2 | Ex Nihilo Nihil FitDear Diery,

  Yestardaye I had a nitemare. There were these pretty girls called Silver and Silver and they were fiting some big monsters. It was diskgusting. The girls had teypathy and magic and were really cool. At the end of the dream the one with green eyes died and I was sad. The one with red eyes got really mad at the monster and she made him dissppear. I think I cryed in my sleep because I was sad.

  I wish I was cool like Silver. I bet she had lots of frends because she was cool.

  Love,

  Cerys Annobeth

  I gnced over the diary entry, cringing at the number of spelling errors; when had I written this, second grade? I might have torn it up with the rest of my old writings and drawings if the letter's contents hadn't caught my attention. Silver. It had been a very long time since I had even thought about that name. I remember how I used to fantasize that I was Silver's—Silvoranna's, because I had to distinguish the twins somehow—reincarnation after I had nobly sacrificed myself.

  What a joke.

  Honestly, only a child's brain could come up with that kind of stupid, chuuni-esque fantasy about being some kind of magical girl who could control the universe. I remembered how I used to write about the twins after that. Every story was a self-indulgent Wattpad fanfic where everyone loved Silver and found themselves constantly floored by her mere presence. All powerful, all knowing, the cool and collected character that I loved the most in fiction. The one that fans loved.

  Then again... I thought, resting the crinkled sheet of paper with its messy graphite scrawl onto my face as I leaned back, I also remember the biggest part of the fantasy. The tie of the twins who shared everything.

  I let out a long, aggrieved sigh as I took the paper off my face to look around my deconstructed room. Gone were the palest-pink walls, and in with the mint green. Gone was the cute mural, and in with the pretty painting. Boxes and old clothes surrounded me, so many things I had hesitated to throw out because I'd been told to be hesitant. Things like scraps, possible heirlooms, and one-of-a-kind junk items. I'd only made about 50% headway through the mess, so why did I bother lingering on a silly fantasy anyway?

  Was it the fact that I had secretly celebrated Christmas as a second birthday? Was it the fact that I had talked to "her" when I was a child? Was it the fact that I cried at night thinking I would never have anything so valuable in my life? Or was it the fact that I wished "she" would take me away from the reality in which I lived for a more exciting, more fulfilling one?

  I stood up, and I eventually tore up the letter over the trash can, watching the paper fall with dead eyes. There was no sense keeping the kind of childhood fantasy that had once given me hope of being understood. I was in high school; I should know better by now.

  "Cerys!" my father's voice came from the stairs, "your girlfriend is calling you!" A sliver of dread alongside annoyance rattled across my spine, and I groaned quietly.

  "She's not my girlfriend!" I retorted acidly as I picked my way through my room and tried not to step on the cat (I almost smmed into the wall) as he investigated my mess. My father greeted me halfway up the stairs with our ndline phone, and I tried to smile as I took the phone with a quick, "Y'eeello? Menie?"

  "Hey, it's been a while, huh?" One and a half weeks."Can't you call me every once in a while?"

  "Sorry, Menie, I've been pretty busy tely."

  "All the time? Really?" I could hear the pout. "You can't even call me once a week?" I could call her once a week, but that was honestly more time than I was willing to spend on conversations that had long since left my ballpark of interests.

  "I'm taking a lot of advanced csses for college prep, Menie," I replied with a shrug she couldn't see. It wasn't a lie, at any rate; I was fairly busy with csses, and judging by the conversations I'd had, I was taking more than what most people my age considered tolerable.

  "I'm doing stuff myself, y'know, but I still make the time to maintain this friendship." Ah, yes, and now the guilt settled in. It was true; for the only person who held the cim to staying my friend the longest, I didn't really try to maintain our retionship. It ate at me every single day that Menie wanted to stay by my side, and she stuck to me even though I was finding it harder and harder to feel connected to her.

  "Sorry," I replied eventually, and I plopped onto my usual spot on my bed, staring into the fur of Graham, who had decided to curl into a tight little doughnut in the exact spot I had sat in earlier. Little shit.

  "Well, whatever. Did you see GHOUL posted again? I'm so addicted already. Have you listened to it?" I hadn't, and I didn't want to. Among my many interests, Vocaloid was something I only explored because she insisted that I try listening to it.

