(Disclaimer- im no stephenie meyer. that be for sure, mon.)

alrighty. so uh, heres chapter seven. i probably shouldn't be putting this up so soon,
but i have a really hard time controlling my impatience. i think that most of me is actually
made UP of impatience..rather than the general organs and other chemical makeup. but yeaaah.
so here it is, for anyone who is reading this. :) OH and you should definitely
read my friends fanfic called Alive, by Queenoftheviciousvines.
and you should read my story on fictionpress . com (without the spaces.)
under sampire. my story is called Chasing Molly. Here is the summary:
It's about a young girl who has recently lost her little sister,
Molly. Molly and Joanna, the star of the book, were both beaten
by their mother. Their mother has told the entire town that the
little girl, Molly, was killed tragically when Joanna got a hold of
her father's hunting rifle, but Joanna knows that that isn't the case.
Her mother has a secret, and Joanna is desperate to avenge the
murder of her sister. But will anyone listen to a little girl like her?
Will the truth ever be heard, believed?
kay. thats the end of my advertising. :P read on!! and review, please. thanksss!

Worthless

I slowly slid back into consciousness, feeling the weight of a long sleep settle in around my thoughts. Leisurely, memories of the long drive came back to me, the gray road stretching far and wide before my tired eyes. I remembered seeing the towns flash by, joy in my heart at the knowledge of passing miles. We'd been on our way to Washington, been driving for hours and hours when I finally must have fallen asleep. I now wondered briefly if we were already in Washington, seeing through the orange lids of my still-closed eyes a dim light, one that seemed very familiar to me, comfortingly familiar. This light had the same effect as a Washington morning, waking up beside the window in Jacob's room, the gray clouds producing a sweet, seductive glow that had managed somehow to reach the brown of my vision even through the blanket of my tangerine lids.

But we couldn't have reached our destination so quickly. I didn't think I was capable of sleeping for two days, especially when I was as excited as I had been. I'd been impatient, fidgety. I didn't see how I could have possibly been asleep for very long, but I could tell that I had been sleeping for a while. Just not for two days. That wasn't possible. Maybe eight solid hours at the most. So we couldn't be in Washington.

Realizing at a snail's pace that the seat below me wasn't rumbling with the motion of the truck, I thought of a different route for my brain to wander upon. Maybe we'd stopped at a hotel so that my dad could rest. We'd decided to sleep in shifts so that we wouldn't have to stop during the night, but maybe he hadn't been able to get me out of my sleep, and he'd been too tired to continue on.

Maybe.

I sighed, stretching my arms out, letting my eyelids divide. I was still raring to go, wanting to get out of there and back on the road as soon as possible. I lay there letting my eyes adjust to the strange dim light for a minute before the room around me actually became clear. The second the haze of my vision disappeared, leaving me frighteningly focused, the nausea crippled my stomach, strangled it, and it felt as though my lungs had collapsed. I gasped, sitting straight up against the soft wall of ivory. My head spun.

"You're up." The voice was familiar. A voice I despised. A voice I couldn't handle. Not now, not ever. This couldn't be happening, this couldn't be happening.

The door opened and two Carols stepped through, the room continuing to spin and double, an effect my overwhelmed eyes had conjured up in their attempts to make sense of the image. This was insane. Simply insane. I supposed the feeling of insanity fit, seeing as I was somehow back at the hospital. But how? What had happened?

My stomach dropped. Could I have dreamt my release from the hospital, too? I couldn't believe that. I just couldn't. What was wrong with my brain? Maybe I did belong here. There must have been something wrong with me. Why was I always so confused? I closed my eyes, trying to come to terms with my inconceivable madness.

