Author's Note: These events took place when I was in high school.

I remember the day my mom went to jail. I was mad at her because I wanted to go hang out with my friend but I couldn’t because she was out doing something and someone had to stay home in case my sister needed something, because she was at her friend’s house. It wasn’t fair, my sister always got to go to her friends’ houses while I was stuck at home.

When my friend texted and told me she was too busy to hang out anyway because she was with her boyfriend Shawn, I lost it. My mommy was nowhere to be found, my little sister wasn’t in the house, my friend didn’t have time for me, who knew why my boyfriend wasn’t texting me.

I knew Mommy had razors in her room, and I knew where one was. I found it and set it to my skin, ready to cut. I knew that if I wanted to kill myself and didn’t just want attention I had to cut along the length of my arm, not across my wrist. My skin is translucent, so I could see the vein running down it. I could see the blade piercing the skin, see the blood flowing. But before I could do it I had a thought.

“What would my boyfriend think of me?”

I loved him a lot, or I thought I did. I cared about what he thought of me. I didn’t want to leave him behind as the guy whose girlfriend killed herself. So I didn’t do it.

Not too long after I put the blade away, my stepdad’s cousin’s daughter knocked on the door of the house and said that my mom was taken to jail and that Sharyn was at their house. So I went with her to get the story from her mom.

My mom was arrested for helping her drug dealers, as they said they would give her money if she helped them. She said she was trying to be better. She was about to start a new job. Too little too late.

I stood in the living room of my stepdad’s cousin’s house. He was in jail at the time for beating up my mom, so he wasn’t in the picture. My sister was crying and didn’t understand what was going on really. I stood next to the TV and soaked it all in. All the words. The sounds, the noises. My stepdad’s cousin, had two younger kids, a girl, and a boy they were taking care of until they could get custody of him.

I left my laptop at the house that night when my stepdad's cousin told us to go home and get clothes. The next day it was gone, because people enjoy stealing from the homes of people who have just gone to jail. People whose homes are empty and unguarded. Laptops that were given to girls by their Daddies, because it was the only laptop they’d ever really wanted, the kind that swung around and laid down like a tablet, like in the movie Read it and Weep. People enjoy breaking hearts and ruining lives.

I walked away from the little boy when I moved in with my dad. In the two short weeks I was there, he grew attached to me. When I was gone he waited by the door, asking for me.

Where’s Tabi?