It's Saturday night and a half-eaten pizza sits on the coffee table in front of me. I'm starving, but it looks anything but appetizing, and I haven't moved in hours. I'm not about to change that. Beck has his arms wrapped around me from behind, and I think he might be asleep now, but I couldn't be bothered to look. The main reason he's still here is the small fact that he's warmer and more comfortable than my couch is.

Some horrifically fake screaming is coming from the TV, and I forget for a moment which movie I'm watching. They all start to blend together, after a while. They're all the same. People get naked and then they die. People tell a lot of jokes and then they die. People do drugs and drink alcohol and then they die. Only the pure, innocent, boring ones get to live. Unfortunately real life is nothing like slasher films.

A long, long time ago, Beck asked me why I liked these movies so much, and I told him that I don't. I hate horror movies. There's rarely any bit of originality in them. They're predictable, and the acting is usually pretty bad, and the characters are always complete morons. If I were a character in any one of the movies in my collection, I would probably kill myself before the killer had a chance to, just because all the other characters I'd be stuck with are so aggravatingly stupid I wouldn't be able to stand it. Why are the girls always naked? Why do they go everywhere alone? Why don't they just turn the fucking lights on once in a while? Why do they run up the stairs when the killer is chasing them? It's like they're aware that their only purpose in the movie is to die, so they do everything to make that possible. I hate horror movies.

The thing is, I love to watch them. It makes my heart race a little, watching these fictional people be so stupid. I love that moment at the beginning of the movie when you've met all the characters and can already decide what order they're going to die in. I love placing my bets on who's gonna live the longest, and whether or not they'll survive through the full movie. I love seeing all these fake people living out the worst part of their terrible fictional lives, until they come to a violent and wonderfully disgusting end. I love watching horror movies and thinking to myself, my life may suck, but at least I didn't finish off some mediocre sex with a double impalement at the hands of a crazy guy with a spear, a burlap sack over his head, and a bit of an oedipus complex. Odds are, my life will never be this bad.

Beck has never really understood that, for some reason. He doesn't see how it's possible to hate something and enjoy doing it at the same time. Beck quit watching movies with me a long time ago. Tonight is an exception. He says that it's no fun to listen to me complain through the whole thing, but au contraire, I think that's the best part.

Tori used to watch these with me. Nothing too bad, of course. She was a wuss. Not quite the scaredy-cat I'd had her pegged as since we met, but still a wuss nonetheless. She made me rate all my movies on a scale of one to ten, based on how gory they were. She absolutely refused to watch anything seven or higher, and would only watch sixes when she was in a specific mood. One thing about Tori - she actually liked my complaining. She told me that the movies were a lot less scary when I was there to point out how stupid they were.

"Do you have the next one?" Beck scares me when he finally speaks. I was so sure he was asleep.

"The next one?" I don't even know what movie I just finished watching.

"Yeah, there are like, nine of these, aren't there?" I stare at the TV for a moment as Beck pushes me forward so he can lean close enough to reach the pizza box. The cast list starts moving up the screen, reminding me what movie it is.

"Umm, the original series had six, actually. There's a prequel, but it's really boring, and then, uhh...two remakes, I think."

"So nine movies."

"Well, yeah, I guess so..." I slide out of his arms and crawl across the living room, to the TV stand where all my movies are. I really don't feel like watching this entire series, so I slide my finger along the row of DVD cases, absentmindedly pulling a few possibilities out while Beck takes the rest of the pizza to the kitchen, since it's obvious I'm not going to eat it.

Honestly, I'm surprised he's still here. He's sat on the couch, holding me while we watched nine movies together without speaking. and for what reason? Because we almost had a baby together? Because I'm a complete wreck and he's worried about my sanity? He even used to steer clear of me when I was on my period - mostly, I'm sure, because he knew he wouldn't be getting any, but also because he couldn't handle my mood swings, and now, here I am, stuck in the downward position, waiting to swing back up, and he's here. He's not here to push me, but maybe he's here to sit and watch me struggle.

