The girl looks at the screen in front of her. Its blinding light is the only thing that shines in her dark bedroom. The girl sucks in a breath as she reads a single word on the screen.

“Slut.”

The girl’s eyes water and she quickly shuts down the laptop so hard that it almost cracks.

“Don’t cry, don’t cry, “ the girl whispers to herself as she looks down into her lap. She tucks a strand of blond hair behind her hair and exhales. She gets up and paces back and forth until she can’t feel her legs. Finally, she gets into bed and lets the darkness suck her in.

The girl wakes up to the smell of pancakes. It’s a new day. She goes downstairs to find her mom flipping a pancake on a griddle. Her mom asks her how school was yesterday, the girl nods, slowly an image of a computer screen flashing in her mind. She shakes it away.
“It was good,” the girl says, not meeting her mother’s eyes.
“Is everything okay?” Her mom looks down at her. The girl slowly looks up, opens her mouth to say something, then shuts it and nods.
“Everything’s fine,” the girl says.

Later on, the girl walks up to her room and opens her computer. She goes to the page where she was last night and sees two new words.

“Dumb b****.”

The girl’s eyes widen and she’s about to type something back but stops. The girl quickly exits the page and slams her laptop. She walks over to a window and a car approaches her house. The car has a couple girls that she recognizes from school, but there’s one girl in particular that catches her eye.

The girl in the car makes eye contact and smiles, holding up a phone. The other girls in the car laugh hysterically, like it’s the funniest thing they’ve ever seen. The car drives away, the engine roaring.

The girl’s heart starts pounding and she walks over to her computer. She goes back to that stupid page and sees yet another word.

“Whore.”

The girl’s lip trembles and she starts to sob. No one else is home and her sobs shake the whole house.

The girl goes into the bathroom, still crying, and pulls out a bottle of pills. She remembers her mom saying something about not taking too many. She looks in the mirror at her tear stricken face and then looks down at the bottle. The girl hears whispers in the back of her mind and she puts about ten pills into her palm. The girl’s hands are shaking as she puts the pills into her mouth and swallows each one.

She’s almost gone when she hears her mom screaming but she can’t do anything because everything hurts. Everything hurts.