• I never meant to hurt her.

    No, that’s a lie. I did want to hurt her. I wanted those tears to fall freely; I wanted them to stain her cheeks.

    What I really should say is: I never meant to kill her. But I did kill her, and everyone knows it.

    Granted, she was the one committed the act. She was the one who made the decision. She was the one who chose death. I only gave her the reason to choose.

    All because I asked her out, got to know her, and allowed others to know exactly what I did.

    ~~~~~~~~~~~

    She was supposed to be my girlfriend, and I guess she was. But our ‘relationship’ was false, existing only through the cruel bet of five high school boys, one being myself.

    I asked her out, trying not to gag on the words as my friends, only a few feet away, laughed conspicuously. I told her she was pretty, beautiful, that I’d had a crush on her for the longest time. I lied to her face, but I was hot, popular, and she didn’t notice. Her romance novels had blinded her to reality.

    We spent time together, almost three weeks, though never in public. She spread the rumor, that we were dating, happy that she was finally part of the ‘popular’ kids. The preps, I now call them, having fallen from their ranks. Of course, we mocked her stupidity behind her back and even to her face, though those insults were more hidden.

    I broke up with her in the worst way possible. Ignoring her whenever she tried to talk to me, laughing whenever she hurt herself, and eventually, talking about her right in front of her. Still, she never saw it coming.

    It was in the cafeteria, where everyone could see, not that anyone was paying attention. We went to a true high school, and despite our popularity, no outside our clique cared about the relationships within it.

    But that didn’t matter. It was humiliating all the same.

    I revealed the private fears she had. How she didn’t stop wetting the bed until she ten, the sounds and faces she made during sex. (She had been naïve enough to give me her virginity.) Everything she had foolishly told me was relayed to the people who hated her the most.

    Funny how those same people now look at me with disgust, as if I had stolen a personal friend rather than a verbal punching bag.

    She broke into my house that night. I wasn’t home, but she didn’t want to talk to me. Instead she wrote me a note, carved into my bedroom ceiling and the cracks soaked with blood. Little drops had fallen onto my bed and spotted the bed sheets.

    I love you Nicholas

    How she did it, I had no idea. My ceiling was ten feet high and we didn’t own a ladder. But she managed it. Just as she had managed to hang herself from my ceiling fan, as it turned in slow lazy circles.

    ~~~~~