Crushed

-1-

         The moment I cross the door of my house, a small ball of fur comes running to receive me, meowing in her cute demand for attention. For half second I can smile as I crouch down to grab the little animal in my hands. Luna, my cat, was just a present Mum gave me not long ago in hopes to help me out. Even if I don't tell her what's wrong, she can sense I have no life in me anymore.

"I'm home," I whisper, my voice low and dead, sounding almost muffled although nothing covers my mouth except from exhaustion and sorrow.

I take steps towards the stairs to go straight to my room where I pretend to stay for the rest of the day, but every step is slow and dragged, like my whole body was made of iron. It's because I'm so slow that Mum catches me before I make it to the third step in the stairs.

"Paige!" she calls energetically, wiping her hands in her apron. "I was making your favourite pie, I thought you'd—sweetie, what happened to your hair?" she asks next, just then noticing I don't look the same as I did this morning before leaving for college.

"Accident," I reply, turning to resume my way, leaving Mum out and ignorant of the truth.

It could be called an accident, made totally on purpose. My classmates thought it would be fun to set my hair on fire. I think there's still some good in this world because I didn't get hurt, the teacher acted fast and controlled the flames before it would get serious. I just had to get it cut. My once waist-length hair is now shoulder-length, which makes it messier and more frizzy as it has no weight on its own. All thanks to my classmates, the same ones that can't leave me alone one day.

"Are you okay? You didn't get hurt?" Mum asks, although I don't even turn to look at her.

"Yeah. I was just clumsy with the scissors and decided to just have a change," I keep lying, like I've been doing for so long.

I've learnt that telling the adults or the people that should protect me is useless. They don't really care about our teenager problems. They think we're just overreacting because we aren't adults yet and we don't know the world. They forget that at our age, this is the worst we've lived and yes, it feels like the end because we have, indeed, not lived more. It can't feel any other way. They want us to act like adults, think like them, feel like them, and act like them... but we can't because we've never been adults. Yet them... they have been teenagers once but can't try to empathise with us.

Every time I said I was being picked on by other kids they told me 'ignore them, they'll stop if you don't give them a reaction.' The problem is that, sometimes, when it hurts so much, you can only cry, even if you don't want to. It's stronger than you. Without your permission, your body gives them the reaction.

"Will you come down for dinner?" Mum asks with that worried voice that is so familiar on her now.

The reason why I don't tell her what's happening is because it breaks her more than it breaks me.

"I doubt it. I'm not hungry," I say, the first truth of the day.

I don't wait for more words, I just go to my room to lie on my bed, Luna curled up on my stomach. My eyes are fixed on the ceiling as I hear the tick-tock of the clock on my wall. That's all I do, just let them slip away, one after the other until they become minutes, hours; until the day is gone.

I don't live, I only endure. I wonder when I'll reach my limit, when the bullying and harassment will make me explode and what will happen then. I wonder if I'll bite them back or just break so much that there won't be a way to pull me back together.

My classmates hate me. They torture me on a daily basis, humiliate me in every way they find, hurt me with words and actions, and no one, absolutely no one cares enough to tell them to stop or to give me a hand. I'm all alone, sinking deeper in darkness every day.

How much can a human being endure? For how long can I keep doing this? Where is my limit?

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I said this story would be sad. We actually see Paige reaching her limit and you'll see her at her gloomiest. I'm sorry. Luckily, this story is a mini-prequel, so it won't last long.

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Bel, xx

~updates every Tuesday~