She dated asshole-guy after asshole-guy. They made her the town-mattress, the ho.

We became fast friends. I had a non-sexual crush on Troy. Her hair was truly the lion's mane with wild red curls, lashing out and pulling you in. Her smile slightly crooked and mild like yogurt. I didn't detect any darkness. Not at first.

She came from another world. The Valley via Bakersfield. The first time I stayed the night (hands on the blanket, mind you, I was still closeted), I woke up in the morning to find her mom chain-smoking, drinking beer straight out of the can and listening to Aerosmith in the kitchen. It was 9 am. Troy's baby brother, wearing a bib and eating Wal-Mart fish sticks,  was trapped inside a cloud of smoke.

It was the first time I became acutely aware that someone's parent was a raging alcoholic. All the other ones, the relatives and family friends, did their boozing and escapism more elegantly.
They weren't Polish blondes with three inches of roots. They didn't wear Iron Maiden t-shirts. And they didn't drink malt liquor.

Later Troy told me about all her mom's boyfriends and how once she'd walked in on her mom getting fucked doggy-style on the living-room carpet, by a guy with a mullet and a hairy back. She said there was a parade of men like that. They drove pick-up trucks with bumper stickers and smelled of sweat and tobacco. The father was long gone, the mother wasn't even totally sure who he was.There had been so many of them, because her pussy was pure magic. At least that's what she had told Troy, and then Troy told me.

Troy started using a lot of eyeliner and getting more drunk than anyone I knew. She passed out in dumpsters. Woke up in parking lots with her panties around her ankles. She was the kind of teenage girl who always cries at parties. Saying nobody loved her, and that she was fat and ugly. Nothing could have been further from the truth. Once she threatened to jump out of a window.
She dated asshole-guy after asshole-guy. They made her the town-mattress, the ho.
But her heart-shaped face always had sweetness for anyone who would hold her gaze for a split second of our fucked-up eternity.
Then we didn't see each other for awhile. Turns out that during that while she cut herself really bad. Next time I saw her, her arms were striped by glossy scars, running all the way up to her shoulders. Some were so deep and desperate that they had cut into muscle tissue.

She said she had been home alone at the apartment. Drinking vodka and sinking a razor into her flesh. Time and time again. Crying and pacing. Crying and pacing. Cutting and bleeding. Swallowing the fire water.

Then, even later, we lost touch. What happened to my Troy?
Does anyone know?