I open a paperclip and scratch it across the inside of my left wrist. Pitiful. If a suicide attempt is a cry for help, then what is this. A whimper, a peep? I draw little window cracks of blood, etching line after line until it stops hurting.

I am locked into the mirror and there is no door out.

My first class is biology. I can't find it and get my first demerit for wandering the hall. It is 8:50 in the morning. Only 699 days and 7 class periods until graduation.

It is my first morning of high school. I have seven new notebooks, a skirt I hate, and a stomachache.

Some adults would rather pretend that bad things dont exist than to talk about them.

School libraries are the foundations of our culture – not luxuries.

I don’t know what I’m doing in the next five minutes and she has the next ten years figured out. I’ll worry about making it out of ninth grade alive. Then I’ll think about a career path.