This is where I scream from.

The shrill ringing of the phone jolted me from my unfeeling haze. Slowly I rolled off my bed and walked across the room to pick up the phone, my stomach twisting uncomfortably. It was Kennedy, I was sure; she made sure to call at least twice a week to check on me.

"Hey!" she shouted as soon as I answered, and I winced – her voice was much too loud in my ear, and I could hear clanging noise in the background. "What's up?"

"Not much," I replied. "I've just been...uh –" my eyes landed on the stack of unopened books sitting on my desk – "studying."

"You're always studying," Kennedy complained. "Don't you ever do anything else? Don't you ever go out and have fun?"

"Occasionally," I lied. "My roommate sometimes invites me to her friends' parties." This was true; I just always declined.

"What's your roommate like?"

"She's...nice." And I guess Sabrina was nice enough; it was just that, more often than not, she'd come back to our room smelling of smoke or so drunk she could hardly walk.

There was a commotion on the other end of the line, and some voices I couldn't quite make out, and I could tell Kennedy was no longer attending to our conversation. After a moment she said, rather breathlessly, "Someone wants to talk to you."

I was mystified, until a familiar voice sounded in my ear. "Anna!"

"Ian?"

"Who else?" he laughed. "How are you doing?"

For some reason, it was so much harder to lie to Ian than it was to lie to my best friend. "I'm good, just tired. I had a busy day." A day in which I'd once again skipped my classes and spent my time hiding away in my room. "How about you?"

"I'm fantastic," Ian said happily. "The band's really picked up ground since we got back from our tour. It's still not the same without you here, though."

"Of course not," I said, only partly achieving the lightness I was aiming for.

"Are you coming home for Christmas?" Ian asked, suddenly serious.

"Yeah," I sighed. "My parents want me home."

"Well, it'll be good to see you again. We miss you, Anna."

"Hey, Ian, lend a hand would you?"

Ian sighed. "I gotta go pack up," he said. "But I think Mike wants to talk to you anyway." There was the rustle of static and voices shouting in the background as he passed the phone over.

"What's this I hear about you coming home?" Mike's voice crackled over the line.

"Yeah. For Christmas break." I did my best to inject some enthusiasm into my voice, but even over four thousand kilometers, Mike saw right through me.

"You don't sound overly excited."

I knew I had to be careful with Mike—he was the most perceptive of the guys.

"Don't get me wrong, I can't wait to see you again...but I really like it here."

"What's it like?" Mike asked curiously, and I breathed a sigh of relief at the change in conversation.

"It doesn't rain as much."

He laughed. "I imagine that's true for a great deal of places."

"But everyone's really nice here. My professors are great and my classes are great and...yeah."

"I'm really glad to hear things are going so well for you, Anna," Mike said warmly.

"They are," I said, feeling awfully guilty.

"Well, Matt's a little...indisposed right now, but I think Josh wants to talk to you."

"It was nice talking to you, Mike," I said, trying to mean it.

"You, too. Stay in touch, all right?" Before I had the chance to make a promise I wouldn't keep, Mike handed the phone over to Josh.

The background noise faded, and I knew Josh had moved somewhere quieter to talk to me. "How's the battle?" he asked.

I swallowed thickly. Lying to Josh was the hardest thing of all. "I'm getting there," I said. "But it's...hard, you know?"

"I do," Josh said. "But at least you're trying. I'm proud of you, Anna."

"Thanks," I whispered, feeling suddenly choked up, feeling horrible for the untruths I was telling all of them.

Shortly after that, Josh handed the phone back to Kennedy, who rambled on about what a great concert I'd missed, about how she wished I could be there, about how she'd call back soon, before saying her goodbyes and hanging up. To be honest, I wasn't really listening; my thoughts had become stuck on the words Josh had said.

"But at least you're trying. I'm proud of you, Anna."

At least you're trying.

I'm proud of you, Anna.

A tear I hadn't even been aware of trickled down my cheek, followed by another. How had things become so fucked up so quickly? How had I let my determination to fix myself fade away into something unimaginable, impossible?

College was nothing like what I had imagined it would be; I had thought that I would make new friends, find a group to fit in with, that the urges that besieged me day and night would fade away if I removed myself from their root.

