"Look at Quinn!"

"What a dork!"

"I've never seen anything like her in my life!"

"It's like she straight out of a cheesy movie from the 70s!"

The hurtful comments still rang in my ears as I walked home from the pre-opening night party. I covered my ears with my palms, trying to stop the voices from harassing me. But they still laughed and teased me about how I danced or how I acted or what phrases I used.

"No one's said 'groovy,' since the 1960s!"

"What do you call that dance move? The spastic hippo?"

"You do realize that no one here likes you, right?"

No one here likes you. No one here likes you. No one here likes you.

The phrase echoed in my mind as I ran back the three blocks from Kasey MacAfee's house. Tears started to appear in the corner of my eyes. I had no idea why I was crying. I was going to turn twenty next April and here I was doing something only a hormonal teenager would do.

I rounded the corner and zipped up to my house. Speedily unlocking it, I ran into the living room and flung myself on the couch where I proceeded to wail like a baby. I kept thinking about how cruel my fellow cast members were. All of them were around eighteen to twenty years old. All of them had experience in theatre before. And all of them were self-centered diva bitches...Well, except for a couple, but they were always too busy associating themselves with the diva bitches and becoming diva bitch babies to bother themselves with me.

I didn't want to do the show anymore. I didn't care if I was playing my dream role as Ulla in The Producers. It wasn't even opening night and I wanted to just quit.

My contact lenses were floating on the layer of salt-tears over my eyeballs, making everything very hard to see. Quickly, I hurried to the bathroom and took them out, putting them in their special little case with their special disinfectant liquid. When I looked at my face in the mirror, I did not really like what I saw.

Everyone was amazed when a girl with black hair got the role of Ulla instead of a blonde. Instead, the director just ended up wigging me.

My eyesight was terrible. I had worn glasses for nearly fourteen years, but I switched to contact lenses for the last eight of them. In theory, I could have gotten eye surgery, but I could barely make ends meet with the house payments and the car payments and the groceries and such. I had literally no money to spare. However, now the area around my eyes was red and the lining closer to my eyes was irritated and even redder.

My nose was dribbling snot and I had drooled a little bit on myself. I was not a pretty crier; that much was for sure.

I grabbed the end of the toilet paper roll and gave it a stiff yank, unrolling about half of the tube. But I didn't care. I tore the sheets off and started dabbing my face wildly, even though no one would care what I looked like.

As this thought ran through my mind, I knew how true it was.

No one here likes you. No one here likes you. No one here likes you.

My pace slowed and I shuffled out of the bathroom. I didn't bother turning on any lights as I walked to my bedroom. When I got to my bedroom, I wiggled out of my flair jeans and peeled off my tie-dye t-shirt, throwing it in a corner. I reached under my pillow and pulled out my pajamas: XXL t-shirt and a pair of men's boxers with the front sewn up. Putting my pajamas on, I flopped on my bed and looked over at my digital clock.

11:11 PM

Now, I'm not one for fairy tale clichés, but in this case, I was pretty miserable.

"Please," I whispered to my pillow, "get me out of here."