Outside the closet door, her worst enemy prowls.
Dear Diary, my teen angst bullshit finally has a body count.
In artificial dusk, her panicked counterpart meets her fragile gaze from the mirrored door. Hell itself stares back at her.
It's me.
"Let's play a game."
As one they lie on his bed, she curled up within him. Her head rings with the aftermath of adrenaline and alcohol. She is half-asleep and she is fulfilled and she is forgetful as she looks up from his lap, searching for the eyes she cannot find.
"Okay."
"Imagine the school didn't exist."
She laughs. "That's impossible."
Finally, he looks down towards her, and some unknown warmth rises. It fills her.
"Why is it impossible?"
Her head buzzing, she can do nothing but kiss him on the chest. Beside her ear, he whispers the words she cannot say.
"School is society."
Bam. Bam. Bam.
The gunshots ring out in her head. She places her hand across her mouth, trying not to be sick, trying not to scream –
What'd I do to deserve this shit?
She scurries away from the door, burying herself further and further into the layers of clothes; trying to drown out the sound, her heartbeat, her heartbeat.
"And so I built a bomb –"
Her head jerks up. Oh.
"Tonight our school is Vietnam –"
That.
"Let's guarantee they never see…"
In the darkness where nobody can see, she trembles. And she reaches out, hoping to rest against the wall she knows is there. Hoping to reach the other side.
"I can find meaning in anything."
A golden croquet lawn. She glances up from her book. "Really?"
He nods, a smile glancing across his lips. "Yeah."
Reaching across the grass between them, he takes he book from her hands. Her fingers yield to him, relenting.
"Give me your favourite line," He demands.
"I don't have one." Her response is so sudden it sounds almost defensive.
He smiles, his eyes just avoiding hers. "That's fine." A highlighter is removed from his pocket and he begins to underline. She watches in silence as, systematically, the page turns a vivid orange.
"See?" He says, capping the pen with a flourish beneath her mute gaze. "There's meaning in everything and, therefore, there's no meaning."
"We, the Students of Westerburg High –"
She stares at the bedsheet which presents itself to her like a lifeline.
"Will die."
And every voice around her tells her to grip the cloth in both hands, to wrap it around herself –
"Our burnt bodies may finally get through –"
The voice outside the door, the eagles, society. It's what Westerburg High would want –
"To you."
And Westerburg High is society. Westerburg High is society.
And she listens to every voice whispering around her
And she pulls down the cloth with both hands
And she throws it over the clothes rail, tying it mindlessly
And she knots it around her waist.
"Veronica!"
Because she's damned if she's going to become another statistic.
A star-bound night.
"Would you die for me, Veronica?"
Her head rests on his lap beneath a limitless sky.
"Nobody's worth dying for. Not even me."
A pause.
"I'd die for you, Veronica."
She looks straight up.
"Did I sound bitchy?"
He leans in to kiss her. She takes it, passively. What escapes is half apology and all truth.
"I just haven't found anything worth dying for yet."
In that closet, a boy kneeling at her feet, Veronica doesn't find anything worth dying for.
She finds something worth living for, instead.