“How was it?” Her dad asked, trying to sound positive.

He knew what Carolyn’s answer would be, though. It was always the same answer every week but her dad would always ask in the hopes of a different answer.

“Class itself was fine. I had a lot of fun. After class was not so fun.” She replied, pressing her forehead against the cool glass window.

“Now what happened?” He pulled up to a red light and looked over at his daughter.

“Kali called me a freak again…” She mumbled.

The light turned green, and her father accelerated slowly through the intersection. “Do I need to have a talk with Kali’s mother?”

“God no. Dad, that’s the last thing I want. Just… leave it be. I’m used to it by now…” Carolyn slumped down in her seat.

“Is there anything I can do to help you? I know I don’t know much about teenage girls but I can learn if I need to. They have books on that type of stuff, right?” Carolyn’s dad was always trying to play both parenting roles. He was constantly trying to be Carolyn’s mother and father at the same time and frankly, it was not working. She could see he was trying his best to do everything he could to help her, but she didn’t want any help. She knew that none of the teasing or name calling would go away, so why bother putting all that effort into something that was never going to change?

As soon as her father pulled up into the driveway, Carolyn jumped out. She didn’t even wait for him to stop the car. She just opened her door and stepped out of the car. She couldn’t wait to be in her room.

Carolyn ran up the cobblestone path way to the front door and pushed her way inside. She ran up the stairs and down the dark, skinny hallway to the lonely room at the end; her room.

If Carolyn’s room could be described in one word, it would be black. All four walls were painted an onyx black color with white writing scribbled on the walls; song lyrics. She had painted them on herself and looked to them for guidance. When she was lonely, she would read them over and quietly sing each song to herself. The words on the wall kept her going. They were her motivation to live each day.

Sitting on the desk in the corner were her two only friends.

Friend One: the red notebook. Carolyn loved to write. Writing in her life was the equivalent of dancing. It was something that allowed her to explore her own mind and create a world where she could go to and control everything. She wrote mostly song lyrics because she was so heavily influenced by her music.

Friend Two: the razor. Carolyn was a cutter. She thought it was a nasty habit of hers, but she couldn’t stop. It had started when she was only ten years old. She was down in the morgue and her father had told her to stay put and not touch anything. He had to go grab something from the house. The morgue was a two minute walking distance from their house. But Carolyn was curious—as any ten year old would be. She walked around the dead body lying on the table and looked at all her father’s tools. They appeared to be very sharp and she knew not to touch them. There had been some formaldehyde on the floor and she slipped and fell onto the tray of sharp instruments. The scalpel dug into her skin and tore a long cut all the way down her arm. She didn’t scream. She didn’t cry. The pain actually felt relieving. From that point on, she cut almost every day and couldn’t stop herself.

Now that she was older, she would draw a dotted line across her wrists and label each one. One line for every name she was called that day, one line for the loss of her mother, one line for the stress of school and one line just because.

Right now wasn’t the time to cut, though. That would be for later that night when her father was asleep and there was no one around to walk in on her. Right now, it was time for her to practice. Although she had just gotten home from dance, the cemetery called to her.

She dropped her dance bag on her bed and pulled out her black slippers. She laced up the ballet shoes and tread lightly down the creaky stairs to sneak out to the cemetery.

She liked the cemetery. It was an open space big enough for her to practice in. The head stones actually helped her. They were like guide lines for how high her leg should be in her arabesque.

When she got tired, she would walk around and sit with the deceased. Death didn’t scare her. She always dreamed of what the after life was like. She would kneel at each of the graves and talk with every dead person lying six feet under the cold, dead earth. It made her feel like she had friends—although these friends couldn’t talk back.

The dead understood her. They were there to listen to her. She told them her problems and about what had happened at school that day.

Today, a fog had begun to settle over the decrepit cemetery. She stood and began to walk around, taking in the eerie scene in front of her.

Her foot hit something and she tripped, regaining her balance quickly. She couldn’t see the ground in front of her. Too much fog had settled. She assumed it was a rock sticking up from the ground or a baby headstone that she never knew was there before.

She knelt down to see if she could find out what it was she had tripped on. She swatted the fog away with her hand and saw a tangled mass of black hair. Maybe it was an animal of some sort? She didn’t want to touch it if that was the case but she swiped away more fog and saw that the mass of black hair had a human body attached to it.

She rolled the body over onto its back so the person was facing upwards. She brushed the black hair out of the way and revealed a boy’s pale face—eyes closed. Blood traveled down the side of his head to his lips and down his chin. The blood had already begun to dry which meant this poor boy had been just laying here for a while. For all she knew, he could be dead. As she studied the boys face a little more, she realized that this wasn’t just an ordinary boy.

This was Andy Biersack—her idol.