This is a really long chapter, I know. But I'm going to be away for the next two weeks or so, so I'm not sure when I will be able to post again. I hope you like this chapter, despite it being long.

Clare: You remember how Adam, Eli and I were in the same English class? I bet you thought we were going to become best friends again, right? And then everything was going to turn out well, because I had my friends back and what not? Well, I thought so too. But I was wrong. Adam and Eli became editing partners. I was paired with Samantha Trutler. We were required to sit with our partners, so I was sitting on the opposite side of the room from the two of them. We barely talked. The only time we spoke was during a class discussion, and even then, it was a few sentences about a book. About a month and a half into the school year, I knew that I lost my two best friends for good. It was awful. To make matters worse, my relationship with Jake was still off. Every time I tried to talk to Alli about it, she tried to convince me that I was just being paranoid, or say something about Jake being "a waaaaaay better boyfriend than Eli." It annoyed me. She knew nothing about my relationship with Eli. She wasn't there to see how wonderful our relationship was before it went down hill. Then there was my family. I was still fighting with my mom. We were just so awful to each other. From all of this, I somehow ended up in a depression. I don't know when my first depression symptoms first started, but they were getting bad pretty quickly. I felt trapped in my own life.

I distinctively remember a day, towards the beginning of November, so we were about two months into school, when all of this for some reason exploded in my life, and I made a big mistake. It started when I first woke up. My throat burned dry, as if I had been sobbing in my sleep. I got out of my bed, and walked over to my mirror, and starred at the stranger looking back at me. Her skin was pale and blotchy, as if she was upset all the time. She was thin, as if she wasn't eating much. Her lips were dry and chapped, and I bet if she spoke, her voice would be raspy, as if she spent the entire night sobbing. And her eyes, her eyes, they were bright red, as if she had cried through the night. They were full of pain. I stared at her for forever, wishing this stranger wasn't me.

When I got to school, I was at my locker, making sure I had everything for the day. I felt someone poke my sides, which was, and still is, one of my biggest pet peeves. I turned around and saw Jake.

"Hey cutie!" he said to me, with a smile spread across his face.

"Hi, Jake," I responded, emotionlessly and blankly.

"I missed you," he stated, expecting me to say it back. He snaked his arms around me, pulling me towards him.

"I missed you too," I forced out of my vocal chords. I couldn't look him in the eyes.

"Clare-bear?" I hated when he called me that, "you okay?"

"Kinda, I'm just stressed. I got into another fight with my mom last night." Jake unwraps his arms from around me, and looks at me with annoyance.

"Really, Clare?" he asked.

"What?"

"It's been, what? Two months? I think it's time you got over the fact that your mom is getting remarried," he said calmly, but his voice was lined with traces of annoyance.

"It's not just about my mom getting married, Jake," I explained, looking with my eyes in every other direction.

"Still, Clare, it's time to move on. I want the happy Clare back." I smiled slightly, and walked away. He didn't understand, and he wasn't trying to. As I walked away, I tried to picture the conversation if I had been having it with Eli.

"Hey, Clare," he would have said when I was at my locker.

"Hi," I would have responded, looking at him momentarily, then going back to my locker. He would have immediately noticed something was wrong, so he would have gently turned me around to look at him.

"Is it your mom again?" he would ask, not needing to ask if it was something else.

"We got into another fight last night," I would respond. He would give me a small, reassuring half smile, and then say, "I'm sorry." With those two words, the weight of the world would get lifted off my shoulders. I would be happy, but I'd shrug it off, and say "It's fine," while trying to seem less okay than I actually was.

"You wanna come over tonight for dinner? Get away for a little?" he'd ask. I'd smile, and politely accept, my body flowing with relief.

Whether Eli and I were together or not, if we were actually friends right now, that is exactly what he would probably do. Me thinking this doesn't mean that I'm I love with him, it just simple meant that I needed him as a friend, but we couldn't be friends like we used to be.

While walking to my class I ran into Alli.

"Hey, Clare!" she exclaimed, with a smile spread across her face. Her smile quickly faded. "What's wrong?"

"Stressful day. You know, my mom, Jake."

"What did he do this time?" she questioned.

"Nothing, that's the thing. He doesn't get my problems," I say.

"He just doesn't know how to help you. You always turn him away when he tries to help you."

"Because he's not very good at with helping me with my problems," I plead.

"And Eli wasn't?" she said, with that voice that she always uses when trying to reason with me.

"Can you stop comparing Eli and Jake?"

"Well, the way you are talking lately, it seams like you would rather be with Eli instead of Jake," she spat at me.

"All I'm just saying that he's not the best person to go to for advice," I stated. I felt relieved when I heard the annoying bell chime through the hallways of the school.

"Whatever," she said in annoyance, "I have to get to class." Then she walked away. Well, that was a crappy start to the day.

By fourth period, I had two pop-quizzes, both of which I probably failed. My failing of the quizzes would lead to my mom getting mad at me, then getting into another fight with me. As I walked to study, I passed the JT Yorke memorial. I saw Adam lying on his stomach on one of the stone benches. Lilly was sitting next to his back, and massaging it playfully. I felt a pang of anger inside me, then it faded quickly. It wasn't worth getting mad over. I just stood there watching them, then I saw Eli walk into the court yard, and make some kind of sarcastic remark. Lilly lifted her hand off of Adams back, and slapped Eli on the stomach, to which he replied "Ouch!" to. I couldn't hear him, but I knew that was what he was saying. I could recognize that any day, it was his favorite sarcastic remark. Then Lilly said something back to Eli. He made a face at her. She said something else, and blew a kiss to him. The three of them laughed together. Anger built up inside of me. Lilly had taken my two best friends. Not only that, but I was jealous of Eli. He was so happy right now, after our break up. I broke up with him. I was supposed to be the one who was laughing and smiling, while he looked on upset, wishing we were still friends. But there I was, standing in a hallway, watching my ex boyfriend, ex best friend, and my future step-sister from afar, wishing I was as happy as them.

