-Caitlin-

Venomous words are spat from the mouths of snakes into the ears of eavesdropping hawks. A neck sucking boy, replaces the life in a girl's neck with his alcohol filled love bites. I weave in and out of buildings, making my way to my dorm room.

When i near the main administration building that watches over the front gate, I take the long way to avoid going through it. Adding 4 extra minutes of speed walking, I slink through the football fields, feeling the eyes of the cheerleading squad engraving their disapproval into my back with their laser like eyes. Then, I walk around the back of the locker rooms that reek of Letterman jackets that have been left in the dryer for too long, coated with knock off cologne.

My arms are on the verge of dropping my books and my eyes are slowly sinking into their sockets. Maybe going through the office would have been quicker, but in there sits the cookie cutter secretaries with sundresses and buns tied tight on top of their heads. So tight that any oxygen is being stopped from entering; they are nothing but helium filled balloons with a smiley face painted on the front and a cheerful message, reminding you to have a great day.

The doors of my dorm building are wide open as i walk through them, like arms pulling me into a warm hug. Drifting under the doors, I hear bubblegum tongues clicking. I pass cheerful girls standing in groups full of laughter and a shared bathroom with razor sharp words slicing the silence.

With a coffee cup in one hand and a stack of books balancing in the other, my hands are occupied. I use my last resort, my foot, to kick the door open. I send my stacks of homework raining on my sheets and kick my shoes under my bed in one motion.

Turning around, I am face to face with my roommate draped around a lanky freshman. "Eryn, what are you trying to do? Swallow the poor kid?" I snarled.

"Yeah just like you swallowed..." before she could finish her sentence, I cut her off.

"You know what I wish I was swallowing right now?" I pause to look in the mirror on our closet door, letting my hair out of a loose messy bun. "hot coffee."

That's all she needed to hear before she jumped up, slipped on her flip flops and threw my bag at me. "Leggo."

After pausing to drop my paper coffee cup in the woven waste basket, I walk out the door, letting it slowly click shut behind me.

---

It's 10:02 and college kids are pouring in and out of the coffee shop. Eryn took her order to go, and i took my spot in the sea of coffee stained breathes drowning in the rants that our textbooks feed us. Mocking everyone's actions, I move my ink stained hands while making small talk about classes and moan about homework with the guy behind the counter.

I text 'E' about the party at Alex's house tomorrow, the essay we have due at midnight, and how we want to sneak a puppy in our dorm room. The chime of my phone didn't stop until the cafe went silent, then it turned into a few one word answers to match my rapid fast typing and breaks I took to slurp my warm drink.

Suddenly, the lights flicker off and then back on and I am left enclosed in a building with a blue-eyed boy.

Everythings that I had in a collage on the table, topples into my bag as I rush to follow him out of the door. His shift was ending and I just came to realization with the fact that I am the only person keeping him from going home.

He looks anxious, maybe he's going off to a party I wasn't invited to; he seems like the kind of guy who dates all the popular girls and flaunts their relationship at blowouts.

I, however, am not the kind of girl who hangs out in the courtyard after school or drives down to the boardwalk with my friends singing along to the radio. When I am not focusing on school, my thoughts eat holes through my brain, slowly killing me from the inside out.

For a few seconds my heart is content because I am not alone for once until he goes his way and I go mine, and it is just me and my demons again walking into a void of oblivion, hand in hand. There is nowhere to run when the only thing you want to run from is yourself and you are the one thing you are stuck with for the rest of your life. I guess the secret of life is that you just have to kill your mind because you're not really alive until you are dying.