"Jade, don't..." Beck reaches out and pushes the DVD case I've subconsciously chosen out of my hands. It hits the ground and I stare down at the red face of Stephen King's Children of the Corn, and I just stop functioning. I can't breathe properly and I start to cry, and I'm hyperventilating or something. I guess realizing that my daughter never had the chance to join a creepy, anti-adult religious cult and kill me in its name has forced it in harder. It sinks in even deeper and I still can't quite comprehend the fact that I was supposed to have a child by now. I would have had a daughter. A little girl. A little girl who could have grown up and gone through her life being told "you look just like your mother," as I have. A little girl who would have thought they were all crazy, because hopefully she would have looked more like her father.

That thought right there stops me. I look at Beck and the thought that he would have been a father - we would have been parents - just kills me. I don't know how he's feeling. He didn't have the chance to meet her - he never had the chance to form that bond, the one that I had gone three months thinking didn't exist, only to find out that it did, once it was ripped out of me.

I haven't really thought about this in so long. I never really did think about it, after that weekend in the hospital. Even before the miscarriage, I simply did not put enough thought into the fact that I was going to be a mother. I thought about it, sure, but I don't know if I really took it seriously. I hadn't even known until the baby was gone that it was a girl. I remember being too scared at my last doctor's appointment to find out. I could have, but I didn't. I decided I would wait until the next appointment, but then the next time I saw a doctor, it was a counselor at the hospital, trying to talk to me about grief when all I really wanted to do was sleep and never wake up.

…

It was a Friday when Tori finally visited me. She certainly didn't hurry - It was nearly 7 o'clock by the time I had a visitor other than Beck and my parents. She walked through the door and stopped barely two feet inside, scared out of her mind. I stared at her and I didn't say a word, and she looked like she was about to wet her pants. At the time, I didn't understand why she was so frightened, but looking back, I realize just how well she knew me. She was scared because she knew how I was going to react.

"I...Jade..." Beck took a hint and stood up to leave, patting Tori on the back as she choked back tears in the doorway. She couldn't get a full sentence out for a while, but I didn't bother to help.

"I don't know what to say. I mean...I want to tell you how sorry I am, and that I'm here if you need me, but I know you'll probably be hearing that a lot and it really doesn't mean anything. That's just what you say to someone when you feel bad...and I just... I'm sorry. I'm so, so sorry. Do you need anything? I will seriously do anything that you need me to do, I'll-"

"You don't have to pity me." I finally spit a few words out, and it surprised her. She started to take another step in, but she hesitated with her foot in the air. "You've done that enough already." I wish that Tori wasn't so stupid. If I had the chance, I would make sure she knew that it was the hormones, and the stress, and the grief, and the fear talking, and that I didn't mean it. I really didn't mean it, and she should have known that, but she didn't. She couldn't tell that I didn't mean it. If I could take back everything I said to her after that point, as cliched as it is, I would do it in a second.

"I don't..." I only just barely remember what I said to her. I was in such a terrible place at the time that nothing was going through my brain before it came out of my mouth. I remember shouting at her, angry, vicious for no reason. She didn't deserve it. She was being a good friend, but I couldn't see that - I couldn't comprehend the small little fact that I didn't have to be alone. I wasn't alone until I made myself that way.

I spit out some sentence about how the whole reason that Tori and I were friends was in a fucking jar or something, waiting to be disposed of with all the spent needles and latex gloves like trash. I made it very clear to her that we were only friends because of the baby, but never once had that been clear to me. It wasn't true, but I told her that it was, and eventually she believed me.

I told her that I didn't need her anymore. I fed her a line about my hormones - that they'd messed with my head, that they were my excuse for ever befriending her. And they were, to some degree. It was a valid excuse, which is why she so readily believed it. My emotions were in overdrive and I wasn't myself when I went to her, but that didn't change the fact that I really had grown to like Tori. I liked her a lot. Getting to know her - really know her - was one of the best things I ever did, and I'm glad that I did it, even if it ended so badly. Even if it ended with me telling her that our entire friendship was a moment of weakness, a creation to be blamed on my diseased, hormonal mind, coupled with her horrible and pathetic need for my approval.

Of all the many times I've told her "I'm not your friend," this was the worst, because for the first time, I think she truly believed it.

