CiTyGrL0912- I so owe you a cookie… And don't worry… but this story is turning into a little Frankenstein monster- I never really intended it to be this long… it just kind of got a mind of its own and I'm trying to make sure it doesn't kill anybody.

Keely and the rest of the Teslows had now been in England for two weeks. Sure, they had made friends, being the extroverted people that they are…

…but Keely still wasn't happy. She felt isolated. Walking down the streets, she was just another face in the crowd. She just blended in with all the rest. Nobody would've expected that underneath her mask was a girl crying out for help, for anybody to help her.

Her breath came out in small clouds in the cold winter air. It had rarely gotten this cold back home. Now she had to live in this cold environment.

She didn't want to tell her friends too much about him. For one thing, it was already done. Moping about it would get her nowhere. For another thing, well, she didn't want to open up old wounds. Her friends weren't even aware that there once was a magically lovely boy that had made her life so wonderful. They just saw the face she wore to fool them all.

Walking in the streets reminded her of what she had become. Without Phil, she wasn't anything. She was just another face in the crowd, another deserted soul, doomed to wander the earth until the love she was looking for never came to her.

"Sometimes I think I'll die alone… Maybe it won't be too bad. Nobody would miss me… I think I'd love to die alone, live, breath, die alone…" she thought to herself, as she looked at all the (lonely) people.

The streets always reminded her of what she had been denied of. She used to walk the streets happily. It still looked like she did, too.

She'd never let them know about him. He could just be her secret, a distant memory lost, slipped through the fingers like so many grains of sand. She didn't need to tell anybody about him. She didn't want to tell them.

Walking among the scattered faces, she didn't mind putting on extra makeup that day. People would stare if she didn't.

…wearing a face that she keeps in a jar by the door… who is it for?

It wasn't too much trouble to put on that extra bit of makeup, but she felt phony with it on. Still, it was a better than the alternative.

No, Keely was just another pretty, happy face in the crowd. Apart from her family… hardly anybody noticed her, anymore. It didn't bother her. If people notice, then they might care… if they care, then they might pry.

Things were better off this way.

Her friends, that is, if you could call them friends, didn't mind that she didn't tell too much about her life in America. They respected her decision not to tell.

She wanted her secret to be buried with her.

"Sometimes I think I'll die alone," she thought.

He was gone. She was still here. But she still dreamed of their days and nights together.

She always woke up in a cold sweat.

She thought of the people she passed on the street. Some of them were already married. Some of them would never find true love, as sad as that was. She was sure that there were a few that blew their chance at true love, just as she had done.

Nobody bothered to think that she was wearing a mask. Nobody had even bothered to notice her.

Something had happened when she left America:

Keely had become another one of the lonely people.

Eleanor Rigby died in the church and was buried along with her name.

All the lonely people die along with their name.

Father McKenzie, wiping the dirt from his hands as he walks from the grave.

"All the lonely people… die along with their names…"

As far as I'm concerned, "Eleanor Rigby" by the Beatles is the best song ever. Oh, a reason that it's the best song ever is because I had nothing to do with it. That's my disclaimer. Anyway, a short, depressing chapter, I know, but that gives you no excuse to stop reviewing!