Sorry this one took so long. It's...not exactly something that I'm proud of. It's rather...droll compared to most things I write. I didn't have such a hard time writing Sam's feelings as I did stretching them out over a whole chapter. Okay, so I think this chapter sucks. Anyway, let me know what you think. Reviews make me happy and feel good about myself. :P

Everything that ever meant anything to me just kind of...disappeared. I found myself all alone in cold, dark, empty place. A place so quiet I could hear my own heart pounding dramatically against my rib cage. The sound was so deafening to me that I covered my ears, all the while knowing that blocking outside distractions would never silence the pain that was inside. I felt empty, helpless, like someone had just taken my life and run it through the shredder. The past 17 years of my life had all been a huge lie. My mother may have taken care of me, but there's much doubt in my mind as to if she actually loved me. And I say "me" specifically because it was obvious to me that she loved Melanie. She wouldn't have shoveled thousands upon thousands of dollars into private schools if she didn't. Or was it just that Melanie was smart, so boarding school was a valid option for getting her as far away from here as possible? Me, I'm not so smart, so my only options were the many military camps that I was shipped off to. Yeah, I spent countless summers away in dirty fortresses surrounded by twenty or so feet of barbed and razor wire, praying for the beginning of school so much that you'd think I actually liked it. I hated school, with every fiber of my being, but nowhere near as much as I hated crawling around in mud wearing full body BDUs in ninety degree weather, eating 3 meals a day of disgusting mystery meat and surprise casserole, drinking nothing but self-bottled water from a tanker truck that had God-knows-what bacteria in it. So, since I wasn't a child genius like Melanie, I suffered for the better part of my life because my mother wanted as little contact with me as she could get.

It all made perfect sense now.

Ask me why my first thought wasn't to run to Carly, fall into her loving arms, and cry. It was because I knew that after I told her I was a rape-child, she would never look at me the same. She would never see my life as having as much meaning as it once did. No one would if they knew what a mistake I was. I was already a failure as it was, now I'm even less than that. I'm just one big accidental product of a very horrible crime.

What was I supposed to do now? My life was completely devoid of purpose. Incidentally, I'm not really even supposed to exist. I didn't feel the need to confront my mother, didn't have any urge to run around and tell people, only to have them give me sympathy. I didn't want to hear the typical "It'll be okay." or the overused "I'm here if you need to talk.". I didn't need to listen to people tell me that my mother really does love me, despite what I may think, and my being alive proves just that. It doesn't. It just proves that she's either pro-life or was just too poor to afford an abortion at the time.

So why weren't we put up for adoption? Great question once again, and all I can come up with is that she had a change of heart somewhere in her third trimester and by the time she snapped back to reality, it was too late to give us away.

What my brain was doing was taking anything logical and rational, throwing it out the window, and replacing it with any horrible, perturbed, cracked version of reality that it could come up with. Maybe I was a masochist of sorts, but I couldn't find any silver lining in this overwhelming storm cloud. I kept reaching for any positive thought, any positive emotion, but found none. Maybe subconsciously I wouldn't let myself, maybe I was my own worst enemy right now. All I knew is that I wanted to be alone to rot in my own self-degradation.

My misery doesn't love company.

I caught the taste of blood in my mouth as I surfaced from my internal reverie. My lips were swollen and raw from my unconscious chewing that had apparently been going on for the past few hours. I checked my watch; it was almost 6:30.

"Shit."

There was a hard knock knock knock on my door. I got up from my bed and unlocked and opened the door. Met by my angry mother with a big wooden spoon in her hand, I stepped back, my breath hitching in my throat.

"Samantha, what the hell have you been doing in here? I've been knocking on your freakin' door for hours now. Dinner's ready."

My eyes dropped to the floor in an attempt to evade the question, giving off an air of guilt that I knew she would promptly discern in spite of the pleasant aroma of Hamburger Helper seeping in from the kitchen.

"Okay, Mom, shit; I'm coming."

She yanked the spoon from her side and pointed it directly at me, no more than two inches from my face.

"Don't curse at me, young lady."

I slapped the wooden instrument from my face and pushed my way past her down the hall.

"Samantha Joy Puckett, what the hell is wrong with you?"

I stopped dead in my tracks and spun around to face her. My eyes locked on hers, staring a hole through her head, before falling to the ground in rebuff. I sighed wearily.

"Nothin', Mom. Just had a bad day..."

I turned back around and continued towards the kitchen, leaving her baffled at the sudden shift in my mood.

