The thing about life is that nothing is guaranteed. That is, nothing in this life is promised to us. Happiness is, sadly, among the list of things that life cannot promise you. No one can promise you happiness. Anyone who tells you otherwise is a liar. And, sitting alone in my room, Stacie's journal open in front of me, I realized that change isn't promised either. Because the thing you're running from can and will find you again.

Honestly, I didn't know what was worse. I didn't know if the words written in the journal were the worst thing, or the fact that my heart was beating a million miles in my chest while trying to uncover the emotions that were lying dormant inside my heart. I knew that I couldn't go through with it. The vile things Stacie wanted me to do, I would never be able to go through with. The thing was, I didn't want to let her have leverage over me. After all the time she left me alone, let me hang with other people, I knew she had something in store for me. I had to have known that she wouldn't let me get off the hook that easily. And I had to have known that she would follow through with her threats.

She would reveal my secret to the whole school, but that didn't scare me anymore. That didn't scare me as much as ruining the people that I had come to love. I really love them. August, Kalilaand Janessa. I loved all of them like they were my family. With August, it was like something else. It was like he just got me in the way that no one else did before. It was like a breath of fresh air on a stormy night. And when we went to watch the airplanes, I knew I should've just told him my secret. I knew that I should've just looked him in the eye and told him what he told me. And what did he tell me? The secret that had been haunting him day in and day out for weeks on end. And I should've told him mine. Because it wasn't like I actually killed him.

Oh my God. My thought process was changing swiftly. A year ago, I would've thought that I killed him. Stacy and Nina had forced me to believe that it was my fault that he was dead, not his own. Not an accident. They had completely changed my thought process, but I had managed to reverse the damage. Maybe therapy was actually working. Maybe I wanted to go back again, although talking to someone else about your problems seemd stupid. It seems stupid to talk about my anxiety as if it's a real thing that can actually hurt me. It's weird to talk about the thoughts inside my head like someone can actually change them. But the thing was, I could change them. And it wasn't just therapy. It was meeting people in my life that actually wanted to change it. It was talking to people for the first time in over a year that didn't have it in for me. And that's when I realized, Stacey couldn't own me anymore. I couldn't let her own me anymore. What was written in the notebook, I knew that I couldn't do it.

I knew who I needed to talk to. There was only one person left that I could talk to. I knew it was Nelson, because he was stuck in the house and he had to listen to me. I could talk to Dad, but I couldn't burden him with this. Not now when he was already working overtime and trying his best to be a single parent. Nelson, he knew Stacy's tactics. He knew who she was inside and out, and he knew how vile and evil she could be. This is why I knew I had to talk to him, I had a reason with him. I had to get my brother back, because I missed how close we were after I finally opened up to him. I knew that as siblings, we would never be the best of friends, but we could ban together and ruin someone else's life. Stacey's life, the life that I knew I had to ruin before she ruined anyone else's. And as much as I hated being a vindictive person, so was she.

I knew I couldn't do it alone, and I didn't want to be this person anymore. I knew I didn't want to let the terrible thoughts in my head determine every single step I made. In order to make my life better, I had to bring the people I loved back into it. That was the only way to bring myself some semblance of happiness. Because I wasn't happy. I really wasn't. But I could make myself happy, and I could fight the anxiety.

I ran out of my room. Not really ran, but definitely picked up the pace. I went and knocked on his door. Quiet. It was too quiet, because usually he had music blasting through his speakers, and I always told him to turn it off. I missed that. I missed that because that's when we were talking, and not doing the dance trying to avoid each other so we didn't have to make eye contact.

"Nelson?"I asked the door. "Are you in there? I know I'm the last voice you wanna hear right now, but I really need to speak to you. I need to speak to you before I lose my nerve."

No response. I tried the handle, but the door was locked. "Nelson, if you do not open the door, I will get dad!" I heard some shuffling on the other end, and the door open to reveal my disheveled brother. There was a girl behind him, and I recognize her as girlfriend of his best friend that he had kissed.

