Running round and round the bases and cones, she was beginning to feel exhausted. She hadn't had a break in God knows how long, and she thought that if she didn't stop soon, she might pass out. She felt like a gladiatorial animal imprisoned by so many chain-linked fences, forced to die at the hands of an evil Roman or work herself to death. Tired did not begin to describe...

Finally, the coach called time. She numbly made her way back into the locker room to change, feeling as though she was being watched, but that was nothing new. She always felt as though she was being watched, even if she was all alone. That was what she got for reading 1984.

The hollowness threatened again. She had been walking around in a daze for the past few weeks, in a permanent dream state. She no longer really felt anything anymore. She reacted the way she thought she should. She floated aimlessly like an empty bubble, searching for meaning that wasn't there.

As she pulled her shirt on over the many scars on her back, girls whispered and tittered. She was used to it. No one had ever seen such strange and ghastly wounds. They couldn't begin to guess where they had come from, and she wasn't about to tell them.

She finished getting dressed without a word, and walked out of the locker room despite the protests from her coach. She didn't care. She could scream at her and she wouldn't stop.

She walked out the door of thr gym, just to run into him. He stopped her, looked at her with glacial green eyes, cold and flawless as gems, yet also just as hard.

"Why won't you talk to me anymore?" His question was whispered. He didn't like talking to her around people because he didn't want them to hear what he had to say. He preferred being alone with her, but she knew what that would lead to, so she didn't do it often.

"I have nothing to say," she answered coldly. She was tired of his bullshit, and she was going to tell him so. "You've strung me along and teased me long enough. I'm tired of being there and caring with no result. I don't want any more of your bullshit."

"My bullshit?" he whispered tensely. "I've told you things that I haven't ever told anyone else. I've trusted you, and you call that bullshit?"

"You're such a liar. You never trusted me. Those things you told me weren't anything but petty nothings, secrets about someone that you can't have. I'm tired of it." When he opened his mouth to speak, she cut him off. "And if you don't like what I have to say, you can go to her. I'm sure she'll welcome you with open arms." She paused. "Oh wait, nevermind, that won't ever happen again, because of what you did to her, the way you violated her. You're such an animal, you can't even control yourself."

He raised his hand as if to strike her, but she didn't flinch. She took this opportunity to hit him as hard as she possibly could. "I'm tired of holding out for you. I love you, but that just doesn't seem to be enough, does it?" His eyes shone like polished rocks from a riverbed at her words. Obviously he hadn't noticed.

I hate you, yet I love you, I hold out for you, I listen to you, I comfort you...but you were never truly there. What is so wrong with me...? Her thoughts were nothing but anger and melancholy. That was simply the way she was nowadays.

As she walked away, she felt like Sylvia Plath in her infamous bell jar, stewing in her own sour air. She looked out of her bell jar at the world around her, and she felt nothing but hate for everyone, at everything that she couldn't have. Normalcy was out of the question. She might as well forget it.

She sat in silence and solitude on the bus ride home. She spoke to no one. She avoided all eye contact.

Her mother met her at the door. "Is there something wrong?" she asks. Yes, everything is wrong, nothing could be more wrong, I want to die it's so wrong. "No," she numbly replies. "I'm only a little tired."

She went and laid on her bed, not wanting to get up for anything in the world. Sweet silence, sweet solitude, that's all she needed. Just let me alone with my darkness. 

And then she was home, alone in her box.