She walks to school that day, head down, trying to hide the red eyes and dark bags covering her face. She doesn't look at anybody. She doesn't see anything.
In first period the teacher looks at her with concern and the students with alarm, but none of them are her friends anymore so they don't ask if she's okay.
They don't ask and she says nothing.
At lunch she sits at the table in the back with a book, ignoring the stares of her ex-friend Alli and her ex-friend Adam and her ex-boyfriend Jake. Ignoring the green eyes of Eli Goldsworthy, who she really cannot deal with anymore.
She goes through the day without saying a word.
When she leaves she walks home and her dad and his girlfriend are waiting there, laughing, but she turns her eyes away from them and decides she won't let them decide her life.
When she takes a shower that night she peels off her baggy grey sweatshirt and stares at the black bruise along the shoulder blade, fingering it and remembering.
But Clare Edwards is strong. She won't let anyone see her pain.
When she returns to her bed the girlfriend is waiting there, naked and smiling. She doesn't have the energy to fight or feel disgusted anymore. She just lets her, not really enjoying it but not hating it either.
Next week her mother and Jake will be back again. But no one will ask. No one will care.
But it'll be better.
The next day she's cornered by Eli, whose sharp eyes have noticed the bruising and the scars and the cuts. But she shrugs him away, because he cares for all the wrong reasons.
She's fine. She's strong, like the Amazon.
She's fine.
But Eli shakes his head and looks into her eyes, but she looks away, because she's too broken to feel anything and he's too broken to care.
That's what they told her, anyway.
Nobody cares.
He steps forward and puts his hand on her sweatshirt and she flinches, twisting away and grabbing his elbow, a mad look in her eye like she's about to hit him.
But he's too fast, way too fast, and the sweatshirt is off her before she can escape. And his eyes are taking in the bruises and the scarring and his eyes are widening….
And she's backing away, and now she's running.
Running.
Because he doesn't care, not really, he's just a stupid bipolar obsessive ex-boyfriend who loves her for all the wrong reasons.
He doesn't care.
She's strong, Clare Edwards is: strong like the Amazon. She doesn't need anybody, not her dad or Jake or Alli or Adam or her parents or Connor or KC or Fiona, and she certainly, definitely does not need Eli.
She can deal with her pain herself.
Clare Edwards is strong.
They find her the next morning, peacefully gone in a pine tree.
And they were right: nobody cared.