I looker between the two of them, and I looked the girl dead in the eye. I think she got the hint, because she went to grab her top, which was missing. She was out of my line of sight before I grabbed brother's arm and dragged him into the hallway.

I had no time for games. In fact, I was done playing games. Because my whole life for the past year had been a game, and I was done being a player of this game. I was just a pawn in this game. It was like the stupid video games Nelson always played and I made fun of him for. Someone was controlling me, and I was just a puppet in this world that someone else has created. Only, I wished it were fiction. I really wished that it was fiction, because then I wouldn't feel the pain I had been feeling all this time. There wouldn't be the pressure inside my chest wanting to rip it open, for my heart to leap out and dance off into the night, or to explode like fireworks. I wouldn't want to cry myself to sleep every night, I wouldn't have anxiety attacks in the bathroom stalls just because I couldn't stand up for myself. I was a mess, and it was pitiful. I would admit that.

"Nelson, I need your help. I need your help to ruin Stacey. Maybe not to ruin her, but just to take my life back. Because this isn't my life anymore. I'm a wreck and this isn't my life anymore. I did need you to help me." Tears ran down my face rapidly, and I ran back to my room without a word. I could hear him yelling after me, but I had to grab that notebook. I had to make him understand. I had to have physical evidence to make him see, to make him understand, to make him want to help me. Because maybe my word wasn't good enough anymore. I seemed to have a disadvantage with words at this point.

I reached my room, grabbed the notebook off my bed, and went back out into the hallway. Nelson met me at my door frame and snatched the notebook right out of my hands. I was crying too hard to speak. I felt all too pathetic. I knew that this needed to stop. I needed to stop crying all the time. I needed to stop feeling sorry for myself when all I was doing was hurting others half the time. There was no room for others to pity me. But here I was.

Nel flipped through the journal, and I saw that girl peek her head out of his room.

"Nelson?" she asked, "What the hell is going on?"

Nelson sighed and turned to her. " I need to take care of my sister right now, we can talk later, okay ? I'll meet you at the diner in a few?"

She nodded and scurried away. I couldn't help but notice the flush on her cheeks and how disheveled her hair was. I really didn't wanna know what my younger brother was doing in that room, but as his sister, I had some curiosity. I just hoped that he was being safe, and this girl wasn't gonna crush him. Because if there was anyone who knew about being crushed and having your heart ripped out of your chest, even by acquaintances, it was me. Pitiful, I knew. I just couldn't help it. I always thought the worst, and the fact that him and this girl were involved in that scandal didn't help matters.

"So she really wants you to do this? "He asked.

I let out a sigh and scooted back away from him, trying to wipe my tears away. "Yeah, she really does. And I really know that she's not joking this time. Because she doesn't joke around about stuff like this. She just fights you, and pushes you to the edge, and beats you down to just do whatever she wants." I didn"t think I'd ever stop crying at this rate. There was no end to the cascade of tears pouring down my face. I was a mess, and I couldn't help it. I couldn't help the fact that I was a mess, and I couldn't do anything to make myself better. I couldn't better myself.

Nelson looked at me. " You know what you need to do, right?" I looked at him. I thought I might know what he meant, but I wasn't sure. I wasn't sure, because I wasn't sure that I could do what had to be done.

" What do you mean? Do you mean what I think you're saying? Because you know that I can't. You know that I can't now."

He looked at me dead in the eyes, his expression not wavering. "You know exactly what needs to be done, but you don't wanna do it. I'm not the reason we had the whole fight, Kiley. The whole reason we fought was because you're too much of a coward to do what needed to be done. And you let other people suffer for it. That's why I couldn't defend you. That's why I couldn't defend you anymore, but you're still my sister. And there's still time to make things right, but I didn't want to talk to you because I knew that you don't want to do it. You haven't wanted to do it for a year. It's almost like you've chosen not to be better. Because the past year, you haven't been my sister. You haven't been to Kiley that I've known my whole life. It was nice at first to kind of bond with you, to share your big dark secret that you could tell dad and not me. But now, I'm not playing games anymore. I don't want to be the little brother that you leave out of everything. And I don't want you to be the older sister that sets a bad example because she can't own up to something. Because it wasn't even your fault right? He was at fault. He was the one that deserved to fall down the stairs, and Stacie is the woman who deserves to rot. Stacie is the one that deserves to be crying right now, not you. But you're doing this to yourself. You're allowing yourself to feel this way, and you're not doing anything about it. So you can sit there and cry about it Kikey , or you can let me help you. You can let me tell you what you need to do, because we both know what you need to do."

