• People in this small town normally stare at me as if I'm a murderer. When they pass me on the street they begin to murmur (about me no doubt). The way I dress also adds to the suspicion that I may have killed someone. The black jacket I wear hangs off my boney shoulders and my black hair covers most of my face from view.
    School is even worse though. I don't fit in in any clique and most of the teachers tend to dislike me even if I am one of their smartest students. The jocks and the cheerleaders are out to get me but I tend to just ignore their unoriginal jeers that I get frequently. When I walk past them they call out "Look it's the emo boy going to go cut himself." Then they laugh. I sometimes wish to lash out at them in anger but I refrain and merely walk away.
    I ponder this as I walk home from school with my messenger bag slung across my body. I have cut myself before and have the (now healed) criss-crossing scars on my wrists to prove it. I pull up my sleeve and trace the scars gingerly with my index finger. They are healed but my reason for doing such a thing still burns white-hot in my mind.
    It didn't take me long to get to my house and I shuddered at what awaited me in it. I was probably the only person in this whole town who knew the difference between a house and a home. When I reached the door, I hesitated a moment before walking in. I live alone with my single mother.
    When I walked through she was sitting on the old sofa, waiting for me. There was a half empty bottle of tequilla in her hand. She took a quick swing and said to me with utter rage "Danny Amherst! You are late! You know I do not tolerate that!" She was drunk and I was scared. "Yes'm. I'm sorry- I was talking to one of my teachers about my grades." I muttered, looking at the floor. She stood up and walked over to me, her bottle of tequilla still in hand. "I do not care what you were doing! I expect you here at four, forty-five and it is now... five o'clock!" "I am sorry." I murmured to the floor. "Look at me when I am talking to you!" With that said she used the back of her hand to smack me. She hit me with such force that I stumbled sideways. "Go to your room and don't bother to come down for dinner, you ungrateful child!" she shouted, finishing off the bottle of tequilla.
    I walked up the stairs feeling horrible and wanting to cry. In fact I did as soon as I shut the door to my room and locked it (I could not- would not- take any chances when my mother was drunk). I walked over to my desk and began to rumage through it until I found what I was looking for, a razor. I had just been thinking how it would be to reopen those white scars. I sat in one of the croners in my room and held the razor to my skin until the blood began to run once more...