"What time will dad be home?" I ask as we drive down the street, heading to my therapy appointment.

"He'll be home for dinner around 8," she says, turning the wheel of the car. "Do you have any special requests for dinner?"

"Um, can we get pizza?"

She laughs. "Sure, we can pick it up after I come back and get you."

"Cool." I turn my head and continue looking back out the window. My mother has been taking a different route to the clinic, the longer route.

The longer way does not pass the school. I know she's doing it for me; I guess she doesn't want me to feel sad, passing the school that I most likely won't go back to.

I'm not sad that I can't go back to school, and I'm not disappointed at the fact that I may never return. I'm done with school for good.

...

Rachel walks over to her desk and grabs a big white paper off of it. She walks back over to where I am and sits the paper on the glass table. "Here you go." she hands me a black marker, I take it out of her hands. She walks around the table and over to her seat. "So," she says, sitting down. "We are going to do a little activity," she says eagerly. I lean my head to the side. "I want you to take that marker and write the names of everyone who has hurt you."

"Um, nobody has hurt me." I lie.

She narrows her eyes at me. "Jayda. This isn't going to work if you are not honest with yourself. You have to be honest with yourself," I look down at the paper. I know exactly who has hurt me, but I don't want to write it down.

I don't like that people have hurt me. I don't like that so many people have hurt me.

"Okay, well, I'll write one down for you, to start you off." She leans forward, and I hand her the marker; she comes over to my side and sits on the floor. I watch her as she writes the words.

Ashely

Ugh, I should have never told Rachel about Ashely and all the things she's done to me. I really don't want to waste 45 minutes talking about her. After she finishes writing, she looks at me, taking in my questionable face. "Am I wrong?" she asks.

I shrug my shoulders. She gets off the floor and walks back over to her seat. "You and I both know she has hurt you. I mean all the stuff you've told me she's said to you, all the rumors she made about you!"

"It wasn't just her! I blurt out. Other people have said things about me too. Other people at that school. Everyone there has played a part in defacing my character!" I say.

She reaches her hand out, handing me back the marker. "Well, there you go, everyone at school. Write that." I take the marker out of her hand and lean forward.

I write, Everyone at school.

"Anyone else?"

I twirl the marker in my hand. I think back to what she said, Be honest with yourself. I take a deep breath and close my eyes; I open them and write.

Mom and Dad.

Rachel leans forward, looking at what I wrote, and she nods her head. "How have they hurt you?"

I think about her question for a minute. "Well, they hurt me emotionally."

"Care to elaborate?"

I sigh. "Well, when I turned fifteen, my parents died." Rachel looks at me, tilting her head to the side with confusion clearly on her face. "That's just how I can express it; when I turned fifteen, something changed. They were away more, they didn't call to check on me as much, they stopped coming home on the weekends, and when they did come back home, they were still working. During dinners, we barely spoke one word to each other." My throat starts to tighten, and I can feel my eyes water at the memories of all the lonely nights. The nights they spent hours downstairs working while I was upstairs cutting, hating myself for making my parents hate me. I asked myself all the time. What did I do to them to make them stop loving me?

"So when you say they died, you meant-"

"I meant when I turned fifteen; I lost them as parents... I lost them. The room goes quiet, I wait for Rachel to say something, but she doesn't. "I just don't know what I did. Why did everything change? I know my parents are changing now; they are completely different people. There how they were in the beginning, sort of. But I still wonder what happened, why they changed."

"Why don't you ask them?" She asks.

"I can't ask them that." I snap.

"Why not? They hurt you, right? So ask them why." she urges. She shrugs her shoulders as if it would be no big deal to ask them something like that. But I can't. I can't just ask them why they abandoned me when I turned fifteen. Just think about it," she suggests. "You know who else you should put on that list?"

"No."

"Caleb."

I smack my teeth and turn my head. "No," I say firmly.

She lets out a laugh. "So, you're saying you're not hurt at the fact he didn't call you back? Because when you told me, you seemed pretty sad,"

"I'm angry now," I say in a low voice.

"What?"

I take a deep breath. Violet and James came over today. They were on their phones, and they came across this picture of Caleb... and this girl."

Rachel gasps and stares at me with wide eyes and raised eyebrows. "Do you know the girl?"

"Nope.

"How do you know that something is going on between them? I mean, he was just in a picture with a girl."

"No, he was in a picture with a girl sitting on his lap and his arms wrapped around her." Just saying the words makes me sick. I think back to the picture on James' phone; I couldn't believe it, how could he move on so fast. I mean, we were not actually dating, but still, we connected, I think.

"How did you feel when you saw that picture?"

"Sick, angry, sad, confused." I spit out all my emotions at once.

She nods her head in an understanding way. "So, what are you gonna do about it?"

"Nothing." I roll my eyes. "It is what it is. People hurt people; that's a part of life."

She sighs, "Look at that paper." I look at the paper on the table. "All those people you wrote, they hurt you, and you're just going to let them get away with it. You're going to allow them to keep hurting you without even knowing the reason why?

I sit up, straighter in my chair. "There is no reason! That's just what people do."

"There's always a reason. Why do you think Ashely does what she does to you and other people?"

"Because she's just an evil person," I say.

"No, that's not why. Do you know what goes on at Ashely's house?" she asks.

"No, but-"

"You aren't the only one who goes through stuff, Jayda. So how do you know Ashely isn't going through things? I have to admit I never thought about that. You once said that people think you have a perfect life, the perfect family. But that's not true. She's right; people just assume that we are the perfect poster family because of the material things we have and the good jobs my parents have. Maybe Ashely deals with whatever she's going through by hurting other people; maybe she makes people feel bad about themselves because she feels bad about herself."

"And Caleb?" I raise my eyebrow. "What's his reason for hurting me?"

She shrugs her shoulders. "Like I said, there's a reason for everything. "