Juice Cleanse

Lily Scheckner

On Monday night, the girl’s blood turned to juice. She had just gotten home from her first day of seventh grade, where she carried: (i) her grandfather’s expectations, (ii) six mechanical pencils, (iii) her desire for a tan. She was sitting in the apartment doing her homework, and later she imagined the pimple patch on her forehead was a third eye, a crystal ball, a sequin.

But it wasn’t. And really, it was just that she had a habit of picking at her cuticles, leaving behind torn layers of flesh (spiderweb scabs, her mother called them), and today, she was attacking them. The Algebra problem was impossible. She couldn’t solve for x, so how could she create an unknown? Her skin broke like tissue paper and blood welled eagerly as if to answer the question.

The girl put her hand to her mouth and sucked, an imitation of Twilight for an empty room. Sexy vampire, she whispered, giggling at her finger. But instead of metal and salt, sea water gone rotten, she tasted apple. The girl sucked again. The flavor was unmistakable.

Hi sweetie, her mother said. She walked into the room while wrenching her curls out of their ponytail prison. Hairspray made her head bulletproof. Her eyelids were glazed with fallen stars. She thumbed through one dollar bills with one hand and tugged on the hem of her skirt with the other. How was your day? she asked.

The girl looked at the dollar bills.

Good, she said. My day was good.

On Tuesday night, the girl discovered the different flavors. She was sitting naked and cross legged in the bathroom. She picked up the razor. She had shaved her legs for the first time, just like her mom showed her. One direction, then the other, until brown bits stuck to the tub in swirls like tea leaves. Her hair was still wet. She was dripping some 2-in-1 shampoo & conditioner that hadn’t quite washed out onto the bath mat.

From her left wrist, the girl produced orange juice. It wasn’t pulpy, just pure and sour. She wished she had cut herself closer to the morning, at breakfast time. What a brunch this would be. Truly organic (that was her aunt’s voice, always shrill from dieting). From her right wrist, the girl produced grape juice, a pale wine imitation like from Passover (it’s not kosher, her Grandma would frown). The girl sucked and sucked but she didn’t get drunk. She was disappointed. She pretended she was tipsy anyways and stumbled around the bathroom with overlapping knees.

Are you okay in there? the girl’s mom called through the door. It was three in the morning. She had just gotten home. Bills greeted her, old friends on the kitchen counter.

Yes, the girl crowed back, victorious. She felt like a woman.

On Wednesday night, the girl told her best friend. She had thought about it all week and she knew that he was the right confidant. She laid out the many secrets they had shared in her mind like rich-people-groceries on a marble tabletop.

A bottle of champagne with gold foil on top (when her dad had finally left and it was all her fault). A freshly dead lobster (when she had kicked her neighbor’s dog, Skippy, after a really bad day). A box of chocolate truffles (when she had searched up porn on her mom’s computer). He had said the right thing every single time.

But on Wednesday night, the best friend didn’t believe her. He wanted proof. Proof for this, the girl worried, was like a milky contrail or a tooth fairy note—unbelievable even afterwards. He pricked the girl’s stomach with a paper clip and drank cranberry juice, which was the girl’s least favorite flavor. It looked too much like blood. The best friend’s nose nudged at her breasts under a blue hoodie. She hadn’t bought her first training bra yet. She was saving up for it.

But at least he believed her. He knew she was special.

The girl started smelling like rotting fruit, so she stole her mom’s perfume and applied too much, keeping it in the front pocket of her backpack.

On Thursday night, the girl stopped eating. She left sacred offerings for her mother: dwindling Chinese takeout, frozen chicken nuggets. When the girl got hungry, she pricked herself and drank her fill. She felt like there were sugar crystals crunching between her teeth. It made the girl feel real, tangible. Otherwise, she thought she might disappear in the mist of her shower, like once she rubbed the steam from the mirror no one would be staring back at her. The imagined roughness on her gums was soothing. Their water bill went up.

