A/N: Warning! This chapter deals with Cutting (as hinted at in the previous chapter) and may be very graphic. If you don't like to read this sort of stuff, or aren't allowed to, then stop! Otherwise, proceed on.

Now, to thank the reviews (who probably hate me for not updating sooner!)

Alyson Teague: Lol. Glad you like.

Future Editor: Thanks! And glad you like!

Me (not me as in me. Lol. Me as in the reviewer ): Glad you agree, glad you like!

Sorry for not updating. It's been a crazy week. But, anyway, hope you aren't too mad!

Please enjoy and please review!

…………………………………………………………………………………………..

The pillowcase was ruined. So was her sweatshirt. Worst of all, her wrists throbbed and were still bleeding freely. She hissed in pain, yet felt freer than she had before. She dropped the scissors on her night table. She looked around for something to stop the bleeding when-

"Piper?"

It was Phoebe, outside her room.

"Just a sec," Piper croaked, looking around, then finally grabbing one of her old shirts from the floor and wrapping her wrists in them. She put the scissor in her drawer and hid her arms under the blankets.

"Okay, come in," Piper called nervously.

Phoebe came in and sat on the bed. "How are you doing Piper?"

"Fine," Piper grumbled. Her shirt and sweatshirt were soaked where she had bled from her wrists and she wished people would leave her alone already.

"Debra and Jennifer were suspended for what they did, along with those Junior guys who helped her," Phoebe explained, hoping it would cheer her sister up.

Piper nodded slightly, feeling faint.

"What they did was really-"

"Phoebe," Piper said, interrupting her. "Can you stop talking about it? I don't want to be reminded. Don't tell grams, either. I don't want her to know. And could you please leave? I don't feel well and I want to sleep."

Phoebe nodded, looking slightly hurt as she got up. "Okay. I'll go," she snipped, leaving and closing the door behind her.

Piper pulled her hands out from under her covers and removed the shirt, then rolled up her sleeves. Her wrists had stopped bleeding but just barely. She'd ruined her sweatshirt and the shirt she'd wrapped around her wrists. They'd have to get thrown out, just like the outfit that had gotten red paint on it.

……………………………………………………………………………………………..

Dinner was awkward. Piper wasn't talking at all and Phoebe, who usually spoke nonstop, was barely speaking, either. If she spoke, she'd spill the beans on Piper's paint incident at lunch and she didn't want to break her promise to Piper. Even Prue was barely speaking, because she wanted to tell Grams, despite Piper making her promise not to.

"Are you girls okay?" Grams asked suspiciously. "You're never this quiet."

"We're fine," Prue and Phoebe said in unison. Piper forked food around her plate.

"Piper, it's eighty degrees out. Why are you dressed in long sleeves?" Grams asked. "You'll get heat stroke."

"I'm fine, Grams," Piper said hastily, hiding her arms under the table.

Grams eyed her, but left it alone and went about boring the girls with what she did that day. Nothing thrilling.

……………………………………………………………………………………………

The weekend went by too fast for Piper. On Monday, she was even less excited about going to school than usual and she had even tried to fake being sick, but Grams had seen right through it.

So now she stood in front of her locker, balancing a bunch of books in her arms as she tried to put some in her locker and take the ones she needed.

Suddenly, a French manicured hand came out of nowhere and knocked her books out of her arms.

Piper gasped as the same hand spun her around and slammed her into the lockers.

It was Aleesha Wilson. She was just as evil as Debra and Jessica and when they weren't around, she took over. The three of them were best friends and were, for the most part, inseparable.

"You got my friends suspended, bitch," Aleesha snapped, leaning in dangerously close to Piper's face, her nails sharp and deadly if used for evil intentions.

Piper stammered, trying to say something but nothing was coming out.

"Shut up!" Aleesha growled, rolling her eyes. "Looser. Thanks to you, my friends got in trouble and now they're suspended."

They attacked me, Piper wanted to point out, but she didn't have the guts to. As it were, she feared what Aleesha was going to do to her.