Dinner seemed to last for hours as my mother tried to draw my issues out of me with her passive aggressive, maternal coaxing. I wasn't budging, though. After about two hours of useless pleading on her part, the doorbell rang. Apparently, she forgot that her new boyfriend was coming over tonight. I was commanded to clean the kitchen and put up the leftovers and after doing so, took it upon myself to "borrow" my mother's bottle of Crown Royal that she kept hidden under her bed. She may have succeeded in pulling me out of my head once, bringing wafts of delicious noodles and meat through my door, but I was going back inside and nothing was taking me from my silent premeditation this time.

Alcohol: check.

Door locked: check.

Lights off: check.

Television: check.

The television was all for sound distraction in case my mother came lurking around the door again. I figured she'd be less frantic if she heard the TV and think I just fell asleep with it on.

Basically, this was it. This was what was going to happen. I was going to drink myself stupid, pondering the whys, the what ifs, and the why nots until my brain just stopped thinking completely. I may have had my mother's genetic makeup when it came to drinking, but even I knew what 750mL of whiskey would do to me. Sayonara, liver and brain cells.

So, I told decided that every time I found myself replaying the situation in my head, I would take two shots. Two because it takes a while to play out, so I figured I'd get drunk faster if I took more. Obviously.

I mean, what was I doing, really? What greatness had I accomplished with my life? I might graduate high school, probably won't be able to afford college, won't ever get a decent job. It just goes downhill from here. And what about Carly, huh? She was the most important thing in my life. Well, I expected I was just doing her one big favor. Who wants to be with someone that wasn't really intended to be here in the first place? Who wants, who needs to be with someone who has no purpose, no meaning to their life? She loves Sam Puckett, she does. But she loves what she thought Sam was, what I thought Sam was, not what Sam really is. Carly deserved so much better, and I hoped that she'd realize that and go looking for better rather than get hung up on the miserable soul that was the real Sam Puckett.

My mother didn't love me. She did everything in her power to get her two biggest mistakes as far away from her as possible. She couldn't even try to be positive about it. Couldn't scrape together the money to put us out of our misery, so we wouldn't have to go through this some day. Better me than Melanie, though. She's far too delicate to handle a situation like this. She'd break into a million pieces and by the time it was over, everyone in the world would know what we were. It's better this way, anyway. This way, at least, the secret that was once meant to die with only my mother and that monster, that will now die with me as well, will never be revealed to anyone. Not Freddie, not Spencer, not Carly, not anyone.

My thoughts were barely making sense anymore. How many shots had I had already? Six? Eight? Ten, even?

I knew Carly, though, and I knew that she would do the exact opposite of what she should do, which was forget about me. In my drunken, paradoxical, delusional state, I decided to write her a letter, letting her know not to worry about anything. I didn't want her to think that I didn't love her, but I couldn't explain what was really going on. I couldn't. As much as I hated myself right now, I had a reputation to uphold. It wasn't really a reputation with her, though, it was more that...she just needed to know how I really felt about her.

And it sucks, because in the back of my mind, I knew that this was the wrong decision. I knew that I'd end up regretting this the second I started the process. The second that it went too far, I'd want to go back in time and slap myself for even considering it. I knew I'd be hurting everyone else by being so selfish. But somehow, it didn't matter to me anymore. I just wanted to get away from it all, to escape to some place where it wasn't true, where I was meant to be, where I would be loved and cared for the way I deserved.

Nothing was making sense to me right now; my thoughts were so mangled. How did I end up here? I took another shot, and another, and then another, and glanced at the clock. 11:43pm. The bottle of liquor was nearly empty and I found myself nearly wasted out of my mind. At least one thing was working for me right now. I was sick, not physically, but emotionally. Mentally. The past eight hours had been filled with nothing but blind searching for even an iota of justification for an end to this horrible nightmare that had been sprung upon me only because of my unintelligible curiosity. What I was thinking was wrong, it was insane, and I knew that...now. Now, after all had been said and done. After my mother had found me, after Carly had seen me so lifeless and searched for answers. Answers that no one could give her now because no one even knew what they were. Answers that now seemed irrelevant and unimportant in comparison to the pain I had caused her. And now I wished I could go back in time and stop myself from making such a horrible mistake. I threw away everything that I had so painstakingly stitched together to create my life.

I stumbled back into the quiet, seemingly empty house around three o'clock in the morning. Seeing Carly for the last time was the most difficult thing that I'd ever had to do. It was so necessary, though, because the note never would have been enough. Scribbled ink on old notebook paper couldn't compare to actual human contact. Though, when I got there, I found that I had underestimated the level of comfort that flooded my body and made all my worries go away.

