The Story of Alice, Part 2.

High school was an even more unfeeling place than middle school; there were more students, but less attention from her teachers. The only thing that hadn’t changed was her reputation, which had carried over intact and seemed to seal her fate as an outcast.

She still had no friends, and with each year, her grades dropped lower and lower. She was just barely making the cut to pass her classes.

When she came home with the news that she would need to be put in summer school if she had any hope of graduating, her mother looked at her with disappointment. That was when Alice decided she didn’t want to cope, any longer.

After dinner, she went up to her room with her laptop, and typed out a note. She didn’t have much to say, but tried to prolong the amount of time it took to write. A farewell, and an apology, to her mother. Not much of anything, to her classmates; she didn’t want to outright blame anyone, in particular. A paragraph, explaining why she was certain everyone in her life would be better off, without her in it. Another paragraph, wondering if anyone would even really care.

Not even a full page, and she’d exhausted all she had to say. Alice took a pair of scissors and cut up her sheets, and tied them into a noose, which she snuck into the bathroom and locked the door. She pushed aside the shower curtain, tied her makeshift rope to the bar, and let herself slip into the tub.

She’d hoped to break her neck. Instead, it cut at her windpipe, and she struggled until she blacked out. Her full weight was more than the bar could support – it broke away from the wall, and the crash got her mother’s attention.

The fire department had to cut the door down, and Alice missed two weeks of school while she was in the hospital, under suicide watch.

She returned reluctantly, and found the rumour mill had remained just as active, during her forced vacation. Some of the teasing was gone, and replaced by hushed and poorly muffled whispers.

But for some…news of her suicide attempt had only given them more ammunition to work with.

They called her uninventive names, mocked the fact that she hadn’t succeeded, and wished her better luck, next time.

It pushed her past her haze of depression…into anger.

They had picked at her, insulted her, spent years making her feel small…and now they were laughing at her for trying to escape them?

The resentment and the loathing she had been denying for years was starting to creep up her throat, like sick bile, and Alice spent the rest of the day hiding in the girl’s washroom, bitterly staring her reflection down and insulting it.

She called herself ugly. She called herself naïve. Mostly, though, she called herself stupid, for ever thinking she should hate herself more than she hated them. She vomited and spat into the sink, and when her eyes lifted to the mirror again to sneer at her reflection, someone else was looking back at her.