There she was, sitting in her bed, panting and gasping for air while her lungs failed to function.

  She knew what this was, but she refused to accept the reality that they were back.

  It wasn't like they had left in the beginning; they had just hidden themselves far away from her for almost a month, so she had wished they would stay there.

  But fate had ways of showing her she would never be enough or worthy of a break.

  For all she knew, she was a murderer.

  She knew what triggered this; she knew he was back and had it out for her. Maybe this was the way her body tried to welcome and warn her for what was to come, but she already knew—she always knew.

  This realization made it even harder for her to breathe.

  Her intakes became sharper and shorter while she felt hotter and more stressed by each passing second.

  She needed to stop this; she knew that, but she just couldn't function. Her mind was working on overdrive; everything was going fast— too fast.

  She was now on the verge of collapsing;

  she was running out of options and time to stop herself from doing something stupid in this dire situation.

  In her desperate and extremely anxious state, she banged her head against the wall to stop it all. Maybe this would work the same way it had worked when he did.

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  Everything stopped.

  "Finally quit," she whispered to herself before she felt a sharp pain and everything went black.

  The feeling of everything slowing down overcame her. She knew this feeling and welcomed the darkness with open arms.

  "Fuck," cursed Raven as she awoke from her unplanned long nap, with a dull feeling in the back of her head like a little hammer slowly but precisely driving needles into the back of her brain.

  'Just fucking awesome.' This was the bringer of the nastiest headache in the world.

  This didn't go as she had planned. Maybe she had banged her head too hard on the wall, now wondering how he did it in her memory.

  It hurt as hell, but she never passed out. Just one hit silenced her mind.

  While wondering, she looked at her watch and mumered, "Well, fuck," cutting her train of thought while she let out a deep breath.

  Noticing she was late, she tried to get out of bed as fast as she could, but this rushing was stopped right away when she felt a speck of the headache she had already foreshadowed.

  After a while, she started to move again after gathering her composure, but at a slower pace.

  At this rate, she knew she wouldn't make it to school before lunchtime, so she just went on, not caring anymore.

  "It is what it is." After getting ready and making sure everything that needed to be wrapped and covered was, she went downstairs.

  She skipped breakfast—she had almost nothing in the fridge and no money—meaning the medicine she was going to take and some water would be enough for school; a snack as dinner would do.

  "Maybe we will share some food at the lunch break."

  With that in mind, she grabbed her bag and headed out of the house.

  The school halls were empty; it was break, and the students were scattered. The ones she saw gave her dirty looks or talked loudly enough about her so she could hear their slander.

  " I heard she got into a fight last night and that's why she is late ."

  A tall blond girl probably a senior from one of the classes she missed, told her locker mate.

  " she is such a brute."

  she added while giving Raven a sharp one over as if the sight ahead her was a disappointment, before she turned her face back to her friend.

  ' well thanks for that, I love your bop too Edna, ' thought Raven.

  Even if she couldn't remember the real name of the girl to save her life, she surely looks like the younger taller blond version of the women in the incredible movies .

  " No no , my cousin told me, she was the one that sprayed on the town board. "

  Her locker mate — brunette friend answered her .

  "No way. " another student joined their conversation, shaking his head, kissing the brunette. "that's like the outskirts of the cit —"

  Raven couldn't hear the rest before she had passed them. Not missing a beat in her step. But it was a fact that neither of them were right.

  Yesterday she was at home rotting in her bed like a good outcast she is .

  Nevertheless this wasn't new to her, and now she barely acknowledged these petty acts;

  she simply chose her own peace over them—they weren't worth it.

  So she made it silently, with fine composure, to the only person in this school she could tolerate, pretending she didn't care and not even bothering to give any sign of acknowledgement to those people.