I walk in through the backdoor and Darcy gives me a weird look. "I thought you were asleep," She says and then looks back at the TV.

"Yeah," I say and shut the back door. "I was."

"Eli dropped by. He said that you were sound asleep when he got here."

My stomach drops. Gosh, I hate lying. "Yeah," I say. "Well I didn't know. I must have been really tired I guess." I say and then walk over to the couch. "Darcy, I have a question…It's kind of serious."

She turns to me, then turns back to the TV and shuts it off. "Ok," She says and turns her whole body to me. "What's on your mind?"

I look down and start to fiddle with my hands again. I tend to do that when I'm nervous. "When you um…" I start, trying to make out the words. "A few years ago…" I looked at her and I think she knew what I was talking about…I was talking about her being raped.

"Yeah," She says quietly. "I know what you're talking about." She said and gestured for me to continue.

"Uh-" I start having a hard time to ask her this. "When you…hurt yourself…Where you trying to kill yourself?"

She looks down and looks like she really didn't want to talk about it. "I'm sorry," I start. "I shouldn't have asked." I say.

"No," She starts sounding a little more comfortable. "It's ok." She continues. "I guess I wasn't trying to kill myself…I just wanted to feel something you know? As cheesy as this sounds, that whole thing made me feel numb. I really didn't know how to feel and what to feel, so I think that that just got the better of me, and well, I had to feel something. Also, at the time, hurting physically hurt a lot less than emotionally."

I nod my head, understanding what she was saying. "That makes sense…" I say quietly.

"Why?"

I shrug. "It just kind of crossed my mind."

She nods. "Well are you ok?"

I nod. "Yeah," I lie. "I'm just fine." I get up from the couch. "I'm going to go upstairs." She nods her head and then I go upstairs.

What Darcy said was wrapping up a few things that I was questioning. I wanted to feel something, I just didn't know what. I didn't feel a thing. I didn't feel sad, I didn't feel angry. I didn't feel anything. Scared mostly, but that's beside the point. The point is that I need to feel something.

I step into the bathroom and look through the drawers and see those scissors that I was thinking about before. Should I do it? No. I can't, but it would make me feel so much better to have me feel something. I stared in the mirror for a second, scissors in hand. I took a good look at myself and knew that I wasn't Clare Edwards anymore. I wasn't a pure girl, I wasn't a happy girl. I wasn't Clare. So why would I be ruining something that isn't there.

I slide the scissors open and take another good look at myself. This what you've resulted to, Clare? I know I'm going to regret it later, but it needs to be done. I take a deep breath and hold my arm out. Clare, don't do this, goes my conscience says. I ignore it, and quickly slit my arm anyways. The pain made the scissors drop to the floor and I take the hand towel and press it on my bleeding arm. So this is how it feels, huh?

The next day came quicker than I thought it would. I wake up and realize it's barely light out. I look at the time and notice that it was only 4:00 in the morning. Why was I waking up this early? I never want to wake up that early. I walk downstairs and turn on the TV and flip through the channels. Of course there was nothing on, it was four in the frickin' morning! I walk over to the kitchen and see if there was anything for breakfast. I look through the fridge…nothing. What am I doing anyways? I'm not hungry.

I sit back down and look at the blank screen on the TV. I kind of liked the quiet; it was soothing.

The quiet made me start to think about what happened last night. I pull up my long sleeve shirt and see the cut that I made. It was terrifying to see, but I knew that this was real, and that I can't take it back.

The rest of the day went by slowly. My sleeves almost got caught on so many things, but I managed to hide the cut as best as I could. For some reason though, I couldn't stop cutting my arm. Every time I thought of something bad, all I wanted to do was do that again. It's like it was a habit. A really bad habit.

Before I knew it, Monday came, and I wasn't ready for it. I really didn't want to go back to school because I had way too much on my mind.

My mom pulls up to the school and says her goodbye's and I step out. I walk into to school and the first thing that happens, I run right into Eli. Of course it had to be Eli.

He looks at me and laughs. "Why does this always keep happening?" He jokes. I laugh weakly. "How are you holding up?" He asks me.

"Fine," I let out.

"Good," He starts. "Because," He reaches into his pocket and holds out something that looks like a…ring? He grins and hands it to me. I look at it, and it looked exactly like my old purity ring. "Since you couldn't find it, I thought that it would be nice to get you a new one."

He hands it to me and I hold it in my hand. "Thanks," I say weakly and look down at it for a few moments.

"What?" Eli starts.

I shake my head. "Nothing," I start. "It's just…I can't take this."

Eli laughs. "Of coarse you can," He says and lightly pushes my hands back to me.

"No, Eli…I really can't."

He looks at me confused. "Why?"

I open my mouth to say something, but before I could, someone interrupts me. "Well if it isn't little Miss Edwards," I hear behind me.

Eli looks over my shoulder and so do I. Man, its Reese. I had a bad feeling in the pit of my stomach. "Go away Reese," I say timidly.

"Why," He says and steps between me and Eli. "Don't want me to meet your boyfriend?" He smirks.

Eli looks at me. "What is he talking about?" He asks me.

"Nothing," I say calmly and look back at Reese with a death glare. "And now he needs to leave," I say directing to Reese.

He rolls his eyes and gasps sarcastically. "You didn't tell him?" He says trying to sound shocked.

"Tell me what!" Eli says sounding angry.

I look back at Eli and back at Reese. "Please," I plea.

Reese smirks and looks over at an angry Eli. "Clare and I did some stuff."

"Reese!" I scream out witch caused a huge scene in the middle of the hallway.

Reese just kept smirking. I felt tears build up and I looked back at Eli who looked like he was about to cry too. "You mean-" He barely lets out.

"Ohhh yeah," Reese says sounding proud of himself. I felt the tears fall down my face. I look up at Reese and then to the floor, and then back at Eli who looked furious. Reese grins. "Your girl is wild." He says and then walks away.

I look down feeling so ashamed of myself. I refused to look at Eli for a while, but when I did, his eyes looked watery. "When?" He simply asks.

I look up at him and choke up saying my words. "It was after we got into that fight," He puts his hands on his head and starts to pace around. "I didn't know if we broke up or not, I was confused!" I yell still crying.

"What," He starts yelling. "So that's what your confusion leads to!" He basically yells and I could see that everyone went to class. Thank goodness.

I start to cry even harder. "Eli," I plea. "Please."

He looks out the window and I saw a tear stream down his face. He holds out his hand and I knew exactly what he wanted: The ring. I cry more setting the ring in his hand. He holds it in his hand and looks at me with his angry eyes and he walks away without another word. As he walks away he walks by a trashcan and without even stopping, he throws the ring in there and stomps off.

I stand there in the empty hallway and start to cry even more. I fall back onto the lockers and slide down which left me crying in my knees. I look up and then wipe the tears on my face and reach into my bag and push through stuff to see my scissors that I brought to school just incase I "needed" them. I stand up and step into the bathroom and slit my arm a few more times. I didn't care how much it hurt, this day was horrible.

Not the longest chapter in the world, but hey, it works. (:

So who else agrees that this chapter really brought out Clare? I think it did.

I just want to dedicate this story to my late night girls. I love you guys!

-Amanda.

PS: I know I've been updating a lot lately, it's to make up for when I went that really long time with not updating. You're welcome. (: