She walks around with her headphones blaring. Screamo, metal, rock. Music is her way to escape. She'll paint, listen to music loud in headphones. Anything but the alternative. That her scars could become new, scares her. The razor blade thrown out, but still the urges come. So she escapes through music. Through art. Each loud song, each brush stroke, make her a little bit stronger.

As a child, Katie's the happiest kid in the world, running, jumping, dancing, laughing. But with age she grows sadder, less joyful.

In sixth grade, her father dies. He was her only friend. She is lost in a world without her daddy.

She cries every day. The razor becomes her best friend. It digs into her arm, letting out blood and hatred and bad feelings. It is for a while, her only escape. Throughout middle school she cuts to release the pain.

Katie is that girl all the boys want but won't say anything and the one no girls want to be friends with. She wears a black hoodie every day, to hide her scabbed and raw wrists. Her long bronze colored hair is brushed neatly, but nothing else is done with it, it just lays flat on her back. She doesn't talk to anyone, she is resigned, timid, a freak.

Once she gets to high school, the razor still bites her wrist. But she starts to make friends. In her third hour Algebra class, she meets a friendly redhead girl named Aubrey with blue eyes and a soft freckled face and sweet smile who becomes a friend to Katie. Aubrey and Katie hang out regularly. They draw, they do crafts, they listen to music.

One day while hanging out at Aubrey's house, Katie's sleeve falls up a bit. Aubrey notices the defined lines that are her scars and some freshly healed cuts. She asks about it and Katie cries. It's her only way out. Her only escape. The only way she knows to feel better.

Aubrey tells her gently "I've been in your shoes". She shows Katie her faded scars on her arms and legs.
Katie asks "How did you stop?"
"I found other ways to keep my hands and mind busy" Aubrey tells her. Aubrey gives Katie an old MP3 player and says "When you get low, play it. And draw or paint or something. You're very artistic."

Later in the school year, Aubrey moves away. The girls don't talk a while and one day in their senior year of high school meet up at starbucks for coffee. Aubrey asks how Katie has been and Katie shows her her wrists and the scars, now all faded away.
Katie tells her "Thank you for being my friend in that dark period of my life. Rather than cutting myself and harming my body, I listen to that MP3 player you gave me, my walls are covered in paintings I did. Thank you for helping me find a new escape."