Penny looked down at the person she’d just pushed. She’d done it on purpose, really. Her stormy hazel eyes glinted in the school building’s harsh lights as she attempted to discern who it was she’d hurt this time. The people tended to blend together nowadays. The first time she’d hurt another person was an accident. Kind of. The person had pulled her silky black hair, and she just snapped. After she’d hit that first person, started to see their tears instead of her own, she felt better about everything. She had started to use this violence as a form of escapism, just trying to run away from her problems. And now, as she looked down, finally able to tell who she’d hurt, she had realized that she had gone too far. She had gone and hurt the one person who still called her a friend. So she reared back, punched the nearest person, and walked out of the school building without looking back. She didn’t care anymore whether she’d get in trouble for it. Nobody came after her.

 
     After leaving the building, she started to blink tears out of her eyes. She didn’t really care where she went anymore. She heard and felt her phone buzz in her pocket, bringing her slightly back to reality. She checked and realized it was a text from her only friend. She got hopeful, because maybe Ashlynn wasn’t all that mad. Right? She opened the text and her world shattered around her, feeling like a thousand tiny pieces of glass rained from the sky.

  

   
     And the tears started falling. No. This wasn’t allowed. Penelope Alexandria did not cry. She threw her phone, delighting in the sound of the fresh crack on the screen. She realized she no longer had any friends. So she walked towards home. Neither of her parents would be there, she hoped. When she got to her house, however, she saw that luck still hated her. Her dad was home. Well, at least it wasn’t her mother.

    
     “Dad?” she called softly as she walked in. Maybe he was asleep. When she heard no reply, she silently rejoiced. She then walked as softly as possible to her room, shutting the door behind her and trapping her with her thoughts.

  
     She started to wonder where she had gone wrong. She had never really had any friends, so she hadn’t just fallen in with the wrong crowd. She noticed that she had started all this fighting roughly around the time her parents screamed at each other for the first time. Tears yet again began to coat her face as she realized she should have just talked to somebody about it. Somebody who may have understood. If only she’d been able to muster up enough faith in humanity to break out of her stupid shell.

   
     She looked at the mirror in front of her and noticed the eyeliner she always wore so thick was in very Black Parade worthy streaks down her face. She balled her hand up in a tight fist as her reflection glared back at her with gleaming dark eyes full of hatred. She pulled back her fist and punched the mirror as hard as she could, watching her face shatter into a million tiny pieces that seemed to be the same size as the fragments left of the world around her. She felt only detachment as these pieces that so much resembled the shattered remnants of her world fell like a soft snow around her. All she could hear, over and over, was the shatter of the mirror that had just been in front of her. All she could see was her own eyes, glaring back at her full of hatred. She could smell the tang of blood in the air. This blood proved she was still alive, still in a body at the very least. She calmly walked to the bathroom, avoiding looking at the mirror altogether, to stop the ruby droplets from falling to the ground in a red rainstorm.

  
     Her dad had stirred from his sleep when he had heard the mirror shatter. He came to the bathroom he knew Penny would be hiding in, it was where she always went to hide. Especially when her parents would fight. He walked in.

 
     “Clean up the glass in your room. And the blood. God, how much of it did you lose? And why did I get a call while I was trying to sleep that you hurt somebody again and just walked out?” He stated all of this in his most detached tone, coldly, dryly.

 
     “You got a call because that’s exactly what I did. And that’s what’s the matter here? ‘How much blood did you lose,’ Dad? You know, I just drew back and punched my own reflection in the mirror. Why do you not even care?” He growled at her questions.

  
     “Just do what I said.” He ordered before going right back to sleep. She didn’t, of course.

 
     What she did do was push the door out of her way and walk back to her room. She stepped on some of the glass that had fallen from the mirror, but since she had yet to take off her shoes, she couldn’t feel it. She only heard the crunch of the glass as she walked over to her bed. She sat on the edge and looked at the destruction around her, the horror movie carnage that only somewhat resembled her room. She tried to remember how it was before she’d changed, before she started hurting all those other people.

 
     She could only just feel that happy feeling at the edge of her mind, so close but not quite reachable. If she could just reach a bit farther…

  
     No. She had taught herself to lose herself in the present for a reason. Remembering when she was happy wouldn’t help her. It’d only make it worse. Tears fell down her face again and she stood up abruptly. She realized she may never be happy again all of a sudden, a flashing epiphany of hatred. She started to throw away everything she’d taught herself, every single thing that made it easier to just be.

   
     She paced the room, hearing but not quite the crunch of the mirror beneath her feet. She tried to pinpoint a way to make it better. She walked over to her desk, and sat down in that soft chair in front of her computer, the one she had spent so much time in. She began to type.

    
     With that, she left the document open on her computer and began to pack a few things. She grabbed her suitcase and stuffed it full of clothes she liked too much to leave behind. She dug through one specific drawer in her dresser until she found her secret stash of money, and she grabbed that too. She walked to the bathroom and looked into the mirror one last time. She wiped off the eyeliner streaks, and blinked a few times. This was the same reflection that had stared her in the face with such hatred just twenty minutes before, yet now those hazel eyes had lightened some, and the only expression evident was resolution. She knew what had to be done. She fixed her hair up so that she’d look a little less manic.

    
     She looked almost normal now. She reached under the sink, and grabbed gauze. She wrapped up her hand to better to stop the slow oozing of red. Then she looked back up.

   
     “Look. I know we’ve had our differences. But you’re me. And all I need right now is some strong backup. Backup only I can get from myself.” She told her reflection resolutely. Then she grabbed her suitcase and her money and she walked out of the house without a backwards glance.

   
     About an hour later she reached the Greyhound station. She grabbed a bus to the city that sounded most interesting, Phoenix, AZ. She took a seat close to the back, and settled in for what she knew would be a long journey she’d never turn back from. For the first time in a long time, she felt confident about what was ahead.

   
     What she didn’t see was back at her house, her parents crying and blaming themselves and trying to call the phone that she’d left cracked on the pavement by the school building. She didn’t see the mourning on their faces as they realized they may never know where she had gone. And what she didn’t see at all was the sorrow about losing their only child.
     She focused herself on the present moment after all. She saw only the journey ahead.

Seven Years

By: Julia Robb

I finally decided to tell people how you treat me.
You aren’t getting away with this anymore. Find other
ways to escape the world around you, because I’m just not
going to be there for you to push around anymore.

Mother, Father
Don’t think this is about you. It isn’t. I can’t deal with
all this hatred of myself anymore. All I can see in this house
is reminders of the happy person I used to be, and I just can’t
be her anymore. I’ve tried so hard, to ignore all this irrational
bitterness I feel toward the world. I can’t do it anymore. I’m
leaving. I’m leaving home in about five minutes, and I don’t
think I’ll be coming back. I guess this is goodbye.         

                                              ~Penny