"Fuckin' bitch."
I don't hear their whispers until it's too late, and then I find myself falling. My head smacks hard into the tile and I hear a cracking noise and see blood.
One of them locks the door behind me.
My drab, unpainted nails scrape grime as I try and force myself up off the ground, but someone rips off my hood and grabs me up by the length of my quills. I get pushed face-first into a stall door before they open it up and toss me inside. I stumble and hit my head on the porcelain base of the toilet and the blood comes faster.
"Bet you think you're better than us, don't you, you little skank?"
I tell them no and my voice cracks like glass. Their laughter stings like acid and I want to cry.
They push me under, and my arms aren't strong enough to push me back up. I gag and choke on filthy water until they decide to yank me back out so they can look at my bleeding face. I can see that the water has turned pink, and I feel lightheaded. They dunk me again, and I hold my breath until I see stars. Light pops in my vision and the darkness sparkles.
I'm rescued from drowning when the bell rings, and the shrill noise pierces my ears like a knife when they tug me back out by the collar of my hoodie and let my soaking head hit the floor with a hard noise. I'm gasping and spitting and vomiting into the drain in the floor as they run off to class, calling me names as they go.
When the bell stops and the door shuts, I wrap my arms around myself and close my eyes so that no tears can come out. The silence makes me think of everything wrong with me and my life and I can only hold myself tighter as I fight my heart back down my throat.
I take in a shuddering, wet gasp of air.
By the time I force myself to stand, the dampness is spreading down my body like a sickness, and it chills my bones through my sleeves. I claw open the zipper and tear the jacket off of me as I push open the stall and wander out into the empty bathroom. The fluorescents above me drone on like trapped insects as I wring out my hoodie under the hand-dryer.
I catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror and see a scared, skinny little girl staring back at me from behind the glass. Her eyes are cold and pale like the pages of a book that no one wants to read. I stand up straighter and so does she, and her spine is showing through the thin fabric of her dingy white t-shirt. The dreamcatcher on her neck dangles over her flat chest, the colorful feathers lying over the pale, smooth texture of her skin. She unconsciously tucks it away under her shirt, and the necklace bulges underneath. Her hair is pink and wet and when she puts the dark hoodie back on over her body and head, only her bangs escape, and they fall about her face and cover her eyes so that her book is harder to read.
I turn to the girl and want so badly to reach out and touch her, to remind her that she is real, that she is alive. But I don't believe it, and the wall of glass between us is thick and unforgiving in its reflections. I can only tell her, "It's going to be okay."
She hears my words, and in her unreadable eyes I can see that she finds them hollow. But they are all that she has. So she holds on to them with all of her strength and cleans the blood from her nose and face before she begins the long walk to her next class.
...
I walk into the cafeteria and sit down in the darkest corner that I can find. The noise and bustle of the people around me drowns me deeper until no one can possibly see me, but somehow Rouge still finds me.
"Hey, Amy."
I wish my hood covered more of my face as I swallow my pride and say hi back.
She sits down on the bench and sets her tray on top of her pretty red skirt, and she picks an apple up off of it and passes it to me without thinking about it. The silvery chain on her wrist jangles with a sound like falling stars. I take the fruit and nod a "thank you."
Rouge combs aside some of her beautiful ivory hair so that it's tucked safely behind one ear and glances at me with her warm, turquoise eyes. "How're you doing, hon?"
Her sympathy sounds more like pity and it burns my face. I tuck my head down lower and chew on the apple. "Fine," I lie.
She leans back and her black leather jacket squawks as she crosses her arms over her chest. I'm jealous of her clothes and I hate myself.
"So, listen, I was thinking of going to the mall this afternoon, maybe shop around a little. You wanna' come?"
"I can't drive," is my immediate response, and I hope she accepts it and leaves me be.
But she doesn't. "It's cool, I can give you a ride."
My face is red with blood and I curl my legs up into my chest until I'm a tight, bony ball of dark fabric and inadequacy. She doesn't see the tears in my eyes when I tell her, "No, thank you."
She stops and I can feel her gorgeous eyes on me and I wish I could trade mine for hers. But I know in my heart that no one wants my scribbled, torn pages in their sockets.
Rouge seems to take the hint and I don't say sorry even though I want to. "Okay. Maybe some other time."
We eat the rest of our lunch in silence, but she never leaves my side and I'm not sure why.
...
Seventh period is when he walks into class and I can't stop looking at him.
Sonic the hedgehog strolls to his seat like the world is waiting on him and not the other way around even when the teacher berates him for being tardy. He smiles sheepishly in reply and shrugs his shoulders and somehow it's not obnoxious at all. He sits down at the front of the class, right where he belongs, and his collar is crooked but somehow it looks alright anyway. His eyes sparkle with a confidence I can only ever dream of possessing and it kills me when he suddenly glances in my direction and catches my tattered eyes poking out from beneath my hoodie.
He shoots me a grin and winks like we have an inside joke just between the two of us even though we both know that he's something and I'm nothing and that the product of anything times zero is still zero.
I blush like a child and pretend to be focused on my paper. I finished the assignment a long time ago, and the other girls seated around me are glaring at me like I've personally insulted them for doing so. My head pounds where I hit the porcelain earlier today, and I try to ignore the pain as I pass the time by staring through the window and at the gray sky outside. The clouds swell and begin to cry rain down onto the concrete below, drenching the parking lot with their useless tears. The pitter-pattering noise of the storm hitting the glass isn't loud enough to silence the whispers I hear circling my head.
"Little-Miss-Smartass thinks she knows it all."
"Who the fuck does she think she's kidding with that outfit?"
"Did you see the way he looked at her? How can you look at that and not just want to vomit?"
"She should do us all a favor and just-..."
The bell shrills and chairs slide out with loud noises but I finish their sentences for them. The rain is pounding the glass and it sounds like the blood in my skull and I have a headache as I slowly stand up in order to avoid the crowd. The room empties out and I'm the last one to leave and that's okay. I'm not looking forward to the rain so I don't mind taking my time even if it means that they find me alone again and push me down and hurt me some more. The rain depresses me.
It's been raining a lot lately.
...
When I make it home to my bedroom, I find the vanity mirror that my mom got me when I was six is staring at me harshly from the wall opposite my bed. The little pink girl is there, a shivering skeleton inside her black-gray hoodie. I unzip it for her and watch her sit down on the edge of her bed with tired eyes and a bleeding forehead. I want to put pressure on her headwound, but something inside me tells me that she wants it to bleed, and so I leave it alone.
In the glass I can see her start to cry. She buries her bloody face into her hands and weeps ugly, hacking sobs that hurt me deeply.
I can only watch as she picks up the knife from her nightstand and rolls back her sleeves. Her ghostly skin is flawed with cranberry-colored scribbles that run jagged lines across her wrists and I understand her pain.
There are nights I simply don't want to exist anymore.
She looks in the mirror and sees the tears in my eyes, and for a moment, she smiles. It is dull and macabre and I can tell that it hurts her to do it. And she says to me, "It's going to be okay."
Then she pulls the knife along her skin and I feel everything.
...
I wake up in the dark with cuts on my arms and blood on my sheets. The little girl is gone. I'm alone.
I don't have far to go as I crawl up my bed and bury myself under my sheets. I slither out of my shirt and jeans until all I can feel on my skin are the lines on my wrists and the dreamcatcher on my heart. The pills are on the nightstand next to my knife. The bottle says "take two" and I take four because the doctor said that they would make me sleep and I never want to wake up.
As my eyelids flutter closed, I think about Sonic.
I think about Rouge.
I think about me.
Then I fall asleep and wait to see if I'm alive tomorrow.