"There is a castle on a cloud/I like to go there in my sleep."

Cecilia fled deep inside her mind. She wasn't sure what she was running to or what she was running from, but she ran anyway. She knew that she couldn't do what was out there anymore, and so fleeing was her only choice.

She thought.

"Aren't any floors for me to sweep/Not in my castle on a cloud."

She knew that her body was lying on the floor in the principle's office, but she didn't care. That wasn't her, anyway. She was the one running, right now, deeper and deeper inside herself, as everything became more and more like a scene from a nightmare. A much worse nightmare than Cecilia had ever dreamed. "Stop!" someone called.

"There is a room that's full of toys/There are a hundred boys and girls"

Surprised, she did. There wasn't supposed to be anyone else here. She was supposed to be all alone, forever and ever. That's why she fled. There were people out there, people like Simon who, she suddenly supposed, might want to help but didn't know how. But still. She didn't want to be out there, where she was Cecilia. Cecilia couldn't be Cecilia anymore.

"Damn right you can't."

"Nobody shouts or talks too loud/Not in my castle on a cloud."

"Excuse me?"

"I'm Cecilia. I don't know who you are, you worthless piece of junk, but I'm Cecilia," the speaker somehow walked into the place where Cecilia was standing. And indeed, the stranger was Cecilia, but not Cecilia herself. The real Cecilia's head hurt. "I'm everything you couldn't be, everything you wanted to be." Cecilia looked, and it was true. She.she.she.did not speak.

"Aren't you going to say something? Or are you just going to run away and cry like you do when you meet your cousin? Say something, damn you! Say something!" the stranger-Cecilia slapped Cecilia.

"There is a lady, all in white/holds me and sings a lullaby"

"I have nothing to say."

"That's it?" stranger-Cecilia said, her voice dripping with scorn. "You've poured your heart into being ME, and failed and you have nothing to say?"

"I have poured my heart into nothing," Cecilia's voice was weak, but it seemed that for the first time in her life she was speaking the truth. It scared her.

"I'm better than you are."

"I'm not arguing against that."

"Don't you want to?"

And Cecilia spoke the scariest truth of all, "No."

"She's nice to see and she's soft to touch/she says 'Cosette, I love you very much'."

Somehow, she did know the truth. "I don't want to be like you. I don't want to be me."

"Well, we all knew that."

"No," Cecilia said, speaking more to herself than to the stranger, "I don't want to be who my parents want me to be. I want to be someone else."

"But I'm perfect!"

"Yes. And everybody hates you," Cecilia said what she had known for a long time.

"They're just jealous."

"No," she said again. "They're right. If I want to be perfect than I have to be" she stopped, uncertain of the words she needed to find. And, thinking of Simon, she found them, "Good. I have to be good."

"You aren't. I'm better at everything than you are," stranger-Cecilia said with a glow of triumph.

"But no one will ever love you. If I want to be loved, for myself and not for what I've done, then I have to be a good person." Cecilia marveled at what she had so recently learned, and for the first time in years, even in the privacy of her own skull, she named herself "I".

I faced myself, wondering by what blessing I had learned all this, to know how to face my demons that had preyed on my sanity for so long in the shape of myself.

"I know a place where no one's lost/I know a place where no one cries."

In that instant, when I named myself, Cecilia vanished. And slowly, I turned. Just because I now knew what I had to do doesn't mean I wanted to go back and do it. That didn't mean I wanted to live my life, that didn't mean I wanted to be Cecilia. That didn't mean it wouldn't hurt. And yet.and yet.somehow, something in me said it would all turn out all right. Maybe this was the God I'd been supposed to be believing in all along.

I opened my eyes, and saw everyone staring down at me. I gathered my fragile resources and tried to think about what to do. And this time, I didn't think I'd fail.

"Crying at all is not allowed/Not in my castle on a cloud."