It turned out that moving to the other side of the country didn't make me into a different, more desirable person; I had as few friends as ever—less, if you consider the only true friends I had before were still in Vancouver—and that the problems I'd been struggling with were even more difficult to handle when I didn't have a support system to fall back on. I had a roommate who barely acknowledged my existence, classes full of people I couldn't talk to, professors who didn't even know my name. At another time, another place, maybe I would have been glad for the anonymity, but here I found that being alone made me sick for home and so lonely it hurt.

And I couldn't bear to tell Kennedy or Josh or any of the others about my struggles, I couldn't bear to tell them what had become of my success story. I didn't want to hear the disappointment in Josh's voice or Kennedy begging me to come home. I couldn't go home, not until I'd at least picked up some of the pieces and managed to assemble together some semblance of my former life.

That was why I had lied to them on the phone; that was why I had avoided contacting them first; that was why I was dreading going home for Christmas. I wasn't ready to face them yet, to pretend to be happy, to pretend everything was better than it had been before. And maybe I never would be—and in my heart I thought that that was most likely the case, because it felt like I never would be happy—but that didn't mean that I was prepared at this moment to act like everything was okay, or to tell them that I'd been wrong, that I'd fucked up, that I was more broken than I'd ever been.

I was so broken, so empty that I didn't even feel the tears dripping from my eyes, didn't know they were there until I raised my hand wonderingly to touch the wetness on my cheeks, and I didn't hear the key turning in the lock and the door opening and closing again until my roommate stood by my bed, looking down on me.

"You look like shit," she informed me.

"What are you doing here?" I asked, twisting my head on my pillow to look up at her and ignoring her comment. As usual, Sabrina's face was heavily caked in makeup, her hair in an elaborate knot behind her head, her clothes low-cut and tight and smelling of smoke.

"What, I can't walk into my own room? I live here too, you know."

"You're in here so rarely, I'd almost forgotten."

She looked me over, her dark eyes taking in my red and swollen ones, my wet cheeks, my tangled hair. "Maybe if you spent less time in here, you wouldn't be such a mess," she observed.

"Thanks," I said sarcastically, although I wasn't really hurt by her comment—nothing really had the ability to hurt me anymore, I was so numb.

"I'm serious," she insisted. "There's a party down on floor seven tonight. You should come."

"Am I even invited?"

"Of course you are! I mean, I was, so no one will mind if you come along."

I snorted. "Everyone hates me, Sabrina."

"They do not! Or at least, they wouldn't if you actually bothered talking to them."

"Me talk to them?" I stared at her incredulously. "Maybe they should try talking to me!"

Sabrina sighed. "Maybe they would, if you weren't so distant, so closed off, all the time. C'mon, Anna, live a little!"

I've forgotten how, I almost said, but didn't—Sabrina didn't need to know the details of my broken life.

"I think I'll pass," I said firmly.

Sabrina took me by the arm and pulled me until I half-fell off the bed. "I'm not going to take no for an answer."

"You can't make me go."

"Oh yes, I can."

Her will was stronger than mine, and in the end I gave up; after all, maybe a distraction was all I needed. Sighing, I let her drag me across the room and into the bathroom.

Hurts the same when nobody knows; I guess that's just how it goes, and I won't say anything at all.

The room was dark and smoky and loud, and I stood uncomfortably in the doorway, tugging awkwardly on the hem of the dress Sabrina had made me put on. It was too small—at least in my eyes; Sabrina declared it fit perfectly.

Already I knew that coming was a bad idea.

"Come on!" Sabrina said eagerly, taking my hand and dragging me into the crowded dorm room.

"I really don't think I should be here."

"Why?" Sabrina asked blithely. "Because you're underage? So is almost everyone else."

"You know that's not what I meant," I hissed. "I don't belong here."

"You only don't belong because you won't let yourself belong. Come on, Anna, live a little. Let go a little."

I sighed, because it seemed like I didn't have much choice.

And anyway, a small part of me whispered, why shouldn't you try to live a little, instead of simply surviving? What could it hurt?

"Alright," I said grudgingly, and, grinning triumphantly, Sabrina pulled me over to a tight-knit group of kids in the corner. "This is Anna, my roommate," she introduced. "Anna, meet Kyle, David, Leslie, Will, and Taylor."

"Want a drink?" one of the guys—Kyle?—asked, offering a bottle of beer to me.

