The sound of rain was deafening. It smacked against the windows, running in rivulets down the panels of glass. I turned up the radio to drown out the sound, but still, the rain shrieked. It pummeled my ears and I raised the volume as high as the knob would allow, the words of Danny Boy becoming indistinguishable as it bellowed in my head.

Yet, it still wasn't enough. The rain kept coming. It drowned the outside world in a thick, heavy deluge.

Worry made my chest grow tight as I stared out the window, unable to see anything through the sheets of water. "Dad?" I asked, hearing the fear in my voice.

Crack.

A fissure in the glass appeared, splitting down across the windshield. If I were in the driver's seat, I would've pulled over and I looked across at my dad, stunned he didn't seem to notice the terrible weather. He couldn't see, and I knew with every part of me that we were going to crash.

"Dad?"

But suddenly, it wasn't my dad sitting there anymore. Within the time it took me to blink, his dirty blonde hair had turned brown and unkempt. His eyes darkened from blue to a burning auburn.

I watched, confused, dazed, as a cold foreboding bled into my insides. He looked over at me.

"Finn?"

And that's when everything shattered.

*************

I jolted awake, sweat plastering my shirt to my back, remnants of the nightmare still clear and unfading in my mind. My breathing was rapid and I tried to slow it, balling up the fabric of my comforter.

I knew before I even got out of bed that my mom was already gone for work and I dressed slowly, trying to shake off the terror of the dream.

Today, for the sake of not looking exactly like I felt, I swapped the sweats for jeans. But I still wore a baggy shirt, one that Thalia eyed distastefully when I arrived at school. She usually made comments on my attire, but since Finn, she'd refrained, hugging me instead and asking how I was before jetting off to class.

I sighed as I walked to my own. Once seated, Mr. Owens announced a pop quiz and I tried to calm my sudden jumble of nerves. I found it comically coincidental that the one time I actually chose not to do my homework last night was the day our Trig teacher presented us with a pop quiz.

Once the papers were handed out and I flipped it over to reveal the sets of problems, that nervousness morphed into outright panic. It was instinct to feel pressure about a quiz, but I pulled myself back enough to realize that now it didn't matter. For once, I was ignorant of the answer to the question lying in front of me and the feeling was almost . . . liberating.

Screw it, I thought, and jotted down the first thing that came to mind.

**********

"Clarke, have you been okay?" Thalia asked me a couple days later, as class broke out and we went to lunch. I'd just gotten back my grade from the pop quiz from Tuesday and I shoved it deep in my bag before Thalia could catch the red D painted on the front. It was the first grade I'd ever gotten that was lower than an A- and I knew that if she saw it, she'd grill me on what went wrong.

I nodded as enthusiastically as I could. "Yeah," I said, pulling out my lunch money as we entered the cafeteria. "I'm okay. Just like I was yesterday. Just like I was the day before that."

She teased her bottom lip, watching me intently like she expected me to simultaneously blow my top or crumble. "We've been best friends since kindergarten," she uselessly reminded me. "So I can tell when you're lying."

I really loved my friends. I did. But the thing was that friends had the annoying habit of prying, and I wasn't in the mood for that.

I took a deep breath, trying to calm myself. My temper was still in a precarious state, dangling between an empty blackness and a brilliant shade of hatred. It was either one or the other and since I'd been in that blackness before, after my dad, I knew anger was definitely preferable to it.

"I'm not lying," I told her, as I purchased a sandwich I knew I wouldn't be eating. "I'm here, aren't I? In school, being normal." Or as normal as I could be.

Thalia let out a quiet scoff. "Right. I know. You're trying. I see that."

I took a seat at a different table, isolated in the corner. "What do you mean by trying?"

She sat beside me, twisting the cap off her soda. Cherry Coke. That would be going on my ever-growing list of daily reminders, along with Ferris Wheels and Greg Laswell.

"Just," she shrugged noncommittally, "that you're trying to move on. It's been almost a month and I"—

"Yeah, a month," I interrupted. "It's been just a month, Thalia. What, did you think everything would just . . . go back to how it used to be? That thirty days was all that it would take?"

"No, I just . . . think that maybe you should get out. We could go to the mall," she proffered, expression turning hopeful. "I know Borders is having a sale."

That anger reared its ugly head and I pushed my own tray away from me, to the middle of the table. "I'm not thinking about sales," I murmured.

"Maybe you should."

"Maybe you should stop pushing me, Thalia," I suddenly barked.

A few of the surrounding kids glanced up at us and I spotted Octavia among them, sneaking looks our way. Though I couldn't see him, I knew with Octavia here, Bellamy wouldn't be too far behind.

Thalia let out a strained breath, fiddling with her fork. "I'm not trying to push. It's just what's been helping me so I thought it could do the same for you."

But that wasn't helping. In fact, it was probably one of the worst things she could've said. "You lost a friend, Thalia," I said, struggling to keep my voice slow and calm. "And I'm not going to pretend you aren't hurting over that. But I lost more than a friend and it's going to take a lot more than a month and sales to help me out of it."

She simpered, giving me a sad look as she placed a hand gently over mine. "Finn would want you to move on."

I stared across her, amazed. "What he would want?" I asked in disbelief. It was like trying to put out a fire with gasoline, and my restraint dissolved. I snatched my hand back. "No, let me tell you what he would've wanted," I snapped. "Finn wanted to go to college. He wanted to get accepted into a program like ITT and get a degree in electrical engineering. He wanted to get married. He wanted to raise a family. He wanted a life. And now he's dead, so don't you dare sit here and tell me what he would've wanted when all he ever wanted was to live!"

My voice echoed around the now-silent room, every face now turned towards me. Thalia's eyes shined but I was tired of tending to other people's feelings. This anger was something else, driving out the darkness and for now, I was glad for it.

I stood, ignoring the following eyes as I left Thalia behind at the table. Let them stare. Let them speak behind my back. It's what they would do anyways.

Out in the hallway, I shoved through a tight throng of people headed to the cafeteria, my bag swinging behind me.

"Our Princess looks pissed," one guy remarked as they passed.

I froze, halting abruptly in the middle of the hallway.

Princess.

That's what they called me. That's what I was to them. I'd always hated that title, but now, after everything that had happened, it'd just become another reminder among the multitudes of them. And like those reminders, I wanted it destroyed.

An idea came to me and I turned on my heel, backtracking the way I'd come. I walked to the bulletin board hanging against the far-side wall, just between the cafeteria and the hallway, decorated in a myriad of notifications and ads.

I retrieved my quiz, paper crumpled and the lead scribbles somewhat smeared. I straightened it out, looking down at it with a strange mix of anger and relief. I'd reached my limit with it all; I was done.

Without hesitating, I uncapped the pen dangling from s string and circled my name in the corner before grabbing one of the blue tacks.

I stuck my paper to the board, right in the center, making the ugly red D on it as clear as possible; so that everyone would see. Using the pen, I scrawled over the body of the quiz in big, blocky letters.

When I was done, I recapped the pen and stepped away. I gazed at it a moment longer before turning my back to it, the words on the paper echoing through my head.

Find a new princess.