"can the lonely take the place of you"

...

I can't breathe.

Whenever I take a breath, air rushes to my lungs but I still can't breathe.

Everything's in pieces and it's all crumbling. Victoria still ignores me when she can, occasionally talking to me but not like we used to.

We're not best friends anymore. We're not even friends. What are we, then? Acquaintances? No. We're just strangers with a history, strangers that hurt each other in the way only best friends can.

All I can do is go along with it, and pretend we're just classmates. If I don't, I might hurt her even more. And she deserves so much more than me. All I do is destroy and destroy, and no matter how much I try to create with my art and try to repair all the broken friendships, I only destroy. I was never born to be a giver, to be someone who can heal and be kind. I was always born to be a destroyer, a hurter. No matter how much I try to change my true nature, it never works.

I know Victoria better than anyone else does, better than I know anyone else. But I don't know how to mend this without sucking her back into my spiral. I know her favorite color, and the song she knows all the words to, and that she likes Twilight, which I don't get but still support her in. And I know all her secrets and dreams and how to make her laugh even when she's so sad she can't say a word. But I don't know what to do now.

Everything's adding up. It's like I'm on a scale, and on one end is everything horrible building up, while the other is everything I'm doing to counteract all the horrible things. I've been doing my best to keep it balanced all this time, but eventually it's going to tip to the side of all the negatives. I'm running out of positives, and the negatives keep going and going. 

All it takes is a little more. It's everything at once, and while it's only little things, there's just too much. A little more and I'll crash and burn. 

"Hazel?"

I jerk my head up, only to smash it into my open locker. "Shit." I blink a few times until my vision goes back to normal. Today isn't a good day. 

"Hazel! Are you okay?" It's Sera. 

"Yeah. Yeah. I'm fine. Everything's fine." I let out a short laugh. 

"Hazel?" she asks. "What's going on? Are you feeling okay?"

I laugh again. Everything seems hilarious right now. "Yeah. I'm okay. Totally okay. Never been better, actually!" I can't help but laugh. I don't know what's going on, but there's no stopping it. I'm falling to pieces, but yeah, I'm absolutely fantastic. 

"Are you drunk?" Sera asks incredulously. "Hazel, seriously---"

I laugh again, but this time it's actually justified. "Sera, seriously. You know me. I don't drink. Maybe it would be better if I did." It's true. I never drink. 

"Then what's going on?"

"Nothing. Everything. I don't know." I sit back and sigh. "It's just everything at once. But it's nothing at the same time, too. I don't know." It feels so good to finally tell someone this. I've just kept it all in forever, until it all overflowed. Now I'm an overflowing sink, flooding everything. 

"I'm sorry." The two words fall out of her mouth, filling the emptiness. They don't really mean anything, and we both know that. But the fact that she cares enough to say anything means more than she knows. 

"It's okay. I'll be okay," I lie. 

...

I'm not okay. 

It's been two periods later, and my head is still aching, and I still can't breathe. I miss Victoria so much it actually hurts. There's a Victoria-shaped imprint next to me, only empty space where there used to be happiness. 

I go to my locker after chemistry, feeling like I'm about to explode. The urge to bite down on my tongue is almost unbearable, but I refuse to do it. I'm trying to be better, and I know that I can't fight pain with more pain. 

Ever since all the crying last night, I've been on the verge of crying constantly. It's like I'm going to cry forever now to make up for all the years of tears held back. 

My locker doesn't open. Frowning, I put in my combination again. It still doesn't work. 

I close my eyes and step back for a second. I need to calm down and not freak out. My locker isn't opening. It's not the end of the world. 

I try to open it a third time, pulling harder. This time it opens, and my stuff tumbles out of it. It's a complete mess. Someone messed with my locker. It's covered in something sticky, probably apple juice. That's why it wouldn't open. 

I swallow. 

A single pink sticky note flutters to the ground. I pick it up. 

you're the worst. so much for all those years of friendship. i hate u. 

- a. r. /

The tears fall. I stare at the note, too shocked to do anything else. I can't breathe. I really can't breathe. I cover my mouth with my hand, trying in vain to hold back the sobs. I can't believe this. There's no way. But there's no denying the obvious. 

I know who sent the note. It can only be one person, only one person who would use those initials and that little slash at the end. 

It's the one person I thought would never do anything as petty as this, the one person who can destroy me with a single note. 

a. r. It stands for Aurelia Rivera. But that's not her real name.

It's the pen name she used when we wrote that book together, the one we never finished. After that, she always signed notes to me that way. 

"That way no one can forge notes claiming to be me," she said. "No one else knows that name." 

Only two people in the world know that name. Me, and Victoria.