"Anna." Carol called to me, trying to bring me back. She always hated it when I was too wrapped up in my craziness to pay her attention. She was so bossy for an old lady. Her looks were severely deceiving. She looked so nice, so innocent. She didn't even look old. She hardly had a wrinkle on her. Just the white hair and the soft voice led me to believe that the numbers signaling her age were high. But not always was her voice so soft. It seemed to be something she could turn on and off. She could put on a good show, whenever anyone else was around to hear. But when it was just me and her, her voice was flat, monotone, high as it was. She simply sounded bored, cruel. She wasn't some sweet old woman. She was really just a bitch.

My teeth clenched in habitual reaction, a response to the sharp sound of her voice alone. My hands were shaking and tears were escaping the confines of my tightly shut lids, slipping down my lashes and following the creases beside my nose. I shook my head, attempting to ignore her, and not only her, but also the hole in my chest, the hole in my very being.

"You must have realized what happened by now." She continued. Her words confused me, finally plucking the string of curiosity in me, and I looked up unwillingly. She smiled antagonistically, smugly, pleased to have been able to draw the attention back onto herself. I held my breath, hoping she'd say something that would help make some sense out of my life as of waking up this morning…or night…or whatever it was.

She continued to smile, but that was it. No further explanation. I shook my head, letting her know that I had no idea what had happened, hoping she'd keep talking.

Thankfully, it worked.

"Well, surely you must not have thought your father would take you to Washington. Who would be there to keep an eye on you, make sure you didn't screw things up, go all crazy again? Because you are mentally ill, Annabelle. We only let you go, let you leave, to see if your parents could handle you. Your dad really wanted you to come home. But apparently they can't handle you. They can't take care of you." She stopped, lips pursed, smudging the lipstick there just a bit. Her eyes were tight, sparkling slightly with a dark humor. If I hadn't been so exhausted with confusion, I would have gone off on her. But I was confused. Very confused.

"You…didn't think I was any better? You didn't let me go because you thought I was sane enough? What about all that improvement Sally had talked about?" The questions fell from my mouth in a rush, so quickly, in fact, that I wasn't sure for a moment if I was even the one asking them. I pictured Sally in my head, the nicer of the two women to come and talk with me. She rarely came here, but the last time I'd seen her, she'd been complimenting me on my progress. Was that really all just an act?

"No, honey." Despite the sweet words, Carol's voice conveyed no sympathy. "No one thought you were any better. It was obvious you were trying to seem better, but you're really a horrible actress. You can tell your condition just by looking at those frantic little eyes of yours, always darting around, looking for things that aren't there." She paused then, thinking for a moment, more and more amused by the second. I just sat there staring, dumbfounded.

"Let me guess." She started again, voice sarcastic, mocking. "You were the kid in kindergarten that went around claiming to be friends with vampires and goblins, huh? Practiced witchcraft on your spare time, tried to move things with your eyes? Wouldn't surprise me." She laughed at her joke, completely oblivious to the startled gasp I sucked into my mouth. I stayed frozen on the white padding of the floor.

To hear her say the word…the word vampire. It made me shudder, made me think she knew more than I was telling her. I'd never spilled the secret lives of my friends. Not once did I mention their last names or their…abilities. The mythical truth of my so-called imagination remained unspoken of. I hadn't muttered a word about vampires or werewolves or anything of the sort to anyone. I'd never betray Edward, the Cullens. I'd never betray any of them. So, naturally, I couldn't help but break into a cold sweat when the word passed through her painted lips. It took five minutes for me to breathe as she sat watching with a smirk. I hoped that she was only reveling in what she thought was the painful blow of her cruel remark and not that she knew more than she did. But my imagination had a way of getting to me, and I couldn't help but shake with worry. What if…

"So like I was saying, the second you slipped off to sleep, your dad gunned it back here. That'd been the plan all along, of course. He was never really going to take you to Washington, just make you think he was going to. You're unstable. You can't be there alone. So, here you are." She shrugged, her lips pulled up on one side, looking like a malicious, tiny, old-lady angel. Almost like Jane. Only much more annoying and not nearly as threatening.

I blinked at her.