She started getting bruises. She cried quietly underneath a comforter embroidered with roses. The drops stung her eyes and she cried harder, but even more silently. Tears are the blood of the soul, but they’re also the band-aid, she remembered her mother saying with red-rimmed eyes after a tough day at work. The girl realized her tears were lemon juice.

On Friday night, the girl’s secret got out. It festered, sizzled, like animal fat in a vat of oil. The best friend had said the right thing to her, but he had also said the right thing to half the school. She never asked him why. Buzzfeed wrote an article about her: “17 Hilarious Tweets About Juice Girl.” The girl got a lot of text messages on her brand new phone that said things like im gonna suck u dry and ur such a stupid lying bitch and thats so cool can i plz try it and wtf. The girl’s mother scrolled through the texts while smoking a joint and googled what to do if your kid is being cyberbullied. Then she googled what to do if your kid’s blood is [backspace backspace backspace backspace backspace]. She posted the question on Facebook. She got a response.

On Saturday night, the girl’s mother quit her job. She said she didn’t need the money anymore, but she didn’t say why. She brushed her hair out and kept her eyelids bare. The girl and her mother watched reruns of 70s sitcoms and listened to boy bands and baked banana bread. You’ve got a lot of spiderweb scabs, her mom commented, and offered to paint her nails red. The girl didn’t cut herself once. At the end of the night, the girl’s mom put her forehead against her daughter’s and they breathed together like they were halves of the same echo.

Late that Saturday night, the girl awoke with a rope knotted in her stomach. She pressed her hand between her thighs. Strange, she thought. It was real blood. She stuck a tissue in her underwear and tried to fall back asleep. She was scared. She felt ordinary. She prayed for juice.

On Sunday night, the girl’s mother drove to the pier and sold her daughter to a singles cruise for the summer. That’s 50 thousand, the girl heard the captain tell her mom sternly, and not a penny more. It sounded like a lyric from a rap song. It’s just 3 months, the girl’s mom told her. I love you.

The boat was big and white and very shiny, like it had been wiped with spittle on a sweatshirt sleeve. Fat men in swim trunks raised their eyebrows at her. The girl felt like she was slick with spit too. She wanted a shower but there was no time for that. The girl’s job, as was explained to her by the captain, was an entertainment-service hybrid. Yes, she started immediately. She stood, hands outstretched like a beggar, as wealthy divorcees took Lamborghini keys and gold-plated butter knives and contract paper edges and sliced her open for Dessert.

Ow, the girl said at brunch the next day. They dressed her in a pink bikini (sexy vampire, she whispered deliriously, her skin raw against the sun). They tore at her thumb scabs and held old-fashioned champagne flutes to her skin. The champagne flutes looked like the breasts she had once hoped to cover with a black, lacy bra.

She looked out at the sea and remembered the salty taste of her own blood like an old photograph. She heard the laugh tracks from the sitcoms around every corner. She imagined the stacks of money, 50-thousand-and-not-a-penny-more, piling up in her mom’s apartment, but it was hard because she could only visualize it in one dollar bills, and they would fill the apartment to the brim, explode it into a million pieces. She vomited up pineapple juice. Her best friend called her twice (but only twice) and she didn’t pick up.

She wished she had solved the unknown. She wished her pimple patch had been a third eye. She wished she had read the tea leaves in the bathtub. She didn’t pray.

On a Monday night three months later, the girl was returned to her mother. She was well fed and slightly taller. Underneath her newly tanned skin, her blood ran raw and red.

Lily Scheckner, also published under Lily Eames, is a high school student and writer residing in Silver Spring, Maryland. She is the winner of One Teen Story’s 2024 competition and her work is soon to be or currently published in The Malu Zine, The ECHO Review, The Incandescent Review, One Short Story, and The National Poetry Quarterly as a National Winner for 2023-2024. In her free time, Lily enjoys matcha lattes, oxford commas, and listening to Sufjan Stevens.