Maybe I Can Fly [Completed]

Part Four

She inhaled deeply before starting.

"I don't remember how it started. I don't even remember how I got this far. All I know is one day I started to feel like I was losing my mind. It was the day I started... this-"

She referred to her sleeve, continuing.

"I felt like I was going crazy, like I was losing control of my own mind really. You see, I'm a top student, straight A's, student council, all that bullshit. And just, that's hard, you know? Having that much pressure on your shoulders. No matter how good I was, it just never seemed like I was enough. I always had to do better, a B had to be an A, you get me? No less than perfect. And perfect, perfect's hard. And it didn't help when neither of my parents were ever home. I was legitimately alone in the world, trying to reach flawlessness for an invisible force that wasn't even there over half the time.

"But anyway, one day, I felt like I was going insane. It was the day before a final, I don't even remember which, and no one was home, and I just lost it. I ripped out the pages from my textbook, shredding them with my hands, I knocked over things in my room, trashed the living room, I mean I really got fucked. All I could see was red. I was screaming my head off the entire time, I'm surprised the neighbors didn't think that I was getting killed or something. Glass was broken everywhere, furniture was messed up, school work littered the floor.

"Then I grabbed a jacket and just bolted, leaving the fucking front door open behind me, too. I walked for hours, not really knowing where I was going. I stopped off at a gas station once, though. I forgot my cigarettes at home, and I really needed one right about then. So I picked up a pack and started walking again, but this time, I had a destination, I guess. There was a psych clinic a few blocks up, so I headed there.

"So imagine that. I was a teenager alone just standing in front of a mental hospital, staring at the thing, trying to decide if I wanted to go in or not. And hell, I almost did, too. And you know what stopped me?" She started to laugh again, empty and false. "The fact that I would have to miss school! I was so fucking afraid that my grades would go down that I hightailed it back home. How fucked up is that?

"And when I got home, my parents still weren't there, I might add. They were on some business trip or some other crap for their job. But when I got home, I grabbed a knife from the kitchen and carved up my arm. The blood didn't stain the bathroom floor, though. I got everything cleaned up before they got home that weekend, and aced my final, too.

"After that, I would only cut once in a while when things got really fucked. I only started doing it all the time after... I don't know if I can even say it."

Her tone went from blatantly sardonic to pained, and her tears threatening to start up again. Her hands shook as she took out her next cigarette, so bad that I had to use the lighter to light it for her. Her fingers wouldn't stop moving long enough to turn it on. She wouldn't catch my eye as she spoke.

"I'm about to tell you something I've never told anyone before."

"Dead men don't talk." She looked at me, taking in what I said. Then she sighed, beginning.

"It happened about two months after the mental hospital shit. I was still kinda fucked up, and my friend took me to this thing that the kids at school were having. It was supposed to, like, cheer me up or something. So I went and halfway through the night, I met this guy. He was a year older, the guy who was hosting this thing's older brother I think; I'd seen him around the halls at school, but I never really talked to him, you know? Just another pretty face in the crowd.

"But that night, he seemed to have taken a liking to me. So I don't know, one thing led to another and we started talking, and he kept shoving drinks at me. It was like beer and crap at first, and then he started giving me the harder stuff and I was already so fucked up about school and my parents and just life in general that I started to just not even care. And then, half stumbling over my own feet, we went to his room, and he kissed me, and- and-"