The girl dropped her head down
on the desk, grateful for the
brief rest. She was supposed to be
doing geometry, but as far as the
girl was concerned, survival was
more important. The girl did not sleep
much at her house.
It took hours for her
to fall asleep, and then she
would wake up a few hours
later, shaking and terrified from
another nightmare. The girl’s
nightmares were unusual, in that
they rarely had monsters or
ghosts or things like that in
them. The girl’s nightmares
were fragments of memories
that she tried not to remember.
Sometimes, often, the
girl would wonder why she
even bothered with it all, and
would briefly consider suicide.
But suicide to
the girl seemed like the
coward’s way out, and
although the girl was afraid
of practically everything, she
did not like to consider herself
a coward. Besides, it wasn’t
that she didn’t enjoy living, on
the contrary, the girl loved
life. She loved the way
the sun felt when she
stepped out of the shade. She
loved the way tree-bark
felt, warm and alive.
She loved the way the
ground felt when she stepped on it,
the dirt sinking just a little
beneath her weight. She loved
the way leaves smelled when she
crumpled them in her hands, fresh,
green, alive. Most of all, the
girl loved attention, particularly
from friends, the girl breathed
attention the way
normal people breathe air, she
needed it, and she would do
anything for it. The girl would
have sex with a stranger for
attention. She would rush up to
someone she had never seen
before and ask them outlandish
questions for attention.
Often she even pretended that
she was crazy, psychotic, so that
people would pay attention to
her. Whether the attention was
negative or positive hardly
mattered to her, as long as it
was there. She did not enjoy
being hit, but she would far
rather be slapped than ignored.
It wasn’t that the girl was
spoiled, at least, not completely
spoiled. She was just unsure of
her own existence. She had
to have people reinforcing
her reality, or she would have
trouble believing she was
there. Sometimes the girl
cut herself, she had several
ugly scars from it. She cut
because the pain meant that
she was real, that she existed.
The girl was crazy;
She distrusted her own experience.
