Chapter 1 - New Mail (No Sequel)

My name is Caitlin Illistrima, and this is my story.

I don’t consider it my “dream come true”, but I do think it’s one of those stories that just have to be retold. And not retold through the grapevine, like Telephone, that child’s game. I mean retold with all the details intact.

Now, where to start…. The meeting seems the appropriate place to begin.

I meet Jason Collie, like, three months before my freshman year. At that point, I knew him as Glitch and he knew me as Ciara. We meet on Myspace, because he thought I was going to his school, and developed a friendship there.

I had up a picture of some model that looked like a taller, skinnier version of me.
He didn’t get a glimpse of the real me until a few days before school actually started.

But anyway, ‘Glitch’ was nice, considerate, funny, corky, and deep. He didn’t ask me to explain something when he could tell that I didn’t want to talk about it. He could be honest in a nice way, and he got my slightly morbid sense of humor, unlike all my other friends.

As Ciara, I was honest in a way I couldn’t be in real life. As Caitlin, I’m quiet, shy, an easy target for harassment, and mostly, just one of those losers that is never really visible. But as Ciara, I was, and still am, harsh, honest, cruel, funny, interesting, morbid, and just a little unstable. I feel as if Ciara is a real part of me, not just some character I made up. Schizophrenia, paranoia, and a pathological liar make an interesting mix.

That summer, I took great pride in pretending to be someone I wasn’t, making friends with people who had ridiculed me at school, and forgetting about reality where even my closest friends were drifting away from me.

We talked about all kinds of things, like his band practices, my annoying sister, his philosophy, my music. We kept our personal problems to ourselves. I never knew he was a football player, he never knew I was almost beyond depression and falling slowly towards suicide as my only option.

We… cut off after I sent him an old picture of me. I’ve always been self conscious. And Glitch commented on how I looked a little… chunky in my fifth grade picture and I felt I hadn’t changed much other than getting taller.

So, I stayed silent.


School started, we didn’t talk for almost another month after that. It wasn’t until almost a week before a football game I had told him we could really meet at that sent me an e-mail asking me if I was going to come or not.

During that first month of school, I found out that twenty-three people from both of the middle schools I’d gone to had followed me over to O’Connor. Out of those twenty-three people, twenty of them hate my guts to an extent that they would take the opportunity to cut out my tongue, torture me, or push me all the way to suicide. Out of those twenty, all of them made at least thirteen new friends in the first week. Out of those two hundred and sixty some odd new friends, two hundred and fifty of them found out about the original group of twenty’s hatred of me. And all two hundred and forty-five of them adopted it.

So, within the first week of school, I went from having just thirteen enemies to avoid to having two hundred and fifty-eight enemies to avoid. There were only about five hundred and sixty-seven new freshmen at my school. That means that about haft of the freshman population hated me.

I only had a total of two friends to buffer the taunts thrown at me continuously.

And, already having teetered on the edge of the void for to long, I snapped when this guy who had decided that I wasn’t thin enough for him to really like asked to meet me.


I packed my bags that night while my mom was at work and my sister was sleeping in the same room. I took an old backpack my mom wouldn’t remember, the clothes on my back, and seventy dollars I’d saved from babysitting.

In twenty minutes, I had walked to the Target down the street, bought new jeans, a hooded jacket so no one would recognize me, and a box of multigrain bars for food, and was standing in line to get on a bus that was heading in the opposite direction from all of my problems.

Memories flood in at the worst moments, don’t you think? As I sat in that back seat of the bus, avoiding eye contact and thinking of what the repercussions of this one fatal move would do, I remembered the one plan I had always had when I finally ran away.

Head home. And home was the one place no one would think to look.

‘Home’ was the first house I had ever lived in as a little kid. I quickly went over the bus map and found the bus that would take me there. By some lucky coincidence, I was already on it.

