Jen Naumann

As I was escorted outside by the officers, my friends looked back at me with blank expressions. I don__ think they knew what to say to me. I had lied to them about my home life. They had always been there for me and probably would have understood if I had told them the truth from the start, but it was too late. All the lies I had told them about having a perfect family had been shattered by that one incident.

All my life I thought love was supposed to be this amazing, wonderful feeling. I thought it was supposed to heal all wounds and conquer all. No one ever told me that it can leave a giant hole in your heart. No one ever mentioned that it could steal all the life away from you.

You know that feeling when everyone around you is happy and you feel like you're standing back to watch them from afar? Like you're in this crappy little theatre all by yourself, watching the lives of other people who are totally fabulous? Yeah, that's me.

No one will say it to my face, but it__ so obvious they think I actually murdered Gavin. As if I would actually want to hurt the guy I was in love with. Still, I see it in their eyes, the way they avoid crossing my path as if I__l snap and go after them next. I hear it in their accusatory whispers that fill the hallways as I pass by. The signs that I__ generally considered guilty are everywhere.

I want to get lost in other worlds and let my imagination travel beyond this life I know.

My chest tightens to the point I fear my heart will suffocate from the pressure of it. Society's standards are the total opposite from how I was raised. The boy who I thought to be so strikingly handsome has less than a year of his life to live, my new friend only a few more months beyond that. Yet they are living these uneventful lives in which they don't think there is a reason for anything. Will I ever see my mother again, or is this how I will be forced to live the rest of my life, as well?

His question is pretty dangerous for me to try to answer, so I don____t continues to hang out there like the stained underwear at a slumber party that goes unclaimed.

Demons, werewolves, zombies--they're all supposed to be for entertainment purposes only.

We're all guilty of saying insincere things at one point or another, if only just to make the moment not totally suck as much as it truly does.

This is the moment I have dreaded, the very reason why we kept running, even when it seemed hopeless. We all seemed to believe if we kept running, we would never die. But what exactly had we been hoping to find in the end? A magical place where the infection hadn't spread? A castle surrounded by gumdrops and cotton candy?