I stared at him for a long time. The tears finally stopped falling, and I swiped my hand under my eyes. My whole body was shaking, and I wrapped my arms around myself. I had to lean back on the wall of the hallway for support. I couldn't breathe. It sounded like his voice got farther and farther away, and became more of an echo than a voice. I feel like my chest was constricting, like my lungs were burning and on fire and they no longer worked as a human's should. I felt like my body was shriveling up inside of itself and trying not to exist anymore. My breaths were coming out raspy, and my mind was foggy. I knew I was having a panic attack. My breathing quickened, I couldn't do anything to stop it as more tears slid down my face. I didn't think I had cried that much for a long time. It kind of feel good to let it out, but I hated the panic associated with it. A voice in my head was hoping to run far far away from all of my problems, and I couldn't handle it anymore. I couldn't do it anymore, nothing I ever did would be good enough again. I knew the thoughts in my head weren't always true, but my mind told me what it wanted to.

. My mind was sick and had to acknowledge that. My mind was sick, and it wouldn't let me do what I knew needed to be done. So as I tried to throw the panic aside, as I tried to ignore it, I said, " I don't know if I can. Is there anyway you can help me? What do I do?"

Nelson sighed. "You know what you need to do. The truth will set you free, and I can't do that for you. You're the only person who can set yourself free."

I stared at him for a long while. I didn't know what to say. My lips were devoid of the ability to form words. I couldn't speak, I couldn't breathe. Nelson made no motion to comfort me. I can see the look of pity and it stung. He'd looked at me like when I had panic attacks before, before he knew why I had them.

He didn't move to hug me, or open his mouth to tell me that everything would be okay, because none of us could guarantee that. Because we both knew that my world would have to explode, one way or the other. We both knew that the world had to explode, and either would take me with it, or the people who I loved the most. In that notebook, Nelson was listed as one of the people that I had to hurt. Worst of all, I had to hurt August. I couldn't do that. I knew I couldn't do that.

I stayed up late at night, replaying the airplane night in my mind again and again. Sometimes, I would even dream about it. Sometimes in the dreams, we would kiss. Sometimes in my daydreams, we would intertwine our hands, or he would even just hold me. I wanted that in real life, but I doubt he felt that way about me. Hell, I just realized that I felt that way about him. Or maybe I didn't, maybe I just wanted someone to look at me like I was human and not something that was too fragile to deal with. I was fragile. Everyone knew it.

I knew, regardless of the decision I had to make, I had to talk to August. I had to tell him the secret before I told everyone else, and that way, he could make any assumptions about me that he wanted to. Because who else would pretend to date my ex best friend to gain information on her. Who else would answer my call at three in the morning and take me somewhere and talk to me and tell me their deepest secret? At best, I had lost a best friend when he stop talking to me. I didn't know how to try to make things right with Kalila and Janessa, and I didn't think I could tell them just yet. Especially since I had given Janessa the folder, the folder I didn't even bother to look into. Maybe she could figure out some thing that I couldn't. August, I really need to talk to him. I knew that if I didn't, I would regret it for the rest of my life.

I looked at my brother with determination in my eyes. We both knew it had to be done, and this was the first moment that I felt like I could do it. I could get my life back. I could get my loved ones back. I could do it. I knew I could. I had to, right?

"I'll do it. I'll do what has to be done. But I at least want you there to support me. Will you at least do that for me?"

He nodded, and walked away without a word. He took the notebook with him. It's not like I needed it anymore.