When I got there, the first thing I did was run over my old neighborhood looking for old friends, old hide outs, the works. I found out that a kid who used to be an almost friend of mine still lived down the street, by himself, and that it was easy to sneak in any time I needed something. So I hide out in his old tree house, and forgot.


The next night, he went to a party. I was glad; I seriously needed a bathroom, not the bushes. I found it quickly, relieved myself, searched out his kitchen quickly and stole a box of cereal that he had, like, seven boxes of, then, I had to take a quick tour, just in case.

I found his computer, turned on, an internet screen already pulled up to Myspace.

I took it as fate and sat down to check my mail. My original user, Kat, was flooded with mail from friends begging me to come home. That was strange, I thought my mom would only call the cops and pray that they found me, not inform my friends.

I deleted it all without reading it.

Ciara, my alter ego user, said ‘New Mail!’ as well. I figured it was just someone telling me about this girl who went to my school running away, some kind of mass e-mail form administrators.

I was wrong.

It was Glitch and the same friends from my real user. The only problem with that? None of my real friends knew about my alter ego. Cautiously, I flipped on the TV in the room. It came up as the news. The top story?

“Caitlin Itatate is still missing after an entire day of searching. The police are trying to convince her mother, Mrs. Cally Dorango, that she was kidnapped and that they should be using their resources to look for clues. Mrs. Dorango is standing on the idea that her daughter has run away and was not kidnapped.”

The screen flipped to an interview, my mom the star.

“Please, Caitlin, if you can see this, come home! Whatever’s happening, we’ll work through it. I know you weren’t kidnapped. Caddie was still perfectly asleep when I got home this morning and you would have woken her up by screaming bloody murder if someone tried to take you. Come home.”

The screens switched back.

“No one has any idea what could have pushed her to run away. One Brianna Yamani told cameras that she and Caitlin were good friends and that she and all of her friends would have known if she was troubled about anything-“

I couldn’t hear the next part because I threw the remote at the wall so hard it left a small dent. I stomped the ground as hard as possible and pounded the computer desk with my fists in an effort to keep from screaming. When I was finally calmed down, the reporter had passed the Brianna part.

“-And her mother begs anyone who knows her on any of her Myspace accounts to come forward about anything she might have said to them. She has her normal account, display name Kat, and an alias of Ciara.”

Then the report left the subject for a happier story about a dog that had walked from Washington State to Phoenix after being left in Yakima after a vacation.

I turned the TV off about there, but I sat in front of the computer for almost fifteen minutes before I finally went and checked my e-mail. I skipped over the ones from my friends. I didn’t want to listen to them. There were two from ‘Glitch’. Both were titled ‘Is it True?’

I opened the first one cautiously. It looked just like other ones he’d written me, full of spelling and grammar mistakes. It looked something like this:



I hit the backspace to look at the other one, but it was just a copy he accidentally sent. I sat back in the chair, crushing myself against the leather. He hadn’t asked me to come home. That was a surprise.


The next day, sleeping in the sun, I had a weird dream about spot lights. Two were following a girl and a guy around on a dance floor and three were trained on people around me. I was standing next to a girl named Stacy, who went to O’Connor with me. On my other side were Brianna and one of her lackeys that I had never learned the name of.

They were all awe struck about something and Brianna had a bruise slowly blooming on her cheek. It looked like a hand print, but it wasn’t defined enough to tell. Stacy was gasping for breath.


When I woke up, it was almost six and Brent, the guy whose house I was hiding behind, was leaving again.

It took a minute to figure out which day it was. I was only ever good with that stuff if I was writing it down six or seven times a day. I had left on Sunday, which meant the day before was Monday and that day was Tuesday. Three days ‘till the homecoming game at Mountain Ridge, where I had promised I would meet Glitch.

I snuck into the house again. I didn’t need anything, but I had an obsession with my Myspace. So I checked Kat and there were twice as much mail as the day before. I back tracked and logged in as Ciara. There was only one on there. I checked it quickly.

