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story.
    I really should get to sleep.
     
     

Chapter Twenty
     
    Wednesday is a bad day, filled with bad classes and bad things. Leanne is bitchy to me. Karen is too busy talking to Hannah about appropriately obscure music to notice. Sarah won’t shut up about her stupid band. Even Fiona’s boredom with hearing about the band is annoying me. I’m just in a disagreeable mood.
    Caroline is out, so I have no one to cook with in the afternoon. Chocolate brownies are easier with two people than one, especially when the one is a hopeless cook who usually forgets to even turn on the oven.
    My head hurts.
    I can’t wait to get home.
    Everything bores me. TV is boring. Reading is boring. Texting people is boring. Music is boring. And I would write, but I can’t , because I have nothing to say that doesn’t sound pathetic and petty and pointless.
    No one really cares what a sixteen-year-old thinks or feels, anyway.
    I’m bored. Plain and simple.
    Into the kitchen. Boil kettle for cup of tea in the hope that the caffeine will cure my headache without me having to resort to tablets with that taste that lingers in your mouth all day.
    I take out a knife. It’s sharp against my flesh. I only drag it lightly across my arm a couple of times, but it breaks the skin, leaving lines of blood.
    I press a tissue against the cuts. They’re not too bad. They’ll be fine in a couple of weeks.
    You told yourself you were going to stop doing it.
    I know. But this is the last time. I promise.
    Last time was also the last time, Abi.
    Oh, get lost, inner child or conscience or whatever you are.
    Outside, the sun begins to shine, the light flooding into the kitchen via the window.
    Stupid me. It’s getting hot outside and I’m stuck in long sleeves for the next week, at least. Stupid, stupid, stupid.
     
     

Chapter Twenty-One
     
    It’s two in the morning. I can’t sleep, so, naturally, I am downstairs, on the computer.
C:\My Documents\Abi\Poems.doc
    Now I know why all those poets went crazy or turned to alcohol. It’s the words. You spend so much time looking for the right one, and then you look back over it a few days later, a few weeks later, and it’s just not good enough. It doesn’t work. It sounds stupid or pretentious or inappropriate. It’s wrong. You’re wrong.
    I really should find a nice, non-frustrating occupation to throw myself into. Something that won’t cause me to constantly doubt my ability at it.
    Maybe I’m just one of those people who subconsciously puts themselves into situations where they’ll feel miserable because it’s safer than developing as a person and taking the risk of being happy.
    Maybe I just like to write.
    Maybe it’s the same thing.
    I trace a finger along the marks on my arm. Three thin lines. Not much. If you look closely, you can see faint dark pink lines criss-crossing underneath.
    Why do you do it, you want to know.
    Sometimes I really don’t know. Sometimes I do it just because I can.
     
     

Chapter Twenty-Two
     
    On Thursday we have a trip to a synagogue, in the hope that exposure to religions other than Catholicism will leave us enlightened and tolerant. It’s really too bad that our religion teacher isn’t coming along. She could use some enlightenment, seeing as she’s about as tolerant as Hitler at the moment. (“Let’s all be tolerant, girls, but only if people conform to what the Catholic church wants.”)
    Karen is moaning about having to go. She knows it’ll be boring.
    “I think it’ll be really interesting, actually,” says Rebecca The Annoying Optimist. Rebecca, unsurprisingly, loves Transition Year, which seems to entitle her to lecture anyone who doesn’t share her view. She doesn’t seem to understand the idea of “agreeing to disagree”. She thinks that she’s the most rational, sensible person in the world, and that if she talks at you for long enough you’ll come around to her way of thinking.
    I’m not terribly enthusiastic about the afternoon