be like that

"And all she wants is just a little piece of this dream. Is that too much to ask?"

The other kids in the hallway were a blur. I'm sure they were looking at me. There I was the, the self-appointed queen of the hallway, ungracefully lurching down the hallway and tripping over my own feet in my rush to get to the girls' bathroom. It was just a few steps away but seemed so far down the hallway. I reached the door just before my last bit of self-preservation failed. I pushed into one of the stalls, ignoring the stares of the freshmen standing in front of the mirrors trying to make themselves look like seniors.

And I let it all out. I wasn't sure which was louder, the rancid retching or the soul-crushing sobs. I was vaguely aware of snickers from the freshmen girls and that I must have been loud enough to hear in the hallway. But the only thing I could really focus on was my own voice echoing in my head. It was like a filmstrip of the past year playing itself out. It was deafening.

There was the first time I saw Katherine. She was sitting by herself in the cafeteria and for a split second I remember thinking that she was almost pretty. I'm not sure if that's what instigated it all, if somehow I felt upset or disgusted by the fact that this girl could have been so pretty if she weren't so damn fat. The second time I saw her was when we christened her Fat Kat. But even know I remember how shocking it was to see the amount of food she consumed during the lunch period.

But the torture didn't really start until the winter semester when she had ended up in two classes with me and some of my friends. We were merciless. We would trip her in the hallways, leave mean notes on her desk, play an elaborate game of keep away with her backpack. And that was the early days, when we were still behaving on a middle school playing field of bullying. The day she finally tried to stand up to us was the day things changed. We were appalled. How dare Fat Kat fight back? We moved from idle bullying to active harassment. Vandalizing her locker. Posting candid pictures of her trying to keep up in P.E. on the internet. Throwing stones at her own the way to and from school.

It must have been hell and we laughed the whole time. In fact this morning, I had a whole new vicious attack lined up for her today. We knew she had been trying to avoid us by walking through the back parking lot onto campus and we fully intended to soak her with power water hose the maintenance staff attached to the lawn sprinklers. Pure genius that was sidetracked the moment Ms. Brown walked into the room.

There were tears running down her face and the fact that a teacher was a crying was enough to silence the entire room. I looked at Fat Kat's empty desk and knew what was coming next. I was standing up in a daze, asking for a pass to the bathroom before Ms. Brown could even finish making the announcement that this morning Katherine's parents had found her with her wrists slit in her bathroom tub. I was trying to make it to the front of the room when I head an quick comment behind me. Some kid's own joke about how she had to cut her wrists because she was too fat to hang herself. Ms. Brown was handing me the wooden pass, and I turned around to lunge at the owner of that voice. I'm not sure what I intended to do but Ms. Brown caught me around the waist before I was able to make contact. I wormed my way out of her grip and practically threw the wooden bathroom pass back at her before seeking refuge in the bathroom.

There was nothing left in me. I continued to dry heave as I sat on the floor beside the toilet. I didn't care if the stupid freshmen girls were running up and down the hallway telling everyone that I was losing it in the bathroom. I didn't care if Ms. Brown sent me to the Principal's office for leaving class without permission and attacking a student. In the grand scheme of things, what did they matter? I had lived the past year as one of the most popular girls in school and had gotten there by slowly killing another person. Nothing mattered more than that.

let me go

"I'm torn between this life I lead and where I stand."

The table may as well have been an ocean between them. Sid and Davey sat quietly in the wooden dining room chairs. Davey silently ran his hand along the cherry finish of the table. Sid sat unmoving with his arms crossed defiantly. Another few tense minutes passed before Sid finally broke the silence.

The scene that came next wasn't pretty. The more they talked, the more the rift grew. And it wasn't as if they didn't try. Sid asked for understanding. He tried over and over again to explain his case. Davey pleaded for compromise, but had to face the reality that there was little left to agree on.

The boys had been friends since the second grade. They had been through everything together. Broken arms, divorce, first loves, and first heartbreaks. They were inseparable. And then one day changed everything.

Sid's older brother died fighting in the war. Sid decided that after graduation, he was joining the army. Despite his youth, Davey was a staunch advocate of piece and had long decried the war. There was little room to negotiate with either of them.

Truth be told, each boy had some understanding for the other's point of view. Each boy was right in a way. And so they argued in a futile attempt to save what they already knew was lost and already missed. In the end, they shook hands as men do when there's nothing left to say. They walked away with sincere well wishes and hollow promises to keep in touch. And the uncomfortable truth that growing up means change.