In My Hands(alyssa) Everyone’s laughing, pointing, staring, and calling me names. I walk through the hall with my head down, hiding my face behind my long strait black hair. This has been happening for weeks now, ever since that night, the night when my life fell apart. I get to my locker, put my books away, and shut it as softly as possible; trying not to make a sound. I lean my head against my locker and try not to cry. When I finally pull myself together I walk down the hall trying to find my best friend, Sophie.

We’ve know each other for basically our whole lives. We met on the first day of preschool. My aunt walked me up to the teacher, introduced me to her, and left.

My aunt got custody of me when I was three after my parents died in a car crash. At the time we lived in Georgia, but when I was four my aunt took a job up in Indiana. She thought it was her dream job but, as it turned out it wasn’t. She worked there for six months before she quit to work in a little family owned dinner.

After she left, I just stood there clinging to the teacher’s leg staring after her. She unlocked my fingers from her pant legs, crouched down and said, “Hi there little one I’m miss. Hallwollow, what’s your name?”

“Annie” I said in a tentative voice “Where’d Auntie go? I don’t want to stay here!”

She gave me a pitying look and said “Honey, she went home. You’re gonna stay here with your class mates and have fun.”

At this point I start to cry so, she takes my hand and leads me over to a table where kids are playing and walks away. I stand there staring at the kids playing. They all ignore me except one, a girl that’s even shorter than me, with bright red hair cut in a short pixie cut. She stops, stairs back at me and says in a bright cherry voice, “Hi, I’m Sophie, I like you. I can tell we’re gonna be best friends.” She was right; we’ve been inseparable since then.

I finally find Sophie hanging out in the English area, reading as usual. I pull out the home work I didn’t do last night and start working on it. As soon as I finish it the bell rings signaling the beginning of classes. I don’t have any classes with Sophie so we wave to each other and head to class. I keep my head down in the hall as usual on my way to math. When I get to class I find a seat in the last row in the corner of the room. I put my head down and try to go back to sleep but I can’t get her words out of my head. They keep ringing like a bell loud and clear, “Did you hear what she did?” “I heard she was lying.” “I heard that’s not all she did.” All their words getting louder and louder in my head; until finally my teacher starts doing roll call. When she gets to my name there are quiet mutterings from most of the class. Ignoring them I called that I was here and put my head back down. When class was finally over, I was the last to leave. This is how the rest of the day went, as it had been for weeks now, ever since that night.

After school I look for Sophie, but she’s no where to be seen so I start walking home by my self. A few months back if you had told me I would be waking home by myself everyday I would have said you were nuts but, here lately it’s been happening more and more. As I start walking down the street a car comes up behind me and slows down. The driver of the car pulls up beside me and the passenger window rolls down but, I can’t see who the driver is. “You’re a nasty piece of work you know that?”

As soon as he says it I know who it is, it’s Damian. I start walking a little bit faster but he just speeds up and keeps following me. “You couldn’t have kept your big mouth shut, you little twig? No one would have had to know what happened that night but you just had to open your big fat mouth. Lucky for you I was able to cover for myself or your life would really have been hell, I would have made sure of it.”

“I don’t want to talk to you.” I say in a squeaky voice, “I told the truth about what happened. You did everything and you know I didn’t want to, so why did you make me? Then when I did tell people about it you turned it back on me. I hate you and I hope you burn for what you did.”

Rolling up his window and revving the motor he said, “Ya, we’ll see about that.”

I stopped and watched him fly down the street for a moment then kept slowly walking home. All I wanted to do was cry, no one believed me. They had no reason not to but yet they didn’t. They chose his side over mine. “And why shouldn’t they?” I asked myself. “He’s smart and popular. I’m just a nobody who never turns in homework.” I keep walking fighting back tears.

When I finally get home the house is empty as I expected it usually is. It’s Friday so Auntie is probably out with her new boyfriend, Jeff, by now. I go into the living room and flip on the t.v and watch it till I fall asleep. When I wake up the windows are dark and the street lights are on, I look at my phone and see I have three missed calls, one from Sophie, one I don’t recognize and one from Auntie. I listen to the message from Auntie first, “Hey Annie, I got off work early at the dinner but I won’t be home tonight. Jeff wanted to take me to dinner and a movie, then if the night goes well I’m staying with him tonight. I’ll be back sometime tomorrow. Make sure you eat something tonight. See you tomorrow.”

