This is my version of the modern day Divergent high school thing. I know that there's a lot of them out there but I wanted to write my own. I'm in the process of rewriting this story, so bear with me. Enjoy!
I rest my head on my knees as our old, rattling car, filled with people and packages, pulls out of our driveway and away from the only home I've ever known. This isn't fair. Given the choice, I never would have left here.
But that's the thing about being sixteen- you never get the choice. One minute you're told to grow up and the next, you're too young to understand. It's completely idiotic. And that was how it went exactly one month ago, when my father announced that we would be moving to Delphi, a tiny town just outside of Chicago. Caleb, my brilliant older brother who has skipped two grades and thinks only about school, was excited, saying that the Chicago area would give him "great opportunities."
And me? I locked myself in my room and cried for a day. I told my father that I hated him and I wasn't going, that he and the rest of the family could move to China for all I cared, I would die if I left St. Louis. It was no use, of course, and he told me to stop being so selfish and dramatic, we were going no matter what.
And so yesterday I said goodbye to Susan and Robert, my best friends since before kindergarten. We had grown up across the street from each other, done everything together. I, the dramatic selfish teenager as usual, cried like there was no tomorrow. Caleb, who'd had a crush on Susan since the fifth grade, barely shed a tear. Susan hugged me tightly and told me to come back and visit, and wished me luck at my new school. But I know better.
If my family has anything to say about it, I won't be coming back.
"Beatrice, honey, are you all right?" my mother asks.
Of course not. But I don't say it. I don't say anything. I just pull my dark blue sweatshirt tighter around me and look out the window, watching the rain pour down. Even the sky is crying today.
I pull out my iPod and shove the earbuds in my ears, wanting to block out the sound of rain pounding on the roof, on the windshield, on the ground. Thunder in the sky and thunder in my heart.
"Oh,you can't hear me cry
See my dreams all die
From where you're standing on your own.
It's so quiet here, and I feel so cold
This house no longer
Feels like home."
Susan and I used to laugh over how ridiculously miserable this song was, but now I'm actually starting to understand the lyrics- how leaving something you love behind creates a cold, dark place inside you. How you never know you need something until it's taken from you.
"You caused my heart to bleed and
You still owe me a reason
'Cause I can't figure out why..."
I close my eyes against the music, and eventually I fall asleep to the beating of rain and drums and lonely heart.
The new house is too big and always, always too empty. I don't try to meet people, even though school starts in a month.
Instead, I curl under the blankets, hide in my room. And there, the knife cuts.
I bleed.