She kind of stared at the knife after pulling it out of the drawer. What she was about to do, well, it would hurt. Ashley knew it would, because cutting hurts. At least, that's what she thought, but of course, last time it didn't hurt like it was supposed to. It hurt, but it felt good at the same time, and getting cut was not supposed to feel good.

"Well," she thought to herself, "it won't hurt any worse than the things Paige has said and done to me. It won't hurt as much as Terri ignoring me. It won't hurt as much as losing my boyfriend did."

Thinking this got her mad, and she decided the best thing for her would be to just do it and get it over with. She decided she'd cut on her upper thigh. No one would see it there, as long as she didn't wear short shorts. She pulled up the skirt she was wearing; just above the point where she wanted to cut. Slowly, she put the blade to her skin, almost chickening out. But she reminded herself of how much pain Paige had caused her, and that it couldn't be any worse. Her mind wandered a bit, reliving the lunch hour, and how humiliated she felt.

Quickly, before she could change her mind, she dragged the blade a few inches across her thigh, shallow the first time through. But then she thought, "If I'm going to do this, I'll do it right." Then she dragged the blade across the same spot again, this time deeper, drawing blood.

A thin red line bubbled over the cut, collecting blood. When the line of blood got to heavy, it turned into a drip, running down her thigh.

And again, just like the first time, all the anger, humiliation, and frustration she felt towards the day's events melted. All she thought about was the drop of blood running down her thigh.

But then she panicked. "Oh my God, what if someone walks in?!" Quickly, she grabbed a tissue, and soaked up the blood. She pressed the tissue to the cut, and headed to the bathroom, just a few feet down the hall.

The moment she got in there, she locked the door and sat down on the toilet seat cover. Pulling the tissue off, she saw it had quickly soaked up a lot of blood. She grabbed a wad of toilet paper, with the intent of soaking up the rest of the blood, but she found herself watching it collect again. It collected into a red line again, until it spilled into a huge drop, and headed down her leg. Soaking up the drop, she pressed the toilet paper wad to her leg, determined not to watch the blood with such sick fascination anymore.

She stuck with that resolve for about a minute, and then pulled the tissue away. But by that time it had stopped bleeding, so there was nothing more to watch.

As she washed the cut off with water, she realized she felt empty. But it wasn't a bad empty; she didn't feel hopeless. She felt empty of all the hurt.

After cleaning it up, she covered it back up with her skirt, and headed back to her room.