Life is funny and fickle. It has no real rhyme or reason, it just is. I just exist, and others just exist, and we just happen to exist at the same time in the same place. Time is a concept that humans try to grasp and try to tame. No one will have enough time. Time is also fickle and funny and a stupid way of saying you're already late to your own funeral just hurry up and die.

Friday is a way of saying that the work week is soon to be over. And then people get to go home to their happy lives and drink in celebration that the week is finally over. News flash, it all starts over again next week. Friday, the day after Thursday. Friday, the day before Saturday. Friday, the day I want to desperately stay home and avoid. But I thought of my list of attributes I compiled the day prior, and I was sick of being a coward.

The school parking lot was packed. It felt like the people who always skipped first period had shown up for this one. Rumors were flying in the wind like they were attached to propellers, making sure they reached all the possible listening ears. Because everyone had to know about Dean's arrest and Janessa's porno video and maybe even the fact that I was a big, fat coward. I knew Janessa was already blasting me on social media, but I was too much of a coward to actually read what she was writing about me.

I had arrived ridiculously early, yet everyone else also seemed to want to be ridiculously early. I knew that I had to grab that file before I chickened out. Before someone else found it. Before I lost my chance.

I all but ran into the hall, anxiety constricting my chest but I tried to push it back. I didn't have time to have an anxiety attack. I needed answers, not an anxiety attack. Squeezing my eyes shut while I walked, I tried to push all negative thoughts out of my head. I had to do this. I couldn't let Dean's work go to waste. I knew that everyone hated me and I hated myself but I had one last task to do, one last chance to half redeem myself and be the bigger person.

My favorite part of school was before class began. The calm before the storm. The chatting, relaxing, happiness before teachers and bullies sucked the life out of you. My eyes were open now, and tears were leaking out of them. The few people wandering the halls were to stuck in their own heads to pay attention to me, the girl crying to herself because of her own stupid mistakes.

Once I reached the door, I stopped, took a deep breath. The lights were on, but whoever the substitute was for the day had stepped out of the room. I was incredibly lucky, I didn't know what I would have done if someone was in the room. How would I explain this situation to anyone in their right mind? I wouldn't, because no one in their right mind would get themselves into the situation that I was in now. I wanted to explain even to myself how I could be so stupid, so naive, so utterly thoughtless as to allow the chain of events that brought me here to even happen.

I couldn't think about this now. I inched open the door like there was a bomb set to detonate at the other end. My arms shook, so did the rest of my body. Deep breath in, long exhale out. Somehow I made my way over to the desk and opened the correct drawer. It wasn't even locked. The file felt foreign in my hands, but I picked it up and walked out of the room. I clutched it like it was worth a million dollars, but all it was really worth was my dignity. Revenge wasn't worth it to me anymore. It wasn't worth all the heartbreak that I had to endure. I knew that I would shred the manilla folder in my arms if it didn't mean so much to other people. If Stacie hadn't humiliated Janessa, if it didn't mean something to her and Dean, then I would shred it.

Janessa was standing by her locker like normal. Only, nothing was normal anymore and I could feel the strain of my heart against my ragging emotions. My legs felt like they were about to give way underneath me as I approached her. She looked like a deer in the headlights as I approached her, eyes doe like and glassy. All the other students offered her a wide berth already, making it easy to approach her without anyone overhearing the impending conversation. At least, I hoped so.

"Janessa," I started, but I quickly forgot all the words that I wanted to say, the words that I needed to say in order to make her understand

"Hi," she said softly.

I was taken back by the softness in her voice. No malice. Maybe she was so distraught, so tired of fighting her own emotions, that she gave up and stopped feeling the hurt. Sometimes, I felt that way when I had extremely bad anxiety attacks.

I remembered the feeling of the folder against my chest. "I have something for you. I know you probably hate me and you have the right to hate me. You completely have the right to hate me. I just- I know that I probably made your life a living hell, but I have this file. It's- Dean told me. He put it together."

She stares at me for a moment. A long moment. A moment that feels like a few years until she shakes her head. "You take it. This is what you've been looking forward to. This has been your journey, Dean wanted to help you. He spent so much time trying to help you, so I really need you to keep that folder."

I shook my head. "No. I'm done. I can't do this. I don't want to do this anymore, I can't be fueled by anger anymore. Please, take the file. Take it!" I tried to shove it into her arms but she pushed it away.

"No, keep it. Dean told you, he wanted you to have it."

"No. He doesn't know what kind of monster I am. So either you take it or I shred it. I'm done and I mean it!" A few tears slipped out of my eyes and down my cheeks as I reached out to her again with the folder.

"I understand why you did it, if it makes you feel any better," she said. "If I was in your position, I don't know what I would've said."

I laughed. Actually laughed. "I'm a horrible person. Take the folder!"

"No, Kiley, I won't. I-"

Something broke inside me then. Something broke and tore and I felt a piece of my soul shatter. I was a terrible person, I had lost everyone, and I just wanted the misery to end. "Take it, you deserve it!" I shouted. I shoved it into her open locker and walked away.

"Kiley, you can't just leave!" I heard her shout after me, but I couldn't turn around. I couldn't turn back. I had to let her handle it. I had to let go. It was time to let go of her and Kalila and August and everyone else and just accept the fact that I had lost everyone and there was something wrong with me. It was okay to cry. It was okay to cry but I couldn't shed anymore tears.

I walked away, and I felt stronger. It was odd, but I did feel just a teeny bit stronger in making a decision bigger than myself. At least, that's how I saw it. I saw it as a decision bigger than myself, anyway. I needed to become bigger than myself because the Kiley I knew, everyone knew, was small and weak. I felt small and weak, but Janessa wasn't. She was stronger than me, I knew she was.

A single tear broke through and slid down my cheek. Before I could hastily wipe it away, I was approached by none other than the original source of my misery. Stacie. Stacie, with her glossy blonde hair and too white smile. Stacie, the girl who never had to face a consequence in her life, yet my whole past year seemed to be a consequence of her actions.

She smiled at me. I truly hated it when she smiled, because smiling meant that she had something evil on her mind. All she seemed capable of was evil and sinister thoughts, but I knew that wasn't true. I knew, deep down, she was human, and maybe more of a mess than I was. I felt odd thinking even a sliver of a positive thought when it came to her.

I glanced down at her hands. Her old notebook was clutched in her grip, the one she wrote all her foul plans in.

When she held up the notebook, I wanted to scream. I wanted to cry. I wanted to run. Yet, I found myself rooted to the spot.

"You thought I wouldn't figure it out? How you slowly stopped hanging out with Nina and I, how you met with Mr. Henderson and Janessa before class? You think I don't know what goes on in this school?"

I thought my heart stopped beating in my chest.

"And you don't think that I know your little boytoy is trying to get some kind of information out of Nina? I know everything, Kiley. Don't you ever forget that. You've had free reign because I let you," she spat. A fire grew in her eyes, and I felt afraid. I felt afraid for August and Janessa, not for myself. I didn't care what happened to me, but I didn't want anything to happen to the people who had decided to help me.

"This is a new, fresh journal. Just for you. Read it. Do it, or what I do will be so much worse. We don't want a repeat of the Janessa incident, do we?"

I didn't want to be a coward anymore, but I knew that I couldn't yell at Stacie to shove the journal where the sun didn't shine. If I declined to just look, she would hurt the people I cared about. I knew she would. She didn't bluff.

I took the journal and walked away without a word.