You know, I'm really writing this story purely for myself. I need to prove to myself that I actually can finish a story that I start. And I wanna get certain lines, images out of my head.

Chapter 2.

Don't own, don't sue.

Something in me died that day.

So easily said. So easily let go. The time we'd spent, love, heat, passion, memories. I'd given him everything, and he threw it back into my face in a sunny school parking lot.

I remember vivid details about that day, but I wish I didn't. I wish the proclivities I'd adopted since would erase the memory, make it slowly ebb and fade, but they only ever intensified it. Made the lines sharper. Made the colors pop.

He'd talked me into it. I mean, sure, yeah, I wasn't exactly fighting him off. I hadn't warned him to stay away or asked him to stop calling. I didn't turn away from his kisses, and I didn't shift out of his hugs. But it was definitely because of him that it happened. His sweet little mouth. His fucking words for persuading.

You wanna know how I lost my virginity?

In the back seat of a family sedan in a cemetery no one's even heard of.

Fucking among corpses, sex between skeletons. It must be some kind of a sick fore-shadowing, a twisted comparison to what I've become.

I used to be better. I used to get good grades. I used to trust willingly.

After we did it for the first time, I bled for a day straight. He was big, and rough, and it wasn't like I'd imagined, always dreamed of when I was younger. He didn't whisper in my ear. He didn't call me any loving little names. He didn't even kiss me afterwards. He just put his pants on a drove me home. I sat in my bathroom all night and tried not to cry, but all I felt was empty.

I refused to do it after that. He pushed for a while, and then got pissed and gave up, and the next week, he was back with his ex-girlfriend. The next day after I'd seen them together, making out in the parking lot next to his truck, rumors had spread. He'd told everyone that I was obsessed with him. He said I sent him pictures of myself naked. He said that I basically begged him to fuck me and, because he felt sorry for me, he finally gave in and "gave me what I wanted." Like he did me a fucking favor.

Since then, it's been hell. The whole student body has turned against me, refusing to disbelieve anything that comes out of their Golden Boy's mouth. He was the most popular boy in school. They swallowed everything he fed them. They stare as I walk. The spread their hands to whisper behind. They call out names when I pass. And he was at the head of the hanging party.

But I'm not a victim. I don't even fucking care about them. Everything has only made me harder. It's been tough. But I'm tougher.

I never told my parents. I don't know what they would have done. It doesn't exactly matter now anyway. I'm no longer that girl.

Alice sat in the driver's seat of her green VW Bug, pale and pretty in a little blue dress that spills like water over her little legs, and stared at me open-mouthed. It was the day after the little incident at Mike Newton's house, and I could guess what she was looking at. The bite.

"It's nothing," I said before she could even ask. I climbed into the passenger's seat and slammed the door, waiting for her to turn back and start driving.

"What the hell happened?" I ignored her question, leaning up to fumble with the knobs of the radio, silently praying that she would just drop it and let it go. But I should have known better. This was Alice, after all.

The car hadn't moved and I could feel her eyes still on me, but I was afraid to turn and look at her. I turned to the window instead, staring out at the windows of my house. Through the blinds, I could faintly see my mother standing in the morning light by the stove, cooking breakfast. As I watched, my dad sashayed in, tie hanging untied around his neck, dancing up to her and making her laugh, and as he grabbed her to make her spin, I saw that his mouth was moving in exaggerated song. I wondered what exactly he was singing and felt the soft indent of loneliness start to creep in.

I don't know when I stopped telling Alice things, but I had. I wished so much that I could, that I could sit and spill my life into her waiting hands to fix and mend like I knew she was capable of. But I couldn't. I didn't know why.

Alice sighed. "Are you going to tell me or not?"

I couldn't answer her because tears had started to crowd my throat painfully, making me feel ridiculous. As I watched, my mother and father started to kiss softly. I closed my eyes to get away from the image and the questions and to lock my tears in.

Alice sighs again, softer this time, and clicks to shift into drive.