Re-edited: 27/3/2013

Hey there
You're beautiful, you know that?

Maybe you don't. You're sitting there so alone. Your head bowed, your hair fanned to block your face. A wall to block the world out or shield you from within? Your shoulders hunched, arms folded in.

Don't hide yourself I long to plead. You ARE worth it. Believe me.

Some people walk by, you shrink. Afraid. The harsh words, the taunts, the ridicule comes.

Ugly. Stupid. Weak.

I see your hands tremble clutching yourself, blood leaving your knuckles turning them white as death, your arms holding yourself in, sheltering as much you can from the hail, smashing the fragility of your house of cards called hope.

Go away! I want to yell. Leave her alone!

But I sit, silent.

Watching.

Maybe she deserves this - a forbidding whisper floats as thought snuggling comfortably in my head - after all, she is sort of ugly. She never smiles, never talks. Doesn't even make an effort to fit in. Maybe she's socially retarded. What a loser. 

And these whispers turn to sirens and signs of confirmation hardening my heart, filling it with contempt and pretentiousness.

When the others meandered away to find another person to victimize, there left only me and her. The room suddenly shrunk, too small to fit the both of us, the silence cliched as it sounds, suffocating, filling every space, every void. I pretended. Pretended that I couldn't see her. That she did not exist. That the room was not pressing onto me laden with, I don't know what, guilt? Superiority? Pity?

I couldn't stay here anymore, couldn't stand to look at her anymore, and just as I was about to leave, she looked up, and stared straight at me, her eyes locked with mine, holding me captive.

And in that instant I realized. 

Her eyes, a deep dark brown, held me, then sucked me into its depths. Falling and falling and falling.

Bottomless holes.

Hurt. Fear. Despair. Suffering.

But at the core of it, a dark, stable heat arose. Its vapor materializing as hate. Hate so hard, hate so bitter, I trembled in fear. With everything that she still had, this girl hated me.

My reflection hated me.