It happened for a few consecutive nights.

Her days kept getting worse. The back of her hands were scarred and scratched. RC thought that they were scratched beyond repair. She hated it all. She hated everything.

She kept having to spend more and more money on stationery, considering she could not quite use broken pens or rulers to do anything at all. She almost felt like she needed to have a special stock for when she felt excessively angry and tired and victimised.

Lately, nothing seemed to help.

RC found herself contemplating suicide more than any ordinary teenager. She would be in the chemistry lab doing an experiment, for all anyone knew, she would be coming up with ways to set herself on fire.

Or she would be on the school terrace, where the cafeteria was, leaning just a little too far off the edge wondering what it would be like to fly, then smack! Lifeless on the ground. She wondered if it would help to cope with the pain.

On the fifth night, RC found herself in the same situation she had four nights ago. Utterly and completely alone, damaged, and unable to sleep. She pulled her pillow over her head in frustration, a small part of her hoping that it would suffocate her.

It didn't work.

Exasperated and deeply angered, RC threw the pillow across the room and watched it bounce off her bookshelf.

Then, with the rage of a distressed madman, RC got out of bed, and took to pacing the more than familiar length of her room. She could not think. She couldn't do anything. She felt, more than anything else, sleep deprived. And jumbled up. One of the two. Or both.

The night was clouding her. "Come on darkness," she whispered, "don't bail on me now."

She pulled her hair in frustration, feeling the urge to scream, to vent out. That day, Shay, Allie's right hand man, or woman, whatever, had embarrassed her in front of her entire class, calling her a pig, then proceeding to snidely make remarks about her all afternoon that set the entirety of the class into fits of laughter. Including the girls who called themselves her friends. All of them.

Except Simone.

Simone never laughed. She watched. But she never laughed.

Over lunch, Brent, Shay's boyfriend, had cornered her by the dumpsters and had punched her stomach so sore that she had been unable to walk home. Simone helped her walk home, silently, peacefully.

But now, RC felt anything but peaceful. She felt violent.

Unconsciously and involuntarily, she felt herself reach for her trusty compass point inside her school bag. She started at the shining tip for a few seconds, contemplating how terrible she was, how unnecessary, how useless, how unwanted. She was pointless.

Then, closing her eyes tightly, she pricked the compass point into her right hand and proceeded to stab herself, again and again into the back of her left hand. Over and over. In and out. Sweet pain. Which wasn't really helping to drown out the screaming shouting exploding voices in her head.

Again and again, continuously, till she could feel nothing. Suddenly, the compass point clattered to the wooden floor as RC put both hands over her face and sobbed.

The only other therapeutic sound in the room was the dripping. The silent drip drip drip of her blood, rolling out of the small wounds down to her elbow then slowly onto the floor. Drip drip drip, like it was comfortable, it was used to this. The dripping was experienced.

RC broke down, biting her lip so that no noise would escape out of her being. She bit her lip until it bled. She walked out to her balcony and sat on the cushioned chair.

Dear darkness of the night, please, drown me out of here, I'm not worth the space, it doesn't matter, please darkness of the night, hide me away till I die. She kept thinking this over and over again. It sounded like her own personal mantra. Except it was anything but.

RC thought her brain would explode. She closed her eyes, still crying, still biting her bleeding lower lip, and took a deep breath. What do you want from me, stupid brain? You aren't the boss of me! She thought angrily.

Yes I am, came the equally forceful reply. Get up.

RC got up, shaken not because her brain was responding to her, but because she was actually listening to herself. She willed herself in and reached for the first thing she though of.

A scrap paper and a pencil.

She walked out into the balcony again, with a can of bug spray, and settled into the couch again. Tears still falling fast and easy, RC started to write.

What use am i, to life's long train

What use am i, to life's bitter game

Die dead heart die, is all I can think

What a foolish thought, but it's what I feel

What use am i, but for the endless rants

What use am i, but a tool for your angered glances

I know dear heart I know, but at the same time I don't

How foolish am i, sobbing, falling, breaking, crumbling

No use, no use at all

Needless to say, she stayed up all night long, until she heard her mother stir. It was morning again. Time to face the world. Or hide from it. Either one. But mostly the latter. Sometimes the former. Especially when RC was not intending to back down from a fight.

So yes, either one.

***

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