My sixteenth birthday came around. I was finally free of my demons. I had a few friends now. My next-door neighbour Cecilia who I had somehow managed to form a bond with. And Leah, we attended the same high school, I suppose you could say we got along. Of course, Alec was still around. It was weird to see him visit me exclusively and not my cousin who paid him no heed now. There was a part of me that was happy, but another that was afraid he would take interest in her, for she had grown into quite the young lady. In the end though, I nothing about it, because it didn’t feel like any of my business to begin with.

It was a peaceful few years, that is, until that summer – where I made the wrong choice

Leah and I grew closer. Too close. It broke my friendship with Cecilia. It broke me. She’d been looking at me the way my cousin used to look at Alec years ago. I liked her too, and I wanted to see her in the same light, but our attractions are something we cannot control. I wish I’d known that earlier, when I said yes from the fear of losing her. I was naive at the time. I didn’t know losing my firsts to her would break the friendship we’d built together. I cared. Her lips were soft. I cared. Her breaths held a scent of peppermint. I cared too much, until she stopped caring at all, as she continued to tell me she loved me.

When I came back to school, my peers were giving me odd stares, specifically in the changing rooms. The guys winked at me and stuck their tongues out when I’d walked past them. The girls had downright begun to ignore me.

My heart dropped to my stomach.

They knew.

I ran, searching for Leah, rage boiling in my throat. She had begged me to tell no one. It was a promise we were supposed to keep. So why? I wondered, why had she betrayed me? Why did the news of our relationship suddenly belong to the ears of others?

Leah was in the courtyard talking to her friends. When they spotted me they laughed and called me names. I took baby steps towards the group and asked Leah about what was going on. She told me I was disgusting for liking her. They all laughed again and pointed judgemental fingers at my figure. It was wrong. I couldn’t understand what she was trying to achieve by doing this.

We were wrong. We never should have happened, I thought as their words clung to my skin like leeches, and the violence began. I didn’t scream when they beat me up. I didn’t want to show her my fear. I didn’t want her to know she had won. I thought of the people who had to go through this every day, every moment of their lives, for being who they were. I was glad that it would be over for me after this, because I didn’t like girls in that way anyway, but a part of me still felt guilty that I was allowed to live so freely while others couldn’t because of their preferences.

I don’t remember what happened next, just that there were a lot of shouts, and slurs – and that by the time they were done, I was covered in cuts, bruises and mud.

I was numb. Both physically and mentally. I didn’t go back to class. I couldn’t like this. My aunt would worry. She didn’t deserve to worry. I thought that it was sad really, that you meet great people, people that you love. That those people eventually change and become the opposite of what you thought you knew. I wondered if Alec and I would drift apart eventually. If he would grow tired of me like I had grown tired of myself. I wondered, if we were all bound to be left with monsters in the end, if that is what being human meant.

My consciousness faded.

I passed out.

When I awoke, the sun had set, and I was surprised I hadn’t died. My skin hurt all over. I wasn’t sure how I was going to make it back home. I called my aunt to tell her I was sleeping over at a friend’s tonight. She was delighted for me and asked if I wanted to drop by to grab a set of pyjamas.

“She has some I can use, don’t worry,” I remember saying as we wished each other good night.

I waited for the school to close.

I snuck in through a window and treated my wounds in the nurse’s office. In the bathroom, I cleaned my clothes, my hair before leaving the school grounds for good. I wasn’t even sure what kind of battle I was fighting anymore, only, that I needed to keep going as my legs wavered from fatigue.

It was chilly. I grabbed my backpack and put a jumper around my shoulders. The world was dark and my mind even darker. I arrived at a convenience store. I felt my pockets for spare change. There was enough left for a small fruit pie. I figured it would be good enough as I ate it on the sidewalk and hoped nobody would notice me.

That night, I ended up crashing in a nearby playground. When I arrived at school the next morning, the first thing they told me was about my detention for skipping my final four periods, without a valid excuse.

The last thing I was told concerned Leah.

“Starting from today, she will not be attending anymore,” my teacher said as she scribbled numbers across the blackboard.

I never found out if this had been Leah’s way of leaving me or leaving a part of herself she hated behind. All I know is that it went downhill from there, that I lost all the trust I’d had in people, which led me to picking my friends based on who wanted me and not what I truly needed. Alec and I didn’t grow apart, but I stopped telling him about my life, and even if he never said anything; I could tell by the way he looked at me that he had noticed.

One thing led to another, and I ended up at a party, on top of the host’s roof. People were cheering, and shouting, as I looked into the pool below surrounded by clapping hands – I jumped.