• She stumbled up the stair case, tripping over each step. Her hair is a mess and her eyes a burnt red. How could her friends let her get to this point? The room turned with her stomach as she walked by her parent’s bedroom. The fight from last night played in her head. Sleep had been hard last night so she went out to loosen up. She walked through the doorway to her bedroom. How did I get here? She would ask herself in the morning, but not now. Now she was alive, too far gone for anyone to care. She grabbed a picture of last year. The smiling faces haunted her, everything was so much better then. The picture fell in one motion, as did she. The room tumbled and dropped. She laughed at the lights dancing before her eyes, but they would soon disappear. She dreamt of the night. They were loud; too loud for any person to ever be. IHATE YOU! She remembered screaming to her parents as the door slammed behind her. Take me away! She closed the phone and ran. The music was drowning everything out, as it should have. Drinks were being handed to her in cheap, red plastic cups from the grocery store around the corner. She drank and drank until every word being thrown at her was one slur right after the other. They wanted to know what happened. They were curious as to why a girl like her would be at a party like this. HA! She could barely understand the words before they left her lips. They all looked in sadness at her, but she laughed it off with another drink of God knows what. The booming of the music softened as the party grew smaller and smaller until there were only a few people left with the aftermath of plastic cups and the result of too much drinking. She woke up on the couch next to a stranger. She remembered his face from the few that sat around her and listened to her gibberish. She stood and vomited out every last content of her stomach. With a quiet sorry she walked out and continued home. Walking home, or stumbling, is a task all on its own. Returning us to our opening scene of a girl too young to understand her own actions sprawled out in the glass of a broken memory. Morning came as did the police and an ambulance. The girl’s mother and father were holding each other tangled in confusion and sorrow. She walked down the stair case wearing her favorite night gown. How it had gotten on her was a question she wouldn’t ask just yet. What had caused her parents such grief? Had a neighbor died? She asked them countless times until she realized they were ignoring her. She shouted an apology but when neither of them turned to see her, she lashed out and began to hit. Her hits were futile, nothing fazed them. She walked past them to the white sheet covering a small body. Should she peek? No one would notice: They were all too busy talking to her parents and questioning the neighbors. She lifted the small white sheet and cried out. No one looked. She screamed louder and louder. The body under the sheet had messy hair and vomit over her mouth. Glass clung to parts of her face and stuck to her hair. She was far too drunk last night to notice the deep cut on her wrist from the broken glass.