"Peter was not quite like other boys; but he was afraid at last. A tremor ran through him, like a shudder passing over the sea; but on the sea one shudder follows another till there are hundreds of them, and Peter felt just the one. Next moment he was standing erect on the rock again, with that smile on his face and a drum beating within him. It was saying, "To die will be an awfully big adventure."

–J.M. Barrie

My name is January Grace and this is the story of how I died.

204 Days Before

"I must go in the fog is rising."- Emily Dickinson's last words

There was a strange and somewhat tangible sadness looming in the air on my first morning of Westfield High.

As I was about to open the heavy, dark doors of my newest hellhole I was reminded of that moment in horror movies when the stupid girl goes to open the closet in which the psychotic serial killer is residing and the audience is yelling at her, because how fucking idiotic could she be to walk into her untimely doom?

Yeah, well by walking through the doors of Westfield High I was both the idiot girl and the audience. And now there was no turning back.

I was instantly greeted by dozens of curious eyes from the student body. Fortunately, I was usually oblivious to all forms of attention in this sort of manner. But unfortunately it was near impossible to remain unaware of all the eyes locked in on me.

I could feel the heavy weight of judgment as all the snobby assholes gave me cursory up and down glances, sizing me up, taking in my long and wispy unkempt blonde and pink hair and dark leather combat boots.

But I really could give less than a fuck of what some L.A. princess thought of how I dressed.

I was wearing ripped black leggings and an oversized Nirvana t-shirt, and just in time of the clockwork of high school, soon into the week I found myself surrounded by similarly frocked adolescents.

On one particular day we all made an executive decision to not subject ourselves to the monotonous ramblings of public education by taking a quick leave of absence to the flat roof of the decrepit building.

I certainly was making a good first impression on the faculty.

My new acquaintances consisted of a varied amount of punk rockers, most of whose names I had yet to learn, but they knew the secret and suspension causing way to get to the roof of the school, which I thought put them pretty high on my list of ideal friends.

My favorite by far that I had met though was Charlie because he reminded me of Jim Morrison, with his brown curls and deep rambling voice. He mostly talked about music, but he talked about it with such a fervent passion, that I didn't really mind when he went on a thirty minute rant about the shitty music played at school dances.

His friend Mara was kind of a bitch, but the good kind of bitch, that was severely blunt rather than obstinately fake, and it seemed as though the only fake thing about her was her hair, which was robin egg's blue.

We were all now sprawled out on top of the wooden, burgundy picnic tables that were close to rotting, but still sturdy enough to hold more or less than three teenagers. They had been brought up to the vicinity recently by different set of hooligans who needed a place to sit.

I dipped my hands into my deep pockets to attempt to locate my Marlboros and my lighter while simultaneously pulling out my Walkman and my little book of favorite poems all of which I carried with me wherever I went.

I finally located what I was desperately craving, lighting in up and inhaling the sweet misery of the white smoke as I reclined with my back on top of the table, before I began to hear the whispering.

"….but he's staring at her, I at least think we should warn her." Mara whispered fiercely about a subject that was obviously me.

"Warn me about what?" I asked arching my eyebrows and lifting myself form my previous position.

This unpredictable question momentarily shocked the pair in front of me, but Charlie shook out of it first.

"Nothing of importance," He tried to explain, but Mara elbowed him in the gut, and decided to tell me the truth reluctantly.

"He's staring at you." She said staring me right in the eye with a mix of awe but mostly some veiled form of sympathy that I did not understand.

And sure enough, when I looked down upon the smoking quad, I was met almost instantly by a pair of gut-wrenching dark eyes that were accompanied by a boy. But not just any boy. A boy with messy and thick golden hair and a red plaid shirt, who just happened to be staring directly at me in a way that would make hell jealous of how it burned. This transfixion from the boy seemed to be set in place much sooner than my own consciousness of it. And as I stared back I noticed that his smirk revealed to prominent dimples on either cheek, as smooth white smoke pooled out of his soft, pink lips. It hurt to look at him, but when I tried to look away it hurt ten times worse than it did before.

"Who is that, Mara?"
"He's fucking trouble, my dear."

Holy fuck.