Chapter 4
What the hell is wrong with me!?
The words repeated over and over in Gwen's head as she raced down the street; running from the confused roommate who didn't know what she had done wrong, from the crowds of people who stopped to stare at the poor little goth girl with tears in her eyes, from her own stupidity for thinking that Courtney would understand what she was feeling, and from herself; from the truth she refused to acknowledge, even though she knew what she felt was real.
What the hell is wrong with me!?
. . .
She had run almost five blocks before she realized, to her surprise, that there was no one chasing her. Courtney hadn't come running after her. The people who stopped to stare simply continued on with their lives, as if they had never seen her in the first place. She was alone. She had escaped . . .
. . . so why was she so miserable?
What the hell is wrong with me?
. . .
Gwen exhaled as she tried to catch her breath between sobs. She wanted to run. She wanted to cry or feel angry. She wanted to hate Courtney; to walk back to her dorm room and punch that little brat right in the face. She wanted to be okay again. She wanted to feel normal. She wanted to feel . . . to feel . . . to feel anything except what she was actually feeling.
What the hell is wrong with me?
. . .
Gwen sat down on a bench overlooking one of the campus' lawns. She was physically and emotionally drained, but her body was tense and her heart felt like it was going to leap out of her chest. She couldn't stop. She couldn't relax.
What the hell is wrong with me?
Over and over, those words kept repeating. Over and over, she kept trying to understand, to rationalize her feelings, to come to any other conclusion than the one that was staring her square in the face.
What the hell is wrong with me?
Because there must be something wrong with her. Because she didn't run anymore, and she didn't cry. She didn't feel angry, and, no, she didn't hate Courtney, even if she did want to give that brat a good punch in the jaw. She wasn't okay, and she didn't feel normal anymore . . . but she did feel something; something so powerful, it completely overwhelmed her . . .
. . . and she couldn't deny it anymore.
"I'm in love with Courtney." Gwen confessed, her face flush as the tension in her body suddenly lifted.
"What the hell is wrong with me?"
. . .
Gwen didn't want this. She never asked for this to happen. She never wanted to have these feelings. It wasn't as if she woke up one morning and suddenly decided she wanted to be . . . to be . . .
. . .
It wasn't fair! Why did Courtney have to come back into her life now, just when she had finally moved on? She had spent so much of her life being an outcast; the creepy goth girl, the reality T.V. star, the back-stabbing boyfriend stealer. She just wanted a quiet, ordinary life with regular, normal friends. For once, couldn't she cast the Total Drama bullshit aside and just be the average girl with the steady boyfriend, the girl working hard towards a college degree, trying to get a good job, so she could have a normal life where no one would judge her on a daily basis because of who she is or what she had done? She didn't want to be different. She didn't want to be famous. All she wanted was to blend into the background . . . and disappear forever.
"Is that so fucking hard!?" Gwen yelled at the vacant lawn.
. . .
So, there she was, a sad little goth sitting on a park bench, ignored by everyone around her and completely alone; totally invisible, just like she wanted. She was exhausted, and her body was racked with guilt over . . . too many things. Yet, in spite of it all, she knew she needed to go back. As completely irrational as it might sound, she needed to walk headlong back into the pit of fire that was her Total Drama life. If she had any chance of being normal, any chance of being okay, she had to face this, face Courtney, head on. Gwen rose to her feet, wiped the tears from her eyes, and readied herself for what was to come. She needed to see Courtney again. She needed to talk to her, to try to work this out. She needed to tell her . . . something, she didn't know what. She didn't know what she wanted anymore. She didn't know if she could ever tell Courtney how she felt about her. She didn't know what she was going to do, and, God knows, she didn't know what the hell was wrong with her, but she did know one thing.
I'm not going to get anywhere sitting around sobbing all day.