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COUNTED ELEVEN BITES on myself. Mosquitoes? Ticks?
Bedbugs? On my feet, ankles, calves, thighs. Stomach, midriff, where my ribs stretched my tight skin. One on the underside of my tiny left breast. There was a fascination in it: some were angry new swellings that, miserable from the itching, I'd made bleed with my nails. Others were older bites that had begun to heal and I'd roused again with my roving nails. Sometimes my entire lower body throbbed with itching, especially at night when I couldn't sleep my heart beating too fast and it was like my skin had gone crazy and turned mutinous against itself and I'd bite my lip hard holding off as long as I could until tears spilled from my eyes and I couldn't bear it one more second and in a luxury of abandon sobbing with relief I would rake my nails hard hard HARD against the bleeding bumps and welts.
Oh God oh God oh.
There were certain things written about INGRID BOONE in the boys' lavatories at Mt. Ephraim High School. And maybe on outside walls, I didn't know. I didn't look, and I didn't know. My boyfriends were a shifting lot. A guy crazy about me one night might not seem to notice me when I walked into the cafeteria next day. I had close girlfriends, but they talked about me behind my back. I knew, but I didn't know in such a way that they knew-that had to be the basis of my friendships. And with guys, too. There has to be some basis. You can't trust them, but you don't want them to know because then they won't like you at all. One of the men teachers must've seen something ugly on a wall because I was called one day to the infirmary, where the school nurse asked me in this sort of embarrassed voice did I have anything to ask her? Any questions of a personal-medical nature? I did, I had plenty of questions, but not to ask her. So I sat there staring at the floor, my face gone hot. Scratched at something itchy on the inside of my elbow till I drew blood.
I was fifteen years old now, and in tenth grade....