Chapter One

From an early age I've been fascinated with death. Everyone knows that – I practically scream it as a greeting. I've always known I was different. While the other little girls were playing with barbies, I was finding creative and original ways to destroy them.

I had no friends, really – who wants to hang out with that type of kid anyway? Even older boys who made fun of all my peers were terrified of me. They'd steer clear, glancing at me a thousand times as they robbed children of two bucks of lunch money. I don't blame them. I've always given off the illusion that I could do things I really couldn't do.

And, sure, it works for the most part. But some people see right through me. Beck, for one. He bulldozed my walls down the moment I met him. That's why I initially agreed to dating him – he saw past my bluffing, I didn't have to pretend around him. A treaty. An agreement. I could rebuild. I figured that's really all there was to it. Guys aren't allowed to just give away their girlfriends' secrets. It's a law. I figured he knew my secrets, so that was a way to keep them in, right?

Wrong.

See, thing is, Beck isn't a lawyer. He doesn't know this stuff. You'd think it was common sense, that everyone should understand that. But no. He listened to all those problems I told him about, all those insecurities and the feelings and the confusion, all of it. And then he went on to talk about it with Andre, of all people.

I don't know why he chose Andre. I suppose Andre's an understanding person. Or he was just there. Doesn't matter much. Point is, he brought all that out in the open, regardless of whether or not we were dating. And now Andre knows all about how screwed up I am, Andre knows how insecure I am. It's not fair. In the slightest.

That's just one more person who knows things about me that they shouldn't.

I didn't say a word about it – the only reason I even knew was because I was late to class and they were talking about it in the middle of the hallway. Where anybody could hear. I didn't ever make it to class. I ended up sulking for an hour in the janitor's closet and then driving home.

Then Vega showed up. Out of nowhere, in the middle of the school year. Beautiful, talented, modest. She didn't need to break down my walls to understand. She had a key to the gate and just made her way inside.

It was horrifying. She made me feel things that I didn't want to feel, right off the bat. She was so close to uncovering everything. I couldn't trust her – I couldn't even trust my own boyfriend anymore! She was already inside my fortress, all I could do to protect my secrets was hide in a secret vault and throw out as many grenades as I could find, hoping they would drive her away.

But she wouldn't be driven away – she was determined to find me, and all my attacks were doing were pointing her in the right direction. I really shouldn't have been so worried in retrospect. She was an unarmed lone soldier posing no threat. But I was thinking irrationally, I figured she'd wait until she got close enough and then pull out her weapon and make it hurt that much more.

I could only see two options – I could make her chase me around in circles until we were both exhausted or I could continue attacking until I ran out of ammunition. I was never one for decisions, so I merged the two together.

As days went by, my weapons just got weaker. I lost energy exponentially. And poor Tori Vega, she was so confused. Showing her surrender flag every time I glanced back, she just couldn't understand why I wouldn't even take her prisoner, as any sane person would do.

But that's the problem. I'm not sane. I'm not rational; I'm not logical. I'm completely out of my mind. She needed to understand that if we were going to make any truce at all.

But she refused to accept that. She followed every move I made, trying to put reason to it. Every word I said was taken down and analyzed as though it actually meant something. As though I knew what I was talking about half the time. She was searching for sequence in a thousand unrelated numbers.

It got so bad in my head. It got to the point where I was considering escaping from my own fortress and leaving her in there. Trapping her inside my mind as I lost it. Running away from all I had. But then I remembered when I was that little girl - so feared, so lonely - and I figured that if I could live through that, then this should be nothing.

I remember back then, when the majority of the thoughts in my head were about how everything dies, and how I wanted to die in an interesting way. Not just be another number. Part of a statistic. I wanted to stand out. I wanted to die in such a way that people would remember it as so well thought out; well executed. A scary story told at one of those campfires I'd only ever heard about at storytelling time in preschool. A statement about humanity and it's faults.

That's not how it happened.

A/N - Hello there! If you got this far I applaud you. I know that most of that stuff was a bit heavy and some if not all of it made no sense, but that is pretty much what I was going for. The whole overthinking things and turning everything into metaphors is actually not only there to confuse you, contrary to popular belief.

This is my first story. I'm not sure it's a wonderful start. I assure you I'm not this depressing all the time. So yeah. That's pretty much all I have to say. It's not like anybody actually reads these things anyway.