It's her favorite book. She's read it five times, at least. It's the ending that she likes, because even though Lucy is poor and trodden upon and ignored left and right, she endures it all until she is on top.
Lucy doesn't cry into her pillow at night and wake up damp-faced. Lucy doesn't steal pocket knives from the market and slice her fingers and wrists left and right. Lucy doesn't sit in caves with her "friends" and hover her hands over candles until the pain turns to numbness.
Lucy is quiet and calm. She is intelligent and beautiful, but everyone fails to realize it until it's too late for them and just the right time for Lucy. Lucy is not Ann.
Ann is quiet, true, but she's anxious. Ann is neither intelligent nor beautiful, and no one fails to realize this. It's always going to be too late for Ann and it's never going to be just the right time. Ann is not Lucy.
Sometimes, at night, Ann hugs the book to her chest and thinks, Lucy wouldn't have used that knife today. She would have bit her lip and endured the pain. She wouldn't need more pain to justify how she was feeling.
Once, Gemma yelled at her about the book, and told her that that never happened in real life, but Ann didn't care. Deep down, she told herself that Gemma was wrong. Gemma was pretty and rich and brave and didn't need to worry about being teased, because she was just like the other girls and could tease them back. But Ann can't do this, because she is not just like the other girls. She is below them.
The moon is high as she sneaks out of the school, alone this time. Normally she sneaks out with Gemma and Felicity. She doesn't even think about how she used to sneak out with Pippa, since the thought of beautiful, engages, care-free Pippa who was selfish and took her life perturbs her so. She heads towards the lake in her nightgown, The Perils of Lucy in her hand.
She reaches the lake, and stands there for a bit, the cool night wind rustling her nightgown and hugging it to her plain form. In one throw, the book arches above her and plops into the lake. She's tied a rock to it, so it even sinks. It's that simple, she thinks. And you could do that to yourself, too, if you wanted. But you won't.
And as she heads back towards the school, she murmurs one thing. "Good bye."
Good bye, Lucy.