'Cause you can't jump the track, we're like cars on a cable
And life's like an hourglass, glued to the table
No one can find the rewind button girl,
So cradle your head in you hands
And breathe, just breathe,
Whoa breathe, just breathe
"My whole life, my father told me people will judge me. People will assume they know who I am by looking at me. And that the deck is stacked against me.
When you're faced with that, when you're without power, on the outside, you have tough choices. It's easy to hide. To give in to the pain.
Like Hannah did. She started to believe that she was less then."
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"So, what did you want to talk about?" Mr. Porter asked as we moved into his office. I stayed standing for a moment, simply staring at the chairs placed before his desk. I couldn't help but picture Hannah sitting in one of them, the day she had came to the man before me for help-- the day she had died.
"See that's the tricky part. 'Cause what I was wanting to talk about, it's not allowed in school anymore. Some pesky new rule," I rolled my eyes as I said the last sentence.
"Feel free to say whatever you need to, Penny. You're safe in here," he assured me, glancing at his closed office door. "It's just you and I here now. I'm not gonna write you up if you talk about something the school board has deemed inappropriate."
"Hannah was the first real friend I had that was a girl," I told him as I took a seat in one of the chairs in front of his desk. My lips settled into a sad smile as I spoke, my mind filled with various memories of Hannah. "I had friends before she moved here, but I was always the closest with guys. Guys like Tony, Clay, Zach... Jeff."
A silence fell over the room at my mention of Jeff. I kept my gaze focused on my hands as I sat there, waiting for him to say something to break the silence. I picked at the blue paint coating my fingernails, it having already started to chip around the top.
"How are you feeling, Penny?" He asked after a few minutes. I wasn't surprised by his question in the slightest. It was the same general question that everyone seemed to be asking me nowadays, as if they were waiting for me to snap at any moment's notice.
"Honestly?" I looked up at him with a raised brow.
"Of course," he nodded.
"I feel...pissed." As soon as the word left my mouth I felt as though a weight of some sort had been lifted off of my shoulders-- because it was the truth. For months I had been trying to shove my own feelings down as deep as I could, worried about everyone else around me. First it had been my parents after Jeff had died. Then it had been Hannah's parents because of her death; followed by Clay when it came around to be his turn to have the tapes. Whenever one fire seemed to be dimming there was always another one roaring to life, needing me to tend to it.