…

It's Friday and I'm back in Lauren's office and once again she has me prattling on like a fool, talking when I never wanted to in the first place. I'm telling her every little story I can think of, listing tiny things I knew about Tori that I'm not even sure she herself knew. I tell Lauren about all her little quirks and the things that most people didn't get close even to know about her.

"She kept packets of salt in her purse and took them everywhere with her. Every time we ate at a fast food restaurant, she had to steal a handful of them before we could leave. She used so much of it. I don't know how her body could handle that much salt. She was just really weird with food. She always dipped her french fries in mayonnaise, and she just...she dipped everything in something. That was one of the only things she wouldn't let me tease her about. She'd just ignore me and go back to dipping saltine crackers in ketchup..."

Lauren is staring at me with a smile on her face but she doesn't say anything. I look back at her for a few seconds and the silence makes me wonder what time it is. I feel like I've been talking forever.

"What? Is our time up?" Her eyes open wide and she looks surprised that I'm out of story-telling mode for the first time since I got here.

"Oh, no. We've still got about ten minutes." She grins and I kick myself for letting her get to me. It's too late to stop talking now, but I have to wonder what it is about her that makes me want to tell her so much. "Tori sounds wonderful."

"I always thought she was really boring, and then when I g- When we became friends... She ummm... Tori was one of those people that seemed pretty normal on the outside, but then once she got comfortable around you she was really weird...but weird in a good way, I guess."

"I've found most people are like that." I suppose she's right. I'm certainly not like that, nor have I ever been, but "normal" people, as we call them, are usually not that normal once you get to know them.

"You said you didn't like her when you first met her. What changed your mind?"

"I don't know...a lot of little things, I guess. We weren't exactly friends for a long time."

"Why did that change?"

"You already know, don't you? My parents told you about my..." She shakes her head and lifts her left eyebrow, but she doesn't look as confused as I expected.

"Your parents only told me that you were having a hard time dealing with the loss of your friend. I don't want to hear details from anyone but you." I feel as if she's manipulating me into telling her these things. She's playing with my brain, making me feel so very unlike myself, though that thought doesn't quite make me want to stop talking. I know it's not good to get into that subject now, so I force myself to stand up.

"I think it's time for me to go." Lauren nods, not bothered at all by my exit.

"I'll see you next week, then."

I take my time getting back down to the ground level, and when I walk outside, my father isn't there. Assuming he's running late, I sit down on the curb to wait. He doesn't show.

Minutes tick by and I wrap a strand of my hair around my finger, twirling it around until it's so tight that my finger starts to go numb. I realize that my roots have grown out far enough for me to be able to see the border between my synthetically black hair and the dark blonde/light brown/indeterminate crap color it's turned naturally. I was blonde as a child, and it's weird now to think about it. It only lasted the first few years of my life until it started getting darker, and I have to wonder if my life would be any different if I were a blonde. Would I have been one of those stereotypical blondes? A cheerleader with half a brain and seven different stupid boys waiting to sleep with me while I go through life blissfully unaware that I am a moron? Would I have dyed my hair anyway and ended up exactly the way that I am now?

It's getting late, and I'm starving. I wonder what's keeping my dad. The likelihood of him having a decent excuse for not being here is slim, and I know that he forgot. I could call him, right now, and he could come to get me, but I keep waiting instead. I want to see how long it takes him to realize he's forgotten. I want to see how long it takes my parents to realize I'm gone.

A car pulls up to the curb and I've been spacing out for so long that it takes me a while to pull back to reality and realize it's not my father's car.

"Waiting for someone?" Andre is sitting in the driver's seat, with his door open and one foot outside of the car.

"My dad forgot about me. Surprise." He frowns for a fraction of a second but his mouth straightens out. I'm sure he, of all people, knows right now just how much it hurts to be pitied.

"Well, hop in. I'll give you a ride home." He waves at me and closes the door without even waiting to see me stand up. He flips on his headlights, because the sun is starting to go down, and sticks his arm out the open driver's side window, drumming his fingers on the side of the door.

"You can give me a ride," I tell him, "but please don't bring me home."