It was another e-mail from Glitch.



I didn’t waste time checking anything else. I didn’t know what time Brent was going to be back. I left the computer the way I’d found it and snuck back into the backyard tree house.


I sat up that night in the cold, freezing my buns off, but I just couldn’t get to sleep. It must have been almost two in the morning when the back door to Brent’s house opened.

I froze, squeezing my legs up to my chest and holding my breath.

Brent moved slowly, pulling a robe tight around his body. It was freezing outside and I could see his breath. It was October. He moved towards me and I stopped breathing completely, not even small gasps every few seconds. He climbed up the ladder and I prayed that, in the dark, he wouldn’t see me.

No such luck.

“You wanna come inside? It’s hella cold out here, Kat.”

I stayed where I was, almost not comprehending what he was saying. I had figured Brent was the last person to remember me since we hadn’t been very nice to each other when we where younger.

Brent sighed, a big white cloud blossoming in the air in front of him. “Okay then. Well, there are blankets in the chest by the back door.”

As he stated to climb down my brain kicked in. “Wait!” I called, yanking on his arm, “We need to talk.”

“Well, can we do it inside? It’s freezing out here!”

“…Fine.”

I followed Brent down the ladder and into the house, rejoicing in the sudden warmth when he sat me down in front of a fire place. I held my hands close, ignoring the slow cooking of the flesh there.

“Kat…” My eyes pulled up to Brent face. He looked a little frustrated with something, probably me.

“What?”

“Why’d you leave?”

It was the question I’d expected. “Because no body there understood.” It was the answer he should have expected.

“Because you didn’t talk to anyone! No one knows anything about you! None of your friends-“

“Who? Brianna Yamani? Ha! She’s a joke! I’m going to punch her the next time I see her because I’m sure you’ve already called my mom and I’ll see Brianna in just a few days now,” I cut in harshly, glaring into the fire.

“But… Brianna said you were, like, best friends.”

“She lied. You can tell what kind of person I’ve turned into since I was six. Have you seen a picture of her? We clash so bad it’s not even possible for us to say a kind thing to each other.”

Brent swallowed. I used to think that was cute, when I was little and he was the unattainable middle school-er. Now it just reminded me that my throat was dry.

“Can I have a drink?”

“Huh? Oh, yeah. The kitchen’s-“

“I know,” I said, getting up slowly and wandering out of the room. There was no Coke in the frig, which pissed me off. It was an irrational anger that I always succumbed to. Anger at other people’s unknown incompetence. Things they can’t help.

Muttering under my breath, I grabbed a glass from the dishwasher and filled it with tap water. I took a deep swallow, walking back to the fire place room all the while. By the time I got there, I had water dripping off of my chin.

“So are you going to go home?”

I chocked on a bit of water. I hadn’t expected him to ask me.

“… I don’t know. I don’t want to.”

“How’d you know I was here? I was really careful,” I said, setting my glass down on the floor to warm my hands once again.

“One of your friends that your mom called told the cops about how you had once said, after she herself had failed to actually run away, something cryptic about how you’d go home. No one could figure it out… ‘till Bailey called your mom with your Gaia profile. The only place you’ll ever consider home? Right here in this neighborhood. You’re mom called me the same night you ran away.”

“That’s where you went?”

“Yeah. At first I didn’t understand why you’re mom would be calling me. But when I got to your grandma’s and there were cops everywhere, I figured it out pretty quickly. I came out that night and found you asleep.”

“And told my mom.”

“No. I told her I couldn’t find you.”

“Why?” I asked, incredulous, though I just sounded exasperated.

“Because. I remember you as a six-year-old, determined to ride a two-wheeler in two days. I remember you as a five-year-old, stubbornly refusing to leave Mason’s house. Hell, I remember you as an infant, determined to walk by your first birthday and already eating solid food.”

