Broken

Nobody Cares

Heather Duke stood on the hot, stone sidewalk, far away from her house, probably on the other side of the neighborhood. She was waiting for the right moment, waiting for a car to come.

She was done. Done with Heather Chandler's lingering effects, done with her family, done with her no-longer friends, done with her fat, ugly body, done with the world, done with life. She had thought about writing a suicide note but quickly thought against it, knowing that nobody cared what she had to say anyways, so there was no point.

She scratched her throat. It had been filled with that awful, acidic taste that came after you threw up. Heather Duke was used to it, really, it happened every time she ate. She shouldn't be eating, she always told herself, it would make her fat, but Heather Duke had no self control, in fact, she had no control at all. If her life was bad before then now it was in complete shambles after Veronica Sawyer waltzed into her life (again!).

Heather was snapped out of her thoughts by her own hacking. It goes on for a painful while before Heather's throat finally calms down a bit. Her left hand is wet and she looks at it to find it covered with her own blood and spit. She felt the bile rise up in her throat as she stared down at the sight but swallowed it down. Her attempt at a final, thin body had failed as it always did and this time she didn't need the vomit stains on her green cardigan to show it.

The short girl thought back to the last time she shoved her finger down her throat an hour ago. She had gotten up to wash her mouth in the sink only to look up at the mirror right above it. She was still the fat, ugly, broken girl she always had been, only this time with barf dribbling down her severely cracked lips.

She thought about all the events that had happened, especially the ones from the past two months, the events that had driven her to where she was now. Heather Chandler's new reign in freshman year, Heather Chandler's quick descent into the she-devil she had become, Heather Chandler's death years later, Heather Duke's all but happy feeling when she found out about Heather Chandler's death, Heather Duke's usurping of Heather Chandler's power, Heather Duke's endless teasing of Heather McNamara just as Chandler had done to Duke, Heather McNamara's failed suicide attempt, Heather McNamara and Veronica Sawyer leaving her, And finally, Veronica Sawyer. Veronica Sawyer who took all of her hard work away, everything she had ever truly worked for, her chance at power, the thing she had pined and desired for years while she brooded in Chandler's shadow, her one shot at control. And Veronica Sawyer took it all away, only by swiping the sacred red scrunchie out of her black hair with one, singed, soot covered hand.

Oh, Heather Duke was broken. Even more broken than the mirror she had impaled with her now bloodied right hand.

Finally, she spotted it. The thing she'd been waiting for. A car was on its way down the road. Heather offered an empty smile as she waved, her eyes dull and wary and full of relief that it was all going to be over soon. She waited a while, counting the seconds until it got close.

3... 2... 1...

And at the final count, she ran into the road, willing the car to hit her so hard that she'd fall asleep and never wake up.

Thud.