"Clare," I heard, as a hand rested on my shoulder, I jumped as my train of though was disturbed.

"Sorry," Jake said, as I turned around to see him.

"It's fine." I relaxed a bit.

"Listen, I'm sorry for what I said this morning," he said, I knew he meant it.

"It's fine, don't worry about it," I said, then walked away, I was going to be late for class.

By the time I got to English, I was numb. My pain made me unable to feel. I felt like I couldn't walk, and the weight of my books seemed too heavy to carry. Ms. Dawes saw me as I walked into the room.

"Ms. Edwards, are you okay?" she rang, as I walked past her.

"Yeah, just didn't get enough sleep last night, that's all," I said, and walked to my seat. The class dragged on. We worked on editing our partner's work. Every so often, I would look over, and see Adam and Eli and their bromantic antics. I so badly wished I was sitting with them, laughing and joking with them, but I knew that I couldn't, so I would try and work on editing Samantha's essay. My head would end up refilling with thoughts of my life, and how it was going wrong, and I would be tempted to look back at them again, so I did. I thanked God when the bell rang, signifying that the period, and the school day, were over. I had to contain myself from sprinting out of the classroom.

I decided to take a short cut home through the woods behind the school. I walked a path for a few minutes. The sunlight was shining through the trees in a beautiful way. The leaves crunched under my feet. I felt as if I was going to cry, and within a minute or two, I was. Why was life getting to me? Even when my parents were getting divorced, I never felt this awful. And in all my life, I've never felt so alone. The pact that I made with myself not to cry, was no longer in existence, because no matter how hard I tried at that moment, I couldn't stop crying. I tried to focus on the positives, just to get my tears to stop, but for some reason, it only made things worse.

After a few minutes of walking, I decided to give into myself, and just allow myself to cry. I didn't bother muffling my sobs. I was in the woods, and no one would hear me. As I cried, relief slowly began to fill me. It was the first time in a long time since I felt relieved. I hadn't felt that good in so long. It was as if a ton of weight was lifted off my shoulders.

I reached my home, feeling refreshed. But the second I reached my doorway, I grew nervous. What would be waiting for me when I got into the house? My fingers trembling, I opened the front door. I took a step in the house, and saw Lilly walking in the living room. She was texting, but looked up when she heard me come in.

"Hey, Clare," she said with a smile.

"Hi," I replied.

"Are you okay?" she asked.

"Why wouldn't I be?"

"You've been kind of bitter and cranky. More than usual," she said. It made me angry when she said that. Not because she pretty much insulted me, but because she didn't know anything about me, and because she was half the reason I was so bitter and cranky all the time. And it's not like I was bitter to everyone, just the people that pissed me off like her.

"You don't know anything about my mood," I spat.

"I'm just trying to help you," she said.

"I don't want your help, okay?"

"I was just checking, calm down. I'm trying to be nice to you."

"Why?" I asked, bitterly.

"Because I figured, that if we were going to live together, we might as well try and get along," she explained, trying to keep her calm.

"Well, I don't care for getting along with you, so you can drop the act."

"Why does it have to be an act?" she asked.

"Because, no one is sunshine and daisies all the time," I said, quoting Alli. She exhaled a deep breath.

"Is it so wrong to be a nice person?" she spat at me.

"It is, when I don't want to hear anything that comes from your mouth, let alone see you."

"You know what, Clare?" she exploded, "I have been nothing but nice to you since the moment I walked through these doors, and you have done nothing but make my life a living hell. I don't think it's fair."

"No, you made my life a living hell, because you just waltzed in here, and took over my family. Do you have any idea what that's like?"

"I don't know if you realized, Clare, but I had to pick up my life and move here, so that you wouldn't have to. So stop being a selfish bitch, and get over yourself!"

"You don't know anything about me," I said, and ran up to my room. I cried. I cried over the fact I was just called a bitch, I cried over the fact that she was right, I cried over the fact that I felt like no one understood me, I cried over all the fights I got into. I cried because it all was too much.

I forced my tear ducts to hold in the tears back long enough to walk across the hall to the bathroom, no one could hear me cry in the shower. I turned the water on in the shower, and made it as hot as possible. Stripped down, and stepped in the shower, and immediately broke back down into sobs. I sat on the floor of the tub, and just let the water burn my skin as I cried. Why was all of this so hard for me to handle?

After a few minutes, I remember looking up, as I swallowed hard. I noticed my razor sitting on the edge of the bathtub. I stared at it for a while. I was never so tempted to take it and slice my skin open. I was desperate for a way out of this pain, and this seemed to be the best solution. With my shaking hand, I grabbed the razor. I brought it to my thigh, and made a gash in my skin, it was thin, but about two inches long. Relief over took me. It was like the crying, but faster. I just sat in the bathtub, water falling on me, watching the blood drip out of the cut, and down the bottom of the tub, and into the drain, until the bleeding stopped.

Okay, so that's the really long chapter. I know it's long, and not very well written. I didn't have much time to edit it. But here it is. I'm going to try and update some more today of not just this, but of my other stories, but we'll see. I have a lot to do today. Anyways, review. I love reviews. :)

~Andy