I knew I was still highly intoxicated, but a hangover was beginning to set in so I decided to go rummaging through the medicine cabinet to find something, anything, that would make the headache go away. There were several semi-translucent, orange bottles in the cabinet with many names that I didn't recognize but assumed to be my mother's heart medication. Candesartan Cilexetil, Metoprolol Succinate, Clopidogrel Bisulfate, Amlodipine, Simvastatin, Furosemide, Escitalopram Oxalate, and last but certainly not least Zolpidem Tartrate. I knew what that one was: Ambien. My mother had trouble sleeping, so the doctor prescribed it to her. She took one every night. I rooted around, looking for some Tylenol or Ibuprofen, but found none, so I grabbed the tall bottle of tiny, reddish pills. If I couldn't kill the pain, at least I could make myself fall asleep and forget about it. I poured the entire bottle of pills into my hand, there were nine of them altogether. Five milligrams each didn't seem like much, so I decided that I needed them all. After all, I had been drinking, a lot, so just taking a few probably wouldn't even work, seeing as the alcohol would just counteract the effects. They were so tiny, no more than half a centimeter each. And I wanted them to work fast, so I crushed them up with the bottom of the bottle, spreading a white powder all over the bathroom counter. My mission then took me to the kitchen to find a straw. I found a blue and white striped bend-y straw in the silverware drawer, which I then cut at an angle so that I'd be able to scoop up the powder easier. Carefully arranging it into as perfect a line as I could, I took a deep breath and exhaled down and away from the counter top, placing the straw up my left nostril as my lungs emptied. I placed a finger over my right nostril and another over the left, to close any gap between the lining of my nose and the straw. I imagined I looked almost elegant as I lowered my head to the counter and placed the straw at the apex of the line and began to inhale sharply, working my way down until all the white powder was gone. Jerking the straw out in a frantic attempt to stop the burning sensation, I stifled any attempt I might have to blow my nose, knowing too well that I would probably blow most of the medicine out and ruin my chances of passing out. Oh, and the taste in the back of my throat was indescribable. It almost made the whole thing not worth it. I ran to the kitchen, grabbed a Peppy Cola out of the fridge, and downed it as quickly as possible, trying to erase the dry, disgusting taste that was slivering down my throat. I started feeling lightheaded, finding myself almost stumbling as I made my way to the couch in the living room. I couldn't keep my eyes open, throwing myself down like a rag doll. Every inch of skin on my body was tingling and it was becoming increasingly harder for me to breathe with every second that went by, like someone had stuffed a pillow over my face or something. I became numb, my heart rate slowing down to almost nothing, feeling as if I was in another world, somewhere I wanted to be, somewhere I belonged. It was peaceful, and suddenly I could breathe again.

My heart rate stabilized and my eyes shot open. I sat up and discovered that I wasn't in my house anymore. No, I was in some place completely different. There were bright lights overhead, the faint smell of clean, detached sanitizer filling every sensory nerve in my nose. The place smelled like a hospital. But how did I get in a hospital? I was just in my living room. I stood up from what looked to be a padded park bench and headed toward the only door in the room. As I touched the cold, metal of the door handle, I heard resounding screams and cries coming from every direction. They penetrated my ear drums like knives with frantic mentions of my own name, why did I do this, how could I have done this; the voice seemed to be convinced that it couldn't be real: whatever "this" was. I yelled in response as loud as I could, but it seemed to do no good. The voice couldn't hear me. I heard a different, more masculine, voice yell, "Clear!" and then a sharp pain spread from my chest over my entire body. It burned, like someone had just placed two irons on my breastplate and pressed down as hard as they could.

"Clear!"

The pain came once again in the same spot, causing me to drop to my knees in front of the huge oak door that stood before me. I was scratching at my chest in every attempt to stifle the pain, but it just wouldn't go away. What the hell was happening to me?

"Clear!"

I cried out in agony for the voice to stop, knowing too well that they couldn't hear me, and even if they could, they wouldn't care.

With one fistful of shirt against my chest, I grabbed the door handle again with my other hand and pulled the door open.

The room went dark, the pain suddenly gone. I lay on a cold slab of concrete in the middle of a vast dark space. There was no smell this time, no mechanical whir of bright neon hospital lights above me, no questioning voice, nothing. I was alone once again. This was the place I craved earlier...this was my solace.