She told me they were cat scratches. It was the same lie she fed to everyone. And I believed her. We all did.

Her behavior didn’t reflect it at first. She came to school the same as she always was, bubbly and charming, ruling over our grade as usual, the rest of us bees in her hive and not minding a bit. I think I was the first one to notice the marks on her arm. And that was when she smiled her perfect smile and said, “Cat scratches. You know how he gets sometimes. It’s nothing.” Then she smiled again and rolled down her sweater sleeves.

But I kept looking at them. They never seemed to heal. When they went away, new ones always seemed to replace them. And other people began to notice, too. Cat scratches didn’t appear in neat, organized rows all along your forearm. We feared the worst, but said nothing. She would say something if she wanted to.

Then the day came. I was called to the guidance counselor’s office. She was there when I came, looking down at the table. She didn’t say a word as the guidance counselor spoke for her. Listed her issues, the ones we knew and had guessed at all along. And she explained that she would be leaving for a little while.

A week later, she disappeared from school. I was one of the only people who knew where she went. I heard from her in the hospital. “I have a shrink and I hate him.” I didn’t hear much else.

One month later, she walked into homeroom ten minutes late. She slid into her seat next to me and smiled. I smiled back. Throughout the class, the teacher was having trouble keeping us in our seats. Everyone was coming over, giving her a hug, saying how glad they were to have her back. And she really was back, not the shell she was before she left, but the queen bee personality we all knew so well. Or so we thought.

Outside of school walls, she was different. She would sink back into the shadows of herself, dwell in the dark corners, relive the blackest moments. She cried a lot. It happened for the first time on the floor of my bedroom. We weren’t even talking about it. Then it happened again in math. And again in gym. I had never seen her cry before.

I didn’t see her a lot that summer. I was busy. I was away. I texted her, but I didn’t hear much about what was going on with her. Even thousands of miles away, just through the phone, I could tell she was avoiding questions, skirting around topics. Doing what she did best.

When she came back to school in September, her hands were cut. Thick, red scabs that traveled from between her knuckles to her wrists. I’m sure she heard the same whispers that I did. “I thought she was better.” “I thought the hospital fixed her.” She didn’t come to school very often.

I watched her. Her eyes were dull, her makeup was smeared, her hair was lank and tangled.

She’s back at school full-time now. But every time I look at her, I see the girl in the guidance counselor’s office, head down, tears wet on her cheeks.

Cat scratches. How we could we have been so stupid?