The Broken Chapter

"Just tell me what you did. I won't be mad. Please."
His eyes were pleading with me. They held panic, pain...I had to tell him. But I just couldn't do it.
I stared forward, losing myself completely. I was frozen. I was not there. I let myself drift away from where I was. My face was blank. I was far away, and everything was fine. I felt nothing. I was nowhere.
"Talk to me."
I came back. My face regained life. I let my head fall into my arms. My knees were pulled up to my chest. I could try to hide myself all I wanted, but he could see me. He could always see when I wasn't telling him something. Head down, I closed my eyes, remembering.
There was no reason to do it, was there? Nothing should have hurt me like that. But there it was, like a spider, creeping up out of my mind. Like a fog, almost. A dense, black fog. It rolled over my head and mulled about there, pulling me apart. It didn't let me think. Didn't let me live. I couldn't shake it.
"Please..." He lifted up my chin with his hand.
I stared into his eyes. This used to make the tears well up when I saw his eyes pleading with me like that. But I felt nothing more than a numbing fear. I was losing touch. I was afraid. But I could feel nothing else. The fog was eating me, taking away all sense of feeling.
I looked back at the floor. He deserved to know, right?
"I...uh..." My voice was looking for sound. Looking for words. "I did it again."
Something inside him broke a little more at those four words. He looked lost. He looked sad. But he did not look angry. I thought he'd be angry. My sense of judgement was so skewed though. I hadn't been able to trust it for days.
We sat there in the hallway, silent. I would've cried if I had remembered how to. But I was numb. My legs lost feeling. I couldn't get up. I was stuck.
"Where?" I knew he would ask. I knew it.
I couldn't show him. I couldn't. But I had to. I wanted out of this, didn't I? I wanted help. I wanted to shake this fog off. I wanted to wake up from inside myself.
My eyes glazed over. I wasn't there again. But he had to know.
I unzipped my jacket and took my left arm out of the sleeve slowly. There it was, bared before him.
He looked like he was about to cry.
His fingers traced over the fresh red marks. They traced over the word.
THIEF
I'd branded myself. Nobody else had done it. Yet, somehow I felt like they'd done it a long time ago.
I had no words. My voice wouldn't work. I put my arm back in my sleeve.
"Why?" His voice was so small. So worried.
I still couldn't feel.
"I don't know." I  told him. It was true. "I can't remember."
Everything was a blur. A black, lifeless, numbing blur.
"I have to tell, you know. I have to." He looked away.
"No. Don't. Please. You can't." The fear welled back up in me. I was so very afraid. That was the only thing left to feel.
"I have to! You want to get better, right?"
I did.
This wasn't the hard part, I knew. The hard part was yet to come. And as hard as telling him was, it would be a thousand times worse to tell them. The social worker. The doctor. The parents.
I was spiraling away. I wanted to sleep. To faint. To black out. To go away and not deal with it. It was too hard.
But I had to fight. Even if I wasn't fighting for me, I had to fight for him.
His face looked so worn. So fragile. We were only fifteen. His face shouldn't look this worn.
I had to fight.
I would get through it.