"Sure." I took it and had a sip; the liquid was thin and bitter-tasting, not at all to my liking, but I smiled and had another sip anyway. I had a feeling that I would need the alcohol if I was going to fit in at all tonight. "Nice to meet you."

There's a better bit of me to see yet, 'cause you haven't seen any of my best.

I wasn't entirely sure how I had ended up here. 'Here' was sitting in a circle on the ground with a group of people I'd met mere hours before, squished between a bed and the wall in a dark bedroom; the room was full of a dark, smelly smoke, and a bong was being passed around.

My head was spinning. Not from the weed—I hadn't had any of that, or at least not that I could remember—but from the alcohol I'd consumed. I'd lost count of exactly how many drinks I'd consumed, but it was enough to make everything funny and my vision blurry around the edges. It was enough to make the emptiness, the numbness, inside of me feel...good.

So this is what it felt like to be alive.

"So, Anna, why are you here?" someone asked me—I couldn't make out his features through the smoke and darkness, and I wouldn't have remembered his name anyway.

"Here?" I blinked stupidly.

"You know," I could see him gesturing vaguely, "here. Don't remember seeing you around before."

"Oh. My roommate made me come." I came to the sudden realization that Sabrina wasn't anywhere to be seen, that I hadn't, in fact, seen her for several hours. "She thought I spent too much time alone." The alcohol in my system made me far more candid than usual.

"She was probably right."

"I'm used to being alone," I defended myself. "I like it."

"No one likes being alone," a girl said.

"How would you know?"

"We all know what it's like to be alone. Why do you think we're here?"

"Do you? Do you know what it's like to be so alone because you hate yourself and it seems like everyone else must too, because you can't help but lie to your closest friends because the truth makes you ashamed. Do you know what it's like to be so alone that you can't even feel anything anymore?"

My voice cracked, and I blinked my eyes in surprise; it was the most I'd said all night.

"Yes," the girl said, calmly, as if my outburst was nothing. "Of course we do."

For some reason, I believed her. Maybe it was the way she spoke so evenly, or because her eyes were so compassionate. "Then how," I whispered, "did you make yourself feel again?"

This time, a girl seated to my right answered; she passed the bong over to me before digging through her purse and emerging a moment later with something clasped in her hand. When she opened her palm, I saw something glinting in the low lighting. A piece of metal. A razor blade.

I sucked in my breath sharply, accidentally inhaling some of the smoke.

"We cut so we can feel," she informed me, holding the sharp blade out to me. I took it slowly, hesitantly, with a trembling hand. They were all watching me. I closed my fingers around the cold metal, tightly enough that I could feel its edges dig into my skin. The girl held out her arm to me and I could see thin lines climbing like a ladder, from her wrist to her elbow.

"Does it work?" I breathed, examining the cuts on her arms. They were...beautiful, in a way.

"It works," she said with a tight smile.

I wanted to believe her.

Not another piece of me.

Later that night, I stood examining myself in the mirror. My face was ghostly pale, my hair limp. Black smudges underscored my eyes. All the effort Sabrina had put into making me look good, making me look alive, had faded as the night had worn on.

I didn't look alive anymore. I didn't feel alive, either. I examined the blade I still had clutched in my hand, where I had held onto it like it was a lifeline, an escape, ever since it had been handed to me a couple of hours before. The fluorescent bathroom lights flickered off of the silver surface entrancingly, tantalizingly.

We cut so we can feel. At one point in my life, not too long before, I would have done anything to prevent myself from feeling; now it was all I wanted. I missed home, I missed my old life, I missed having the strength to even contemplate breaking my habits; I missed unforced laughter, I missed talking to people, I missed being able to cry.

Even now, when I was on the cusp of making a decision that I knew would ruin my life even more than it already was, I couldn't bring tears to my eyes. I couldn't bring myself to feel anything other than a vague curiosity.

Surely even real, physical pain was better than feeling nothing at all?

With a shaking hand, I pressed the cool edge of the blade against my skin. I left it there for a moment, staring at the small indentation it made. And then, quickly, before I could think about it, I pressed down.

Vibrant red droplets welled up where the blade had sliced my skin. I touched the blood with my finger, watching as the bright colour spread. It seemed almost unbelievable that such a colour could live inside of me, could be racing through my unfeeling veins.

For the first time, I could see the draw of cutting; in the times when I felt most unfeeling and dead, it would prove to me that I was still alive.

I cut myself so I could feel something I know is not a lie.