Chapter1

#Chapter1

What made me this way? What made me like this? Them, maybe.

Today is my eighteenth birthday. So far, all I've learned is that nothing changes and that everything still sucks and that being an adult, technically an adult, doesn't make me feel any more powerful. All I have is a party full of strangers and a shortbread cookie shaped as a heart. Now not everyone is a stranger—my mother and father are upstairs monitoring by sound—but I go to school with these people. Or I went to school with them. Really it's only been a day since graduation and not everyone has wiped their brains clear of these horrible memories, so we still remember each other.

I've been sitting in the corner for an hour. People gave up trying to include me after twenty minutes, and let me be. Really, they care more about the free food, uncovered alcohol, and possible shots at sex more than my birthday. An opened bottle of tequila and a half-drunken bottle of vodka with a large pack of beers sit in the garage, and if anyone wants a drink they have to go in there and sip quietly. Marissa drank half of the vodka and is now flirting with her boyfriend in the corner opposite of mine. He looks pretty pleased because he just may have his shot at finally sealing the deal. She wanted to wait and obviously, he didn't, and the only reason I know this is because I sit with her at lunch.

I've shamelessly eaten my fifth shortbread cookie, so I glance out the window behind me instead of getting up to fetch another one. The pool lights are on, but no one is outside. It's not like it's cold or anything, it's June and beautiful at night. My mother turned on the light just in case anyone wanted to swim, but I didn't tell anyone to bring a swimsuit.

Getting up, I push past the few people in my pathway to the back door.

My life isn't bad. It's been pretty okay. I have a few friends, or people that call me their friend, and both my parents love me. I had a dog, though he died last week from cancer—I didn't even know dogs got cancer (okay, that's a lie)—and now I'm just realizing my life hasn't been great. It's not bad. But it's not great. And maybe I sound like a whiny teenage girl, but that's because I am a whiny teenage girl who can at least admit it to herself.

The only thing keeping me from running off again is the fact that we're leaving for my Aunts beach house tomorrow, and I like the beach house, so I don't want to miss it. She's a bit of a hippie, but the town is nice. It's far better than this cesspool of hormones and two-faced text messages, so I plan on laying on the beach until I roast. So what? I think I'm better than everyone but worse than everyone at the same time, and I'm sure everyone secretly hates me. I'm just that girl in the corner who thinks she's so mature that no one understands the language she's speaking.

Sometimes I hate people like me. But other times I couldn't care enough to do anything about it. I don't have all the answers to life, I'm just trying to make it by.

Sure, I realized a lot of crappy things today, but one good thing I learned is that no one cares about me. I don't mean it in a depressing, self-hatred kind of way, but a this-is-real-life kind of way. My mother would probably die for me, and my father is caring, but besides them, no one really cares what I do in life. They'll be dead in less than forty years, and when a parent is old, they expect you to no longer need them.

I'm not saying I need them, I'm just saying that no one cares. My furniture boss doesn't care if I have rent payments if he fires me, my future ex-husband doesn't care what I do when he has a young piece of meat to screw, and everyone else is only worried about themselves. So what? I'm probably a pessimist. It doesn't bother me that I am.

My feet meet the cement patio as I slip through the back door. It's glass, but for some reason, I act as if no one can see me anymore. There's crickets, cars in the distance, and muffled music from inside, but all I hear is the beating of my heart.

I guess I'm scared of the future. It's not easy being a pessimist and hoping for the best.

I stand in front of the pool with my toes curling over the edge. There are cookie crumbs on my shirt and an ugly temporary tattoo of a bird on my thigh that I hope washes off when I do this. Marissa said it was cute but it's ugly and I hate her.

When I jump in, the splash causes everyone to turn to the large windows. Marissa flocks to the glass and presses up against it. I hear her knock on the glass and call my name. /"Emma! Emma, what are you doing!/"

She sounds like a man from underwater, but I can tell it's her. She's the only one who would ask what I'm doing when it's obvious. A person can't kill themselves on purpose in a pool by jumping in unless they purposely hit their head and pass out. So, I don't know why everyone immediately decides that I'm trying to kill myself.

I jumped into the middle of the pool like a normal person, well, a normal person with clothes on.

To make a long short, my parents rushed down and kicked everybody out. They got me out of the pool and nearly took me to the hospital. After convincing them that I'm fine, they found the alcohol in the garage and grounded me for the night, which is pointless but made them feel powerful.

In the morning they wake me up to leave for Aunt Wendy's beach house, and the entire ride there I think about how stupid they are. Well, they aren't completely stupid, just terrible at punishments.

My phone is decorated with text messages from the partygoers about my suicide attempt. I don't bother answering any of them as I will hopefully never see them again. I wonder if they'll think that I died. Would I care if they thought I was dead? Is that a dark thought or just a whiny-teenage-girl thought? I wonder if our doorstep will be cluttered with dead flowers when we get home in two months. I won't mix that up with caring, though. Giving flowers to a dead person is just the norm, you don't actually have to care about them to give them flowers.

The drive to my Aunts house is the same every year but not very repetitive for some reason. It takes about four hours to get there, yet feels like a whole other planet when we reach the town. It's like some heaven on earth. No one is on their phones, everyone is enjoying their company and the scenery. The beach is close enough to chuck a rock into the water from the road, and the seawall gives me nostalgia. I always climb over it and make my way down the rocks below when the tide is out. Shells litter the sand and I collect them.

I used to really like shells, and now they're just shells, but I gather them anyway because the guest bedroom at the beach house has shells everywhere from years of vacations here. My Aunt doesn't get rid of them. She doesn't have many visitors so she keeps that bedroom just for me.