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She's mastered the cough-puke method by now. She no longer shakes in fear every time she goes into the bathroom, terrified that someone may walk in or overhear from the hallway. Sometimes, if the day's lunch has been small – a bag of cheese curls or a Twinkie – and she knows it will only last ten seconds, she'll even throw up when there's another girl in one of the stalls.

And, maybe, she's not all that scared of someone finding out anymore.

By the time she leaves the bathroom, the bell has just rung, announcing sixth period. Her breath is minty, her eyelids heavy, and her stomach stretchy as ever. They say that when you're dizzy the room spins, but it doesn't really. Because, for Katie right now, it's blurring out around the edges and somehow falling down at a slant away from her. She wishes it would spin. Unlike Maya, she always kept her cool on those carnival rides from their childhood – the ones that would spin them and lift them and drop them.

Then again, she has a weaker stomach nowadays.

She stumbles out into the mainstream hallway –

And knocks full-head-on-force with another girl.

Katie hits the ground first, but the other, slightly shorter – she thinks – student, comes right after her. Papers scatter the floor, and the contents of Katie's purse – the Nano iPod that she pins to her sports bra when she runs on the treadmill in gym, a few individually-wrapped breath mints, and three lead pens – sprawl out over granite tiles, creating a mixture of the clinking of metal and the shuffling of plastic wrap.

Katie, disregarding her own mess, instantaneously reaches for the pile of papers soon to be trampled by the oncoming herd of football players (plus Adam Torres).

In her muddled vision, she has to reach a farther distance than the papers seem to be away from her, but eventually, her fingers curl around them and sweep them out of harm's way in just the right time. Owen accidentally steps on her pinkie finger. "Sorry, Katie!" He calls over his brawny, padded shoulder.

His cleat has chipped the yellow nail polish.

Finally, Katie looks up to meet the eyes of her next apology client, and – whoops! – it's someone already in the waiting room. The startled-doe, blue eyes of Clare Edwards are gazing back at her. "I'm so sorry, Katie!" She says – pleads – reaching for the closest spearmint Lifesaver.

Somehow, Katie's mint-fresh throat that she has just splashed buckets of water down gets uncannily dry. "I'll buy you a new shirt. I'll buy you three new shirts," the wide-eyed junior wails, pawing at Katie's shoulder where Katie now realizes is a bit damp from a half-opened bottled water Clare had been carrying.

Her secretary is chirping in her mind. "Miss Matlin! We have a client claiming you owe her two apologies now. I think we should bump her to the front of the list! Miss Matlin?"

Her throat is dry.

And then comes a voice she's never heard before.

A curt snap. "It's fine, Clare." Her lips are numb; she isn't in control of them.

The younger girl, humiliated and still utterly apologetic, leans back and swallows hard before gathering her papers and standing up. And, while Clare may not realize it, she's towering over Katie right now. Her trembling fingers are clutching at the jumbled pile of newspaper articles that Katie used to manage, and in her next class, she has a boyfriend waiting for her with a smile and comforting arm to wrap around her shoulder. Eli will probably brush his thumb over her now crimson cheeks, and Clare will realize that 'who, the hell, cares what Katie Matlin thinks of her?' Especially now. Now that Katie's whole world has boiled down to nothing.

"I'm sorry, Katie," Clare murmurs one last time before slipping around the corner and disappearing down the hall.

And Katie just sits there in her little pile of breath mints and illegally downloaded songs. The halls are deserted, excepting the few last-five-seconds stragglers. She's still slumped against the wall, at least two minutes from her World History class, when the bell sounds through the halls.

She pushes herself up and stumbles into the bathroom again just in time for the tears. Her slanted vision is starting to glisten with water now.

And the sobs claw their way up from her throat like wild animals. She clutches the side of the sink and stares into the mirror, and she watches eyeliner-colored tears stream down the face of a stranger. She listens to the unfamiliar girl's cries.

They don't sound like the ones Katie cried last year when she sprained her ankle on the soccer field. Or the ones that came when her dog, Wink, died three years ago. They're anguished and lost and broken, and Katie hates that when she hears them, the first thing she thinks about is the night she and Drew watched the quivering back of a curly-haired, fiery-eyed girl clutching a gun in a black alleyway.

Hates it because she doesn't ever want to turn out like that.

And hates it because she has no right to compare her problems to that.

She slides away from the mirror's reflection rays, sinking to the ground and closing her eyes tighter than she ever has before in her life. The darkness behind her lids is static, filled with her uneven sobs and watery with her tears – and she feels like she's cooped up in her shiny new car Mom and Dad bought her for Christmas, slouched up in the middle, front seat while torrents of rain run down the glass around her.

And she can't see outside. She can't see anything but a blur of colors, smearing and melting in the storm. Maybe, they can see her a little bit, though. Maybe, they can make out the outline of a girl with her arms wrapped around her knees, alone and scared of the thunder in the distance.

This isn't her. It never used to be.

She can't remember when someone else took over her body – a Katebot rolling around on a broken wheel. Intake little white capsules. Carry on. This load is nothing.

Exhaust cheese curls and dignity.

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Her little, chirping secretary has quit. Katie doesn't blame her. What self-respecting figment of the imagination wants to work for a girl with slanted vision and minty-vomit breath?

Katie's thoughts are quiet now. She didn't realize it was possible to get any more tired, but, as it turns out, her mind has been going a mile a minute since rehab. Just like her body, with it's stretchy stomach and splintering migraines, couldn't start working again once it sat down, her mind, once frantic and spinning, can't seem to wind up again now that she's spent a few days in silence.

She and Marisol talk on the way to homeroom. Only it's not really a conversation. Marisol asks how she's doing, and Katie tells a lie – that both she and Marisol know is present – but Mar smiles anyway. Katie's – once, a long time ago – best friend has always been good at talking, but now, Marisol's dark brown eyes lace the ground a few steps ahead of her; she stutters a bit and sometimes even begins to say something before stopping all together. Her words are being stifled somewhere along the road to Katie.

And, in the end, Marisol doesn't invite her to sit with the other girls in homeroom. Even though Katie had thought she might.