  "...I'll listen to it now," I eventually replied, grabbing my ReKindle and looking it up on Youtube. I certainly thought about muting the thing so I wouldn't have to listen to another piece of music that only crossed my mind as being mediocre, but Menie would certainly question it if she didn't at least hear the audio feedback. So I listened. Or, more so, I read the lyrics. I wasn't surprised Menie liked it; the song felt like her.

  "Isn't it so good? You know, GHOUL actually got the design suggestion for that character from me." I could only draw a bnk at that because at least to me, GHOUL was a nebulous person who could have been operating anywhere in the world that spoke English, and Menie, a random person, was telling me that a semi-famous music artist in their own right, had taken ideas from her? She probably misconstrued something again. I mean she thought some random person on the internet who really liked yaoi rolepy was Iyana Dohoso. The mangaka doesn't even speak English.

  "Yeah," I replied without much commitment. I didn't really care; I wanted to listen to SPIAIR or Four Days Grace or something. Something with real singers. The intensive cnging of complete electronic instruments and strained voices wore at my nerves.

  "You don't sound like you enjoyed it at all."

  "Don't I?"

  "Why don't you like the things I like?" she asked sadly, and internally sighed. Dammit; I scked on the acting again. "I tried to like the things you like, and I do like the things you like."

  "Mm." My standard response. The one that I'd grown accustomed to using when I didn't know how to respond or when I didn't care enough to respond. I knew it made her feel like I wasn't giving her due attention, but I couldn't think of anything else to say anymore. I also couldn't tell her about how I felt, or she'd certainly swing into her full depression, and god knows what kind of hell that would bring. It was kind of like constantly being asked, "do you love me, or do you want me to die?" and even after several years of being asked that question, I still couldn't fathom a way to respond correctly.

  "I love you, you know?" she was starting to choke up. Every other time she called, she ended up either being on the edge of crying or fully choking up and crying over the phone. It was fairly often that I found myself seething at her shitty parents, who had given me this mess to deal with every other time she called me—because the sad reality was that I was the only long-term friend she had, just like she was the only one I had. I was the only person she felt safe enough to talk to because unlike everyone else in her life, I had the goddamn human decency to listen to her and say "I'm sorry; that sucks."

  "Can't you at least say it back?" she asked, a pitiful shell of the person she had been when she initially called me. Today, I imagined, was a bad day for her, and she had concealed it with a thin veneer of annoyance.

  "I'm not your girlfriend, Menie," I replied wearily. I never said the word 'love' casually—it was a heavy word, den with my own internal turmoil, and I couldn't even bear to lie about it just to make her feel marginally better. "We tried." Or at least she had. I had let her cuddle with me once for curiosity's sake and immediately gotten sick. I couldn't call that "trying."

  "I know! You're not even my type anymore okay?! Can't you just say you love me as a friend?"

  I couldn't, so I didn't answer.

  "Do you even want me around anymore? Am I just a nuisance?"

  "No, of course you're not," I replied, automatic. It was wrong to tell her she was bothering me. I was her friend. I had to help her as well as I could. "I'll always be here for as long as you see fit to keep me around." There was my cute way of saying, "I don't want to be the bad guy. Just tell me you hate me and I'll go away." The truth was that I felt if she hated me, then I would be absolved of the responsibility to be her friend—to keep her alive. No one would want or accept help from someone they hated.

  "You say that every time! You're so frustrating!" I pinched the bridge of my nose and nuzzled my head into my cat's luxurious bck fluff, inhaling the smell of undry detergent. "I don't know why I even try anymore!" I don't know why I try either. I'm tired of powering through my life like I have some kind of purpose. It'd be nice to be dead.

  "You try because life is beautiful," I lied through my teeth. What beauty? Friendships that are scarcely more than a lukewarm hello? Boys who dump their emotional shit on me like I'm not a human being? "Things will get better one day. I know you're frustrated, but you just have to hold out and have faith until then." Faith. Hah. Where has faith gotten me? Five plus years of suffering?

  "Where's the beauty?" she echoed my thoughts, "I keep moving schools, no one keeps in touch with me, and I can barely even get four words out of you every time I call you anymore! We're best friends, Cerys! Doesn't nine years mean anything to you?"