I smiled real small. That he remembered me at all left a nice, warm, fuzzy feeling in my chest somewhere.

“Come, you look tired. I’ll set you up in JayJay’s room. JayJay’s my nephew. Every couple weeks, he comes and stays with me while his parents go to counseling,” Brent said, leading me down a hall to his old bedroom.

The room was dark, even with the one blank bulb in the ceiling. The room was a mess and walls were covered in hard rock posters.

“I figured JayJay’s room would better suit you than his sister, Laya’s room.” He opened the door across the small hall to the room that used to be his older brother’s. It was now a baby blue with small pink flowers everywhere. I only got a glimpse before mock hissing and hiding my face from view. I giggled, forgetting what was happening for a minute. Brent smiled and closed the door.

“I’m just down the hall. I’m sure you already know the way. We’ll figure out what you’re going to do tomorrow.”

I nodded and closed the door, flicking off the light and finding the bed in the dark. The blanket was thick and warm and I felt almost bad about messing up the perfectly made bed. But the second my head hit the pillow I was out.


I woke up again six hours later, smelling pancakes and hot syrup. I crawled from bed, fell on the floor, stumbled to my feet and padded towards the kitchen rubbing sleep from my eyes and squinting away from the light as much as possible.

“Good morning. I figured pancakes would wake you up. They always get JayJay away from bed,” Brent said cheerily from the stove.

“You’re a morning person, aren’t you?” I growled, burrowing into my arms folded on the table.

Brent hummed merrily, flipping pancakes like a pro. The only time I would lift my head was for a sip of the orange juice that Brent had set out on the table before I came out.

When there was a piping hot plate of cakes in front of me and a thing of syrup all to myself, I finally brought my head all the way up and began shoveling food into my mouth.

Brent laughed, then sobered immediately. “So, what are you going to do? You can stay here for as long as you need to, but eventually your mom will find out.”

“I know,” I said after a massive swallow that left me draining my glass of water, which had also been there before I came out. “I think… I need a little while longer to figure things out.”

Brent nodded. “Well, just don’t set the house on fire, please. I have to go to work today, yay, me, and you’ll have to stay here by yourself.”

“Kk. I’ll just watch TV… maybe surf the net a bit. That okay?”

“JayJay would like you. That’s all he ever does.”


An hour later, the house was empty. I was lounging on the couch, watching the SciFi channel. I was itching to go check my mail, but I didn’t want to get another note from Glitch. It was the day before the football game we were supposed to meet at and he’d probably be pressuring me into coming by now.

Eventually I couldn’t hold back anymore and I wobbled my way to the den. Wobbled because I had been sitting on the couch for three hours, movement down to the bare minimums of breathing and switching the channel.

And I was right. There was another note from Glitch.

Hi. My name is Jason Collie. I go to Mountain Ridge High School. I thought I should introduce myself properly instead of leading you on that my name was Glitch.

I know you’re reading this. I actually feel kind of special when I imagine that my mail is all you’re getting on to read. I wish you’d type back, but I understand why you aren’t. I’d be paranoid about people revealing they’d talk to me, too.

I bet you’re wondering why there are no spelling errors or grammatical errors or just errors in general, huh? Well, the truth is, I wanted this one e-mail to be nice, like all the ones you send to me, with no errors whatsoever.

What are you doing tomorrow night? You’re not coming to the game, since you already would have told me if you were. What is there to do where ever you are?

I hope you’re going to come back eventually, Kat. I really like talking to you.

My eyes slowly began to water. He wasn’t questioning my judgment. He wasn’t even telling me to come home, or even asking, for that matter. He was just hoping…

Right then, I knew what I was going to do.


That night, when Brent got home, I cornered him as he was getting ready to make dinner.

“I need a dress.”

“What?” He was dumbstruck. He remembered when I was little; I shredded every dress I ever got.

“I know what I’m going to do. Do you work tomorrow?”