I look over at the big clock on the wall and see it’s getting close to midnight. Realizing the last time I ate was yesterday morning when Auntie made me, I walk into the kitchen and fix me a bowl of romen noodles in the microwave. When the timer beeps I open the door and almost gag, holding my breath I take the bowl to the sink and dump it down the garbage disposal.

Deciding I’ll be fine till later I grab my jacket and bag and head out into the night, locking the door behind me. I walk down the street and feel almost instantly calmer, I love being out at this time of night. There’s almost no car’s on the road and no one in the streets, no one to stair at me, no one to point and whisper behind their hands about me. This is the best time to be out. I keep walking till I get to the edge of town; then I start heading east, into the more run down part of town, till I get to the building I’m looking for.

The old movie theater is where I come in the middle of the night, when I’m sick of sitting in the empty apartment, or when I just want to get away. Sophie and I discovered it about three years ago and claimed it as ours. We used to come here on a daily basis and pretend that it was up and running. We would deal with angry or mean customers and have crazy adventures. That changed last year when we got to high school; suddenly Sophie didn’t want to come here anymore. She said it was lame to hang out in an old dusty shack all afternoon; she’s rather be at the mall with everyone else, so I started coming here by myself.

I move the board hiding the hole where a window used to be and climb through. This is home, I think to myself. I take the flash light from my bag and make my way to the theater in the back of the house; this is where we spent most of our time. I sit down one of the few chairs still remaining, put my head back and feel myself start to drift off.

A half hour later I wake with a start when a drop of water falls on my head; it had started to rain outside. I pull out my phone to see what time it is and realize I never listened to the other two messages back at the house. I dial voice mail and tell it to play unheard messages.

The second I hear the voice I want to shut the phone but, I can’t. It’s one of the girls from school; I don’t know who but, it doesn’t really matter. The girl on the phone is shouting, she sounds drunk, “You listen to me you little backstabbing, boyfriend stealing, anorexic whore. You chose the wrong man to go after and now you’re gonna pay for it. Monday you had better watch your back cuz you’re gonna get it.” Throughout the whole message I can hear people yelling in the background, supporting her.

When the message is over I just stair at the phone, hearing the rain pounding down on the roof, this is the first time I’ve had a threat. I’ve been call every name in the book and then some, but not this. This is worse. Not bothering to delete the first message I go on to the second. If I was hoping this would cheer me up, I was dead wrong. “Hey Ann, sorry I wasn’t there to walk home with you today. I was going to talk to you in person but I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. I don’t think I should hang out with you anymore. I heard about what happened with Damian at the party a few weeks back, I kept waiting to hear it from you what really happened, but you never said a word. I couldn’t believe what the girls at school where saying but, every time I tried to talk about the party you changed the subject. I can’t believe you wouldn’t tell me about it, whatever it was that happened.

If you thought you could keep something like this from me and still be my friend you were wrong. You’ve been lying to me for weeks now and I’m not taking it anymore, if you don’t want to talk about it that’s fine. I just don’t think I’ll be able to trust you anymore.

I really am sorry about all this, we’ve been for so long, and told each other so much. I thought we would be friends for the rest of our lives but I guess I was wrong too.” Then she just hung up. By the end of the message she was crying and so was I.

I just let the tears fall. I sit there thinking about everything, all the nasty names I’ve been called over the last few weeks and through-out my life, my parents funeral, moving in with my aunt, and every other thing that’s happened in my life. It’s right then that I make my decision. I can take no more. I want out.

I dig in my bag for a pen and paper, when I finally find them I write,

“To Auntie,
I’m sorry. Sorry for everything I did and everything they said I did. Please don’t blame yourself. You did everything right. This is my fault. You where an amazing aunt and parent. I just can’t deal with this any more, I’m tired of cry, tired of fighting. Just remember that I love you, even if I didn’t say it enough.
With love,
Annie May”

I walk to the cabinet next to the screen, open it, and pull out the gun I bought six months ago off a man on the street. I think about all I’m leaving behind, all the people and things. I won’t miss any of it, I think, this is how low I’ve sunk, how low they’ve pushed me. This is goodbye.

There’s a flash of lightning out the window. I put the gun to my head, close my eyes and think of my parents as I slowly pull the trigger. The thunder booms as I pull the trigger masking the sound.

A flash of light, a blinding pain, and then finally at last…blissful peace.

THE END

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