Outcast

Chapter Three

I don't know what to do.

An endless darkness stretches over me, a sea of stars floating above my head. The bottoms of my sneakers scuff across the pavement, my head held low, studying a long, thin crack in the concrete. I wish it could swallow me up. Every day, I just want to feel like I mean something. That I'm not just a candle, dancing in the wind, waiting for the flames to dissolve into lifeless grey smoke. The only person who makes me feel like I have any significance is in the ICU.

I got one wish; to have someone to talk to. But now I don't know what I really want.
Which is better? Loneliness, or helplessness?

I finally had someone to talk to, but at what cost?

We've been talking for a month now, and never once did I stop to think that maybe the girl who can hold the stars has more stars falling through her fingers than she can hold in her eyes. She's "fine," right? Or was I too selfish to consider that beneath her ocean eyes, "fine" was drowning? I ignored everything. The slightly off smiles, the quiet "okay" I always received- the long sleeves. Always long sleeves. I never questioned it. And I wish I had. Because this isn't just a girl, not just a friend, but not more. Just Asteria Iovino. The star girl, who no one ever cared about. The quiet one, who felt the pain of worlds. Ocean eyes, drowned in shadows.

A small girl walked past me that day. The air was still, and quiet, but I heard what sounded like raindrops. Soft water meeting the warm pavement. It wasn't raining. I heard the girl. I heard quiet tears meet the ground, before disappearing without a trace. But when I looked at her, I didn't expect to see my only friend staring back at me. I saw the hurt in her eyes, and saw something darker than water falling on the pavement. Thicker, slower, and almost black in the night.

Blood.
It's pooling at her hand, which tugs at the heavy cloth at her waist. I can't see the colour, but the hoodie is definitely glistening at the stomach.

And then she fell. Her legs gave in, her body collapsing into a heap on the sidewalk. The sirens came again, and the girl on the pavement became the girl in the ambulance. The girl in the ambulance became the girl in the hospital. The girl in the hospital became the girl with the suicide note.

Why me?

I'm going to die in a matter of months, my only friend attempted suicide, my family barely even acknowledges my presence, my grades are slipping, and the air is getting harder to breathe. The days are getting colder, darker, stormier, and more like a nightmare than my life. The stars are falling, emptying from the sky, until everything is just dark. It's so fucking dark.