"Bliss?"

The word, the simple title that represents everything I have ever known and wish I could find, interrupts the hypnotic silence that I find in the promise of these pills. I fall out of my trance and the pills slip from my fingers. Panic buzzes through my skin, enlightening my nerves, as I drop to my knees in a desperate attempt to collect them. As if I can still force them past my lips.

"You selfish bitch!"

The tiles scratch and nip at my knees, but I don't care. My hands trail the rough lines that separate them, before feeling the satisfactory bump beneath my palms, and a grim glee suffocates my lungs. My breath catches as I snatch them, ready to pop them between between my lips and-

Hands grip my arms and the pills fall away from my puckered lips. I yelp, instantly trying to wrench away from whatever is holding me back. But I know. I can see the hands clutching my upper arms, their nails biting into my skin and drawing blood. I don't feel pain. I feel the buzz draining from my body, desperation drowning my senses, and I feel the shriek in my throat as I cry for the only thing that can offer me my identity.

But soon I'm no longer staring at the pills, I'm no longer feeling the tug of hands on my arms. I feel the cool ground, pressing its pattern into my back, warm air falling onto my face in pulses. Breathing. My eyes find hers.

"Grace," I mumble.

Grace's eyes are never the simple blue of the sky or the ocean or rain, they're the type of blue that remind me of old bruises. Fading, but alive.

Her palm flatten against my cheek, hard. My head rolls over, smacking against the ground on the other side, the blow knocking the breath out of me. I can still feel the sting long after the blow. "I fucking hate you."

I wish I can say that Grace is pretty, but that would be a lie. She has tangled blonde hair, twisted into a knotty braid over her hair. Her face is all snow, pale and cold, the architecture of her face too sharp to be attractive. She is wearing torn jeans which make her hips look bigger than I knew them to be, her baggy sweat-shirt claiming love for The Beatles. And she smells. Not like daffodils or daisies, like other girls do, but like smoke. The stinging musk clings to her pores, circulating around her and polluting her demeanor, until she is just another cloud of nastiness staining our world.

I have always been the better one- the pretty one, the smart one;we both know that. I laugh in her face. "You've always hated me."

I can see the tears glimmering between her eyelashes. Her mouth still turns in that angry jut and I can see the indent on her cheek where she is biting the inside. She shakes her head. "I've loved you, but like a sailor loves a siren. You enchanted me. But everything you touch turns into a tragedy."

The first wave of anger bursts through my heart in furious beats, pumping the zealous ferocity throughout my body. I can feel it consuming me. "Like what? You know nothing about me."

"You act like you're so much better than me, but you and I are one and the same." One of those tears fall down her cheek, though. "You might look prettier on the outside, but you're just as rotten on the inside."

"I'm nothing like you." I spit. "I'm like a fucking copy of Vogue. And what are you? A shitty, torn up copy of Peter Pan from a thrift shop, because you're so fucking childish."

"I'm the childish one?" She demands. "You can't even give me one thing! You think you are so perfect, Bliss, but you're a bitch. A mean girl. And you know it. Why else would you be taking those pills, my pills, then to forget yourself?"

"Your pills?" I deadpan. "Since when have you been taking antidepressants?"

"Why would you care?" Another tear. "When have you ever fucking cared about what happened to me? Your life has only ever been about Bliss Riordon."

"Grace . . . "

"Stop," she snaps. "Call me names and hit me, but don't you dare try to pity me. Don't try to pretend that you care about me, Bliss."

"You're my sister-"

"Family doesn't mean anything," she screams, her eyes becoming large marks of abuse. "Blood doesn't connect us. Why do you think I keep my pills here, at a stranger's house? Because you don't understand. You and Mom and Dad are all as thick as thieves, like the villains that you are, and then there's me. I've always been the outsider."

"What did I ever do to you?" I murmur. "When did I become this shadow in your life?"

"Don't have the audacity to say you don't know," she snap.

"I don't, Grace, really-"

The pressure lifts from my stomach, abruptly, causing me to suck in a much needed breath. Grace spares me one venomous glance. "Just get the fuck away from me."

It takes me a moment to realize that she wants me to leave. I rise from my back to my legs, wobbling due to the adjustment they rapidly have to experience from the removal of Grace's weight from them.

She kneels down on the ground and I know she is trying to scavenge them together. I know moments ago I was that girl on the ground, scavenging those clouds, which could elevate me to heaven. But as I gaze on Grace now, I know there is no more pitiful creature than her.

*

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Notice: Sorry for taking so long to update, I've just been busily writing a project offline and forgot to update :P

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