For Every Guy

"Look," she commanded me, her eyes drilling holes into my face. I looked. She was holding out her palm, and I was shocked to see it. It was covered in X's, like some sort of sick tattoo job. Some were small, some were big. Some were very clear, but others were so faint you could barely see them. What caught my eye was the biggest one one the middle of her palm; it was fresh, and still bleeding. I had been friends with her for so long - why had I never noticed this before?

I looked at her, my eyes questioning, "Why did you do this to yourself? Why would anything hurt you bad enough?"

Her beautiful brown eyes looked into my blue ones. They were tortured, in so much pain that I wanted to kill whatever had made her this way.

"There is one cross for every guy who ever hurt me. Who ever made me feel inadequate, who made me feel ugly, or stupid, or sad," she said in flat tones.

I suddenly remembered one day when she had come back to the apartement we shared crying. Her boyfriend had just broken up with her, and he was one of the guys she had fallen for the hardest. I had been on the phone at the time, but imedinately hung up. I couln't stand seeing her tears. I had held her close, and stroked her hair until she the tears stopped falling. She had looked at me with such grief in her eyes that day, but that was nothing compared with what I saw now.

I filled with agony, to bursting point, and anger. Whoever had done this to my best friend, they would pay. I had no idea she had been seeing anyone, or that she was even in love. Ususally she told me, and I wondered why this time she hadn't. I made a vow to myself: I would hunt down each and every one of the people who had caused the scars. I would make them feel the kind of pain she felt. I wished I had known sooner. I could have protected her.

"Tell me their names," I said angrily, " I'll make them pay." She pionted to the one in the middle of her palm. The fresh one.

"That one, for starters," she whispered, " Is yours."