"You better watch your back, bitch," Aleesha snarled. "I'm going to make your life hell." She pushed back, flipped her hair and flipped Piper the finger, then strutted away, her Jimmy Choo's clicking on the tile floor and her skirt dangerously short.

Shaking, Piper picked her books up and decided to walk around with all of them. That meant less trips to her locker and a more direct root to her classes, which equaled less of a chance she'd run into Aleesha or the other Popular Princesses and Princes who wanted to strangle her.

Still shaking, her heart pounding, Piper feared she was having a panic attack and ran to the nearest girl's room. No one inside. Piper dumped her books into the sink and hastily searched inside her backpack.

"Come on, come on, where is it?' Piper whined. Finally she found what she was looking for and pulled it out.

She lowered the scissor to her wrist.

………………………………………………………………………………………………

(Four weeks later)

The next few weeks went about the same. Piper wouldn't have been surprised if the whole of the Popular Group had come up to her, each several times, blaming her for Debra and Jessica's suspension, even though they attacked her and it had been weeks and the Preppy Princesses were back in school, anyway. They had taken to torturing Piper even more, several times a day. She made three stops into the bathroom each day and, by the end of the day, her arms felt raw but she felt good on the inside. She felt freer and more able to cope. It was a way to let her deal with what was going on.

That's how she saw it and how she felt at the time.

When the day would finally end, she would hurry out of the school and wait by the curb instead of on the steps. The curb was by the buses and none of the popular kids went over there if they could help it. So she was safe.

Prue and Phoebe would come over a few minutes later, asking what she was doing waiting there. She barely answered them and ducked into Grams car the second she arrived.

………………………………………………………………………………………………

One day after school, Piper went right to her room. She had been avoiding socializing like it was the plague, not wanting her sisters or Grams to find out about the cutting thing. Piper had read about cutting only a few times, but knew that most cutters were sent places to get better and to stop cutting. Piper didn't want to stop. It was her only way to vent.

So she sat on her bed and began her homework. It wasn't much and what she had wasn't due for a few days, but she did it anyway as an excuse to stay in her room.

Someone knocked on her door. Piper didn't reply. She continued to do her English homework.

The door opened and Phoebe walked in.

"Phoebe, go-"

"No," Phoebe replied. "I don't know what your problem is lately, Piper. But you've been so mean and I want to know why. What's your problem?"

Piper sat up and stared at her, but didn't reply right away. The shirt she had on was long and covered her hands, all the way to her fingertips.

"Why? Why am I being so bitter and mean? Like you don't see it, everyday at school. That thing in the cafeteria, where I was doused in red paint, didn't set off any brain cells? Oh, wait, you don't have any brain cells left. You're too busy slacking off and hanging with your loser friends, the ones pressuring you into trying cigarettes and drugs and alcohol."

Phoebe's eyes widened. Startled, she stammered, trying to deny the accusations, "No- that's not true – I've never-"

"Save it," Piper snapped, rolling her eyes and laughing. "I've seen you with a cigarette in your mouth and I've seen you swigging a beer. It doesn't happen much, I guess, but it happens enough."

"Piper-" Phoebe began.

"Just leave me alone, druggie. I don't need to hear you bitching at me and if you ever bother me again, I'll tell Grams what you've been doing!" Piper snarled.

Tears in her eyes, Phoebe ran from the room, slamming the door and running to her own, plopping on her bed and crying into her pillow.

Prue slowly entered the room and went to the bed. She sat next to Phoebe.

"Sweetie? What happened?"

Phoebe looked, bleary eyed, at Prue and explained, in between sobs, what had happened.

Angered, Prue stalked to Piper's room and knocked loudly.

"Piper!" she called loudly. When no once answered, she pounded harder. "Piper!"

Still no answer. So, Prue did the only logical thing: she turned the handle and stalked right in.

And screamed so loudly, the whole house shook.

She was frozen with shock and terror.

On the bed was Piper, pale as death, laying with her head hanging off the edge.

The baby blue sheets, along with Piper's clothes and arms, were covered in blood.