I ran upstairs crying for the fifth time this week.
Locking myself in my room, I collapsed on the carpet, and carried on sobbing silently, the tears bleeding into my shirt and onto the floor. "Why me?" I said. "Why always me? What did I do wrong?"
I finally stopped crying and looked at my wounds in the mirror. A large, purple bruise on my temple. The scratch from Josie's attack in the locker room. The scar from where one of them had used their compass on my face after Math. The chunk torn out of my hair had only grown back recently. I touched the new strands, slightly shorter than the rest.
And then there was the texts. The Facebook messages. The tweets. All of them telling me to go and die or calling me a loser, most often much worse. They hurt more than the bruises and cuts, but nobody could see the pain when they used words. I kept it bottled up inside of me, and soon enough there was enough hate inside that the bottle could smash at any point.
I had had enough of this life. By looking at my scars I decided that someday I have to let them heal, and the sooner that day comes, the better. So why hadn't I made it happen already?
I didn't know where I was going to go or what I was going to do. But it didn't matter. All that mattered is that I was out of this school, this town, possibly the whole of Wisconsin! I was escaping them, and one day they were going to see me and what I'd made of my life and envy me. They'll see if I don't!