  "Cerys!" my mom called, bailing me out, and I suppressed the urge to sigh with relief.

  "Hang on, Menie, my family's calling me. YES?"

  "Brrrp?" Graham purred in annoyance to my loud voice, raising his head up, uncurling himself and making a big, long stretch before he jumped down from my bed.

  "Dinner!" my mother answered, and as if he knew it was time for me to feed him with food off my pte, my cat waited for me at the door with a quick tail flick before he sat at the threshold.

  "I'm going to get something to eat. I'll call you back ter."

  I forgot to call her back ter.

  ***

  "'And he leaned in for...' No. 'And he started to close...' No. God, my writing is shit," I ground out, nursing my eyes before I gnced at the painting of Lawrence that had begun to stare back at me with concerning intensity. Maybe I shouldn't have decided to put him in my room. It was bad enough that I thought about him every single day. Still, how could I say to my mother as a fifteen-year old that I was getting disturbed by an anime painting?

  I id my hand on Graham, whose back foot was stretched up onto my upper belly, zily showing himself off as he id on my p. Purring like an idiot. I scratched behind his ears, and he rolled and practically hugged the wrist that had been sitting on my ptop like his teddy bear. I gave the brat an exasperated smile before I resigned myself to petting the gremlin with one hand, trying my hardest not to move. Big momma's boy, I thought warmly at his rexed face.

  "I love you, you stupid furball," I murmured at him, and he lightly rumbled onward, unconcerned with my deep admission. How anyone could not love a cat like this was beyond me. For all the times he puked on my carpet because he ate something he shouldn't have, this was worth it, ten times over. Even in the stifling heat of my room in the middle of summer vacation.

  I gnced back at the profile for the fanfic I'd been writing, Affwys. Lawrence Agrippa x Reader, a story of the reader, a normal person, being seduced by Lawrence and ultimately wanting to die because of it. To be honest, it was my darkest fanfic yet and probably just a reflection of my increasingly unstable mental state, but none of my readers were going to notice that. Unless they had been with me since the beginning, anyway.

  I tapped on the pstic of my computer, idly wondering if I would cry to myself tonight like I did st night. The sheer absurdity of it drove me mad most days—I cried for Lawrence. He, to me, was the answer to my loneliness, and I didn't care anymore about love. I cared about the facade he could put up while he carefully destroyed me without my noticing. Love... huh?

  I nursed my eyes, sighing deeply into my free hand. Love... I'm no different from Menie, really. I cling to things that give me no value because they're the only things I have in a reality I no longer wish to be part of.

  God, I'm so tired of thinking about people who would say, "you should feel lucky to even be alive." I'm sick and tired of other people. I'm tired of fantasizing about being able to spend time with someone without impatiently looking at my watch. I'm so fucking tired of it all.

  I gnced back over at my desk drawer, and I squeezed my fists so tight that I thought I would tear open my palms. I'm tired of it. But I'm too much of a fucking coward. So how long until a freak accident cims me? How long do I have to stay suspended in the limbo of life and death?

  Should I try poison after all? Nothing in the medicine cabinet will kill me for certain. I might cripple myself and have to keep living, and I don't want to go through that in addition to whatever bullshit I'll have to go through after my family finds out how suicidal I am. I uncurled my fingers, watching them shake as I revealed the crescent-shaped dents in my skin. Pathetic. This is pain to you? You really are worthless, aren't you?

  "I'm so tired," I mumbled, and a single tear zed its itchy way down my cheek. Sadness isn't a single tear. You've never been sad a day in your life because you have it good, and you just want attention because there are people like Menie and Randy and Nathan who need more than you.

  You want to be the one who's babied, don't you? What right do you have when your situation is better than most people's? You've never been abused. You've never been bullied. You've barely even been injured, and still you compin? "I'm... so tired." My vision blurred, and I slowly lowered my face into Graham's fur, as if his shedding coat would alleviate my internal turmoil. I'm not in pain. I've never been in pain. I'm the selfish bitch who has wanted to die for no good reason.

  "Please kill me. Please kill me. Kill me. Please... please... just kill me. "