It was Monday morning and Amber Jackson threw up. Again. She did that every time after her appointment. Her throat burned and her eyes watered. She was seated on the bathroom floor in school with her hair out. Everyone else was in class. She felt disgusted, vulnerable, weak and worst of all; she felt like a whore.

She was, in actual fact, but she didn't enjoy being one. She had reasons. Just like anyone else. Her stomach hurt and her lips were dry. She coughed and put an arm across her tummy.

She wanted to cry, scream, yell. She wanted to hate her mom. She wanted to hate Wendy. She wanted to hate Alexis.

But she couldn't.

She just couldn't.

Why? Because deep down, hate wasn't in her system. Hate wasn't her. About a thousand times her mother had said just one last time but it was never the last time. She wondered why her mother didn't do it herself. She wondered why her mother had sent her off like that, exposing her daughter, selling her, promoting her like some kind of product.

Only no one actually bought this product, they only used it, benefited from it, took pleasure from using it and then tossed it to the garbage afterwards and never came back for it again.

Amber brushed a strained of long black hair behind her ear and sniffled. She sighed and then held onto the walls beside her and slowly got up. She walked out of the toilet stall and to the sink where a big mirror was outstretched across the wall. Her pale arms leaned against the sink and she gazed at the person looking back at her.

She looked like trash. She looked sick.

She looked older, not like an eighteen year old, rather a twenty something early thirties. Not like the young looking ones, no. She looked like the washed out types.

Tears gathered in her eyes as she stood there trying as best as she could to hold herself up.

This stupid so called job had ruined everything for her. It had drove her friends away, it ruined her amazing friendship with Wendy and Garcia— possibly even Alexis and God knew Alexis was a really good person, it ruined her focus on school, it took away her innocence, her purity, it ruined everything.

She lost everyone including herself.

She missed them. Maybe it wasn't them, maybe it was the memories she missed; the old days. The times she didn't have to deal with the struggle of trying to make her mother proud. The struggle of trying to be good enough for her mom.

But apart from everyone else, she missed herself the most.