’m saying that what you believe to be true impacts what you do.

“It shouldn’t have been that way,” I mutter. “People you love should always be more important than people who judge you.”

“I have a theory,” Doc says. Peachy.

She stared at the painting again, shaking her head. “Ashley . . . why do they hate you so much? What did you do?” I blanked. She thought it was my fault?

When we got it to the mechanic, he whistled and said we were lucky. He said that crack was under so much pressure that the tiniest bump from the wrong direction could have broken it into a million pieces and showered us with shards of glass. Now, as Mom put her hands to her face and shook her head, I felt like that windscreen. Crack, crack, crack. A fracture started behind my navel, the brittle pieces shivering, on the edge of letting go. I hunched forward, pain exploding through my body.