“No. I have Friday’s off.”

“Okay. Would you mind paying for a hair cut, dress and heels? I can do everything else myself.”

“…Okay, Kat. I’ll take you to the store Laya is always begging to go to. It’ll have everything.”


I had that dream again that night. The one with Brianna, Stacy and the other girl. I can’t tell who the girl and guy on the dance floor are, but I’m kind of guessing the girl is me.


“Call me Lynn at the store. People might recognize my face anyway, but my name will be a dead give away,” I said as Brent drove towards the more expensive side of town. The radio was on and they were giving a report about my disappearance. Brent had tried to change it when it came on, but I wanted to hear it.

“Lynn, check. How short are you going to cut your hair?”

The question brought the reality that I was fiddling with the ends of my hair over my shoulder. “Short.”

“You’ll look cute,” Brent assure me.

“Yeah….” Brent pulled into a parking space and we both climbed out of his Jeep.

“Wow,” I breathed, looking at the store window in front of us. The dresses they were displaying were not for little kids as I had imagined Laya to be.

“Yeah, did I mention that Laya and JayJay are twins?” Brent asked, pulling me towards the door. “I’ll set up the hair appointment. Go look at the dresses.”

I stood, awestruck, staring almost greedily at the array of dresses in front of me. I instantly started pulling black, white, red, and blue dresses from the racks, most just past the knee and one almost touching the floor.

“The appointment’s in twenty minutes, Lynn,” Brent said, coming up behind me.

“Thanks. I’m going to go try a few of these on, okay?”

Brent nodded and I walked off to the dressing rooms. It took me almost the entire twenty minutes to pick my dress, but eventually, I picked a light blue knit dress, polyester, with a halter top-type tie, a Rhine stone circle at the center, above any cleavage, and a handkerchief hem line. It looked beautiful.

I showed it to Brent and he almost ogled me before he remembered who I was.

“It looks beautiful, Kaa-Lynn. Lynn.”

At my hair appointment, I told the girl doing it that I wanted highlights, she could pick the color, and that I wanted it cut to about chin length and to either curl or flare. I let her make that decision.

I came out of it with my naturally dark brown hair flared around my face decorated with baby blue streaks that were only temporary but would match my dress along with some white and black ones that were permanent.

The heels I picked out were jet black, but I asked Brent if we could make one last stop at Michael’s for some ribbon and a glue gun before heading home.

By the time the game rolled around, My hair looked even more flared from my tweaking when we got back to Brent’s house and my shoes had blue ribbon that matched my dress around the sides and tied into a small bow at the front.

I did a small pirouette for Brent after I was ready. He loved it.

“So, are we going to the game?” he asked me as we walked out to his Jeep.

“You’ve been reading my mail!” I said mock angry. “Well, yes, we are going to the game. There’s someone there I need to meet.”

“I thought so,” Brent said, starting the car and turning on the radio.

At the football game, it was easy to pick out Jason. He was the quarterback of the Mountain Ridge team after all. I stood by the stands, remaining obscure while Brent went and sat in the stands.

At haft time, I nervously walked forward, fiddling with my fingers. As I neared the field, I heard gasps from the crowd and Brent shouting encouragements to me. I smiled, suddenly confident.

The closer I go to the center of the field, where the teams were huddled on opposite sides of the center line (1), a spot light fell onto me. My heart seized, but I kept moving, looking confident.

The entire O’Connor team was staring at me. But only two people from the Ridge team were looking directly at me. One of them was Nate Yatki, a boy I had had a crush on for a long time before high school.

And the other? I could only guess he was Jason. I had never seen him so close up. He ran out to meet me, ignoring his coach, and stopped directly in front of me, towering over my mere five feet, nine inches height to at least six foot, five inches.

“You never told me you were the quarter back,” I said, smiling nervously.

“No….” Jason didn’t seem able to stream words together to make a sentence.