Wow. Wow. So I had never been the actress here. Everyone else around me had been the ones pulling the wool over my eyes. I'd never seen it coming. Not really, anyway. I'd known that it was a possibility that the people here at this hospital didn't believe my act, but not once did I imagine that they'd pull something as big as this off without me knowing. I didn't once detect the lie in my father's eyes…in his voice. I'd thought that he almost trusted me, that he'd cared. Or maybe I did know the truth. Maybe I'd known all along what they'd do with me. But I'd tried not to believe it, tried to wrap myself into the hope I'd built. I didn't want to believe that I wouldn't see Jacob, that I'd be back here. Because it was true that I'd gotten my hopes up, thinking of Jacob. I was too focused on him to see the signs, the warnings — or to accept that I'd seen them, anyway.

Now, with tears in my eyes, I could see every little thing that should have alerted me to their deception. Like the apathy of my mother, rather than the worry she should have felt. She hadn't worried because she didn't havea reason to worry. She wouldn't have been alone. And then my dad pulling back the suitcase. He'd done that so I couldn't feel that it was empty. So I wouldn't know the truth…

I shook my head, feeling like I might pass out. I was back here. Back in this hell hole, put here once again by my own parents. My own lying, deceiving, horrible parents. They didn't love me. It was quite obvious now. How could you do this to someone you loved? How could this ever seem like the better option? How could this possibly be seen as good for me? Jacob would never have done this to me. Neither would Edward. And now I wouldn't even be able to find them. I wouldn't even be able to look. I couldn't stand knowing that. I couldn't stand it. I clutched at myself, feeling the room shrink around me, trying to contain the mass hysteria that was my constant pain. As I started to sob, Carol slipped out of the room, bored with my recurring emotions. Some psychiatrist she was.

I shriveled against the floor, feeling everything and nothing all at once. My life was shot, my hope—shot. My luck had never existed. I'd never even had a chance. Maybe love was eternally lost for me. Maybe it just hadn't been my destiny to find true happiness. Maybe it was a dream, and that dream, that taste of life, was the only happiness I'd ever get. Maybe that's why I'd dreamt it, because subconsciously, I'd known that I'd never be provided with any real joy, real love. So I'd tried to bury myself inside of my own longing, my imagination. I'd tried to hide away there, to build a life there which I'd never have to leave. But I'd failed. I'd woken up, come back. And I couldn't get back there anymore. Not permanently, not like before. Sure, I continued still ever since that night to hold tight to my dreams, seeing the beautiful faces in my sleep every night, but it just wasn't the same. It wasn't real. Just dreams. Simple, shallow dreams. And I'd never see more than that, more than the image of their faces in my head, circling, taunting me with lust. I'd never see them with my eyes, really, truly before me. Because I was trapped here.

I was a prisoner.

I used all the strength I had to lift my head from the soft ground, feeling the muscles in my neck strain as I did so. Then, with all the force I could muster, I brought my head back down into the floor, hard and fast, hoping to knock myself out. I just couldn't deal with the pain of the realization. I couldn't handle it. If I wasn't insane already, I would be soon. Very soon. I'd never see Jacob. I wondered if he missed me, thought about me. If he existed. If he knew I existed. The pain continued to deepen inside of my chest, opening up into the fiery pits of hell. It felt like something had broken loose inside of me, eating me alive from the inside out. If it hadn't been such torture, I would have let it take me.

But I needed something quicker than that.

I smashed my face into the floor once more, but neither time did it work. The padding was just too soft. Too irritatingly soft. It was just a useless attempt to rid of my pain, just like every other sorry excuse of my days. Nothing worked. Because maybe I didn't deserve the peace of death, of unconsciousness, without the stabbing pain of dreams or the wake of confusion to an insane asylum. I just wasn't worth it. I was just a stupid, insane, worthless piece of trash. And nobody cared about me. Not even my own parents. Not even Jacob.