She looked like she was made of glass.
     There was an ethereal shimmer about her, lovely to look at but dangerous to touch. The moment I saw her, I wondered how someone so fragile could carry such a heavy aura of mystery, like a porcelain doll perched on the highest shelf of her case.
     I met her in fourth grade, at recess. She sat alone on a swing. I approached her.
     “Don't you have any friends?” I asked.
    Startled, she narrowed her gray eyes. “No.”
     “Oh.” I took the swing beside her. “What's your name?”
     “Valerie.” Her voice was soft, like the steps of a newborn lamb.
     “That's pretty. Mine's Anna.” I smiled. “Let's be friends.”

     Seven years later, we're sitting on a sunbleached porch swing. It's June, and orange light creeps over our toes as the sun dips below the horizon. Val turns to me.
     “Anna?”
     “Yeah?”
     “What would you do if I died tomorrow?”
     The question is like a blow to the stomach. I stare at her. She stares back.
     "What?”
     “I don't know.” She plays with one of her bracelets. She always wears so many. “Say there's an accident, or... Something. What would you do?”
     “I wouldn't know what to do,” I say slowly, shifting in my seat. “You're my best friend, I'd… Be devastated.” I frown. “Val, that's kind of a depressing question.”
     She shrugs. “Don't mind it, then.”
     A streetlamp flickers on. Swatting daintily at a mosquito, she suggests we go inside. I rise, and after a brief pause she follows. She stumbles, bracing herself on the doorframe. A chip of white paint flutters to the ground.
     “You alright?” I reach for her arm.
     “Never better,” she mutters. “Just... Vertigo. Is that what it's called? I don't know.” Halfway inside, she turns to swat a mosquito from my arm. “Hurry up. They'll eat you alive.”
     Upstairs, she perches birdlike on my bed while I spin lazily in a desk chair. She scratches furiously at her left wrist. A bracelet jingles faintly. I roll my chair toward her. “Mosquito bite?”
     She nods, continuing to scratch. Her nails are short, with jagged edges, and one of those sharp little corners catches her porcelain skin. I see a drop of red.
     “Val, stop!” I seize her wrist. When I look at her, she doesn't look back. “You're hurting yourself.”
     “I know.” She pulls her hand away. “I didn't mean--” She looks at me then, and tears are welling in her eyes. “Anna, I'm scared.”
     “...Scared? Of--”
     Silently, she pushes the bracelets up her forearm, and cold sweat beads at the nape of my neck. I see her pale wrists with blue spiderweb veins, and the slender lines etched into her skin, some faded to white and some a dark, fresh pink. Her hands shake.
     “I...” I sit beside her. “Val, I'm sorry. I'm so, so sorry, I--”
     She shakes her head, leaning on my shoulder. She's shivering. Her fingers are like ice. Under the bracelets, her wrists are so thin that I could wrap my hand around with an inch to spare. It strikes me then that, after all these years, I don't know her. I could recite all sorts of superficial things-- her favorite books, her best class, her birthday to the minute-- but I know nothing of what she thinks about at night. Nothing of the things she loves and hates about herself, those she wants to change and how she wants to change them. I don't know her, and it frightens me.
     I let her cry, speaking when she needs me to and silent otherwise. She says a lot of things, but what she says most is “Don't tell.” Don't tell, don't tell, like it’s absolutely imperative. Don't tell, like her life depends on it.
     A few days later, I'm sitting with my mother and father at the dinner table. I've wanted so badly to tell them. I'll think of the starving wrists crossed with hateful slashes and lean in, words threatening to spill over, but I'm stopped every time by the memory of those round doll eyes shining with fear. Val had trusted me. She had poured out her pain, spreading it thin and vulnerable at my feet and willing that I wouldn't crush it to dust. I can't betray that.
     My parents talk, occasionally glancing my way but only once remarking on my tense silence. I say I'm going to my room. They don't protest.
     I fall onto my bed, staring at the ceiling. There's a brown water stain in the corner. My father repaired that leak years ago, but never the stain. I wonder if he will. I close my eyes and breathe deeply. I wonder what Valerie is doing. I get a sudden urge to call her, to ask how she's been since that night. I resist. I shouldn’t interrupt her dinner.
     The trill of the landline drifts up the stairs, and I listen as my mother answers it. I fail to make out any words; after a moment, though, I hear what sounds like the receiver hitting the tile floor. Seconds later my door flies open and she's there, my father a few steps behind.
     “Anna,” she breathes. “It's Valerie.”
     “What?” I sit up and see fear welling in the lines of her face. “Mom, what happened?” I demand, a bit louder.
     “She...” Her voice lowers. My father’s arm tightens around her shoulders. The room feels tiny, unable to contain the three of us and the ungodly thing I feel hovering on my mother’s lips. “She tried to kill herself last night.”
     A strange numbness creeps into my fingers. I open my mouth to speak, but it forgets how. I am paralyzed, because somewhere in the back of my mind I knew. Beneath all my reassurance that she would be fine, that I could help her, I knew I was wrong. My head feels light.
     I hit the floor, and I swear I shatter into a thousand shards of glass.