“I know I’m probably not what you’d expect, but I just thought… you should know who I really am, and this is the me that I am on the inside, through the shoot of my life and the depression I feel frequently. This is me.”

“Kat… you couldn’t be any better even if you tried,” Jason whispered, leaning down to gently place his lips against mine.

About haft of the crowd, both schools, went silent. The rest burst into shouts, partly jealousy, partly joy for me. I never realized how many people really liked me and thought I deserved the world.

When we pulled apart, Jason and I were smiling like idiots, but Jason’s coach was screaming at him.

“Go sit down. We’ll go to a dance after this,” he said, brushing some hair out of my face.

“Yeah, now get back in the game and win,” I said, turning him around and pushing him gently towards the huddle.


I went back to the Ridge stands, searching out Brent from the grass. I smiled as I saw him waving me up energetically. But before I could start up the steps, I was ambushed by my friends from… everywhere.

Nataly, Lindsey, Stella, Michele, Britca, Steven, Steven, Collin, Darci, Darci, Kelly, Lacie, Molly, and Kevin all crowded around me, hugging me so tightly I almost couldn’t breath.

“I’m so happy your back!”

“What a show! Why didn’t you ever say anything about having a crush on the quarterback?”

“I thought I was going to upchuck, but you deserve it!”

“Congrates!”

“I’m so jealous!”

“How’d you meet him?”

“Where’d you go?”

“Why’d you run?!”

“We missed you so much!”

“I had to put up with school all by myself!”

“It’s good to see you again, Kat!”

I smiled and closed my eyes, basking in the warmth of my friends. They were all the family I needed if ever I couldn’t have mine. But finally, their questions began to wear on my nerves.

“I’ll answer questions later, okay. I just want to go sit down with Brent right now.”

“Brent? Who’s Brent? Didn’t you just kiss Jason?”

“Lindsey, Brent is one of my old neighbors. He’s also one of my best friends. And, yes, I just kissed Jason.”

Slowly, they all released me, but most of them trailed me to the seats around Brent, and the few who didn’t (Kevin, Collin, Steven, Darci, Kelly) were back in a few minutes after telling their parents where they were going.

“You done good, kid,” Brent whispered before anyone else sat down. I had the seat next to him.

“… I did, didn’t I?” I breathed, smiling contentedly.

But, of course my perfect moment had to be ruined, but only slightly.

“You do know that he’ll never stay with someone like you, right?”

I sighed heavily, standing up and turning towards the aisle on my right. Brianna, Briany, Nally, Stacy, Tracy, and Brianna’s lackey whose name I didn’t know were standing there, looking haughty, haft of them in cheerleader outfits.

“No, I don’t know, Brianna. You must be living in some other reality because, unlike you, Jason got to know me, not what I look like.”

“dog, it’s not going to last long. He’ll be dating me in a week.” Brianna flipped her blonde hair over her shoulder, her eyes filled with mirth, her smile displaying cruel intentions.

I walked forward just slightly, pulled back my right hand, and slammed it forward, so hard it made an audible crack in the night air and pushed Brianna so she toppled over a few benches. I smiled as I realized there was a spot light on me again. I grinned in triumph and held up the rock on symbol for the crowds.

Again, haft the people cheered for me, haft of them booed.

Stacy moved to get me from behind. Stacy was a small, compact volleyball player, so she was pretty strong. I turned around just in time, thanks to Brent and Nataly’s shouts of warning, and threw a punch directly to her stomach. It pulled up her shirt a bit and I could already see her stomach turning blue.

She must have had weak skin.

I sat back down with my friends while Brianna and Stacy were helped away by their friends and no one bothered me for the rest of the game but a spot light was continually flitting up to my seat. I still smile in triumph every time I think about that.


After the game, all my friends and I made plans to hang out that Saturday. I waited with Brent outside the Ridge locker rooms. I didn’t have to wait long, it seemed as though Jason could power shower and change as fast as he could throw a football.

He swept me up off of the ground as he hugged me and swung me around. I smiled into his neck.

“So, which dance are we going to?” he asked, setting me down and placing an arm around my waist.

“I don’t even care, just as long as I can dance.” I was in a good mood, so I wanted to dance.

“We could always go to the O’Connor one. Watch those doges squirm away every time they see you,” Jason said, smiling in a sadistic way that made me laugh.

“Yeah, but don’t you want to talk to your football buddies?”

“No. I just want to spend the night with you.”

That made me smile. “Well, I think most of my friends are going to the O’Connor one. I want to introduce you.”

“Okay, O’Connor it is,” Jason said, beaming down at me. He had a wide smile that didn’t make his eyes scrunch up. And he had beautiful eyes. A clear, crystal cut blue.


It was my first slow dance. I had never really done much real dancing before. So here I was slow dancing nervously with Jason. It was wonderful.

We had been right to go to the O’Connor Homecoming dance. It was really funny to watch Brianna and her junkies scamper out of the gym when they saw me, and it was really cool to walk in the crowd and get unanimous cheers. Someone even dedicate Video by India Arie to me.

“So, why’d you run away?” Jason asked softly, head on top of mine.

“…I don’t even remember anymore.”

Suddenly I was engulfed in a hug from behind as Jason slipped away from me. My hands flew up to the arms holding me and I realized my mom was there, hugging me like no tomorrow, crying into my back. And then there was a head at my waist, and there was my sister, holding back tears but just barely.

I could see my grandma and my grandpa looking at me in a relieved way, and my sister’s dad was there, smiling at me in the same way. My uncle and his girl friend, soon to be fiancé, my aunt, my uncle… Everyone. Even my grandparents had come from Virginia!

Then I noticed two faces that shouldn’t have been there. Bailey’s parents were looking happily out towards me. I cocked my head to the side, before realization washed over me as Bailey came up from the side to hug me just as tightly as all my other friends had.

The dance floor was silent. I smiled and hugged my mom, my sister, and my best friend. There were more cheers for me, the music started again, and my mom and sister let me go, congratulating me on getting the guy. They smiled at Jason.

But Bailey clung on, and it was only then that I realized she was crying into my shoulder.

“Bailey! I’m here! I didn’t mean to scare you so bad!” I said, hugging her tighter. I was worried. Bailey didn’t cry.

“I thought we were going to lose you forever! It was hard enough losing constant contact with you when I moved to Vegas, but this would have been too much.”

I realized one thing right then: Bailey needed me just as much as I needed her.

“It’s alright. I won’t do anything like that again. We’re so ying yang. We can’t survive without each other.”

Bailey calmed down and sat down, shoveling food into her mouth as she suppressed hiccups, after about a minute more of crying. I smiled. Jason smiled.

The world was right again.
-----

And now, two years later, I’ve proved Brianna wrong by sticking by Jason just as he has me.

The first week back at school after the homecoming (Which wasn’t actually the next week, since my mom let me take a while off to sort out my problems with a professional psychologist), Brianna tried to pull me back into her game, even though everyone could still see the hand shaped bruise on her cheek from the slap I’d given her at the football game (Through three layers of cover up, if you can believe that).

The entire cafeteria ganged up on her and she ended up hiding in the nurse’s office for the rest of the day.

The best part is that she can’t even transfer to a different school to escape us. My story spread through the Arizona school system like fire through dry woods. I’m friends with every one, all senior, juniors, sophomores and freshman. Through that one week of my life, I got my one strongest wish.

That people would know me for who I really am.


THE END








(1)I don’t pay attention to football. If I did it wrong, tell me. I’ll find a way to fix it.

So, how did you like it? I actually thought of doing something like this for a long time. I appreciate flamers, weird I know, and I love critics!! Say whatever you want! Rip it apart! I need all the help I can get!!

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