Band-Aids On Bruises

Dread

[The Next Day]

I don't know if I'll be alright after the trial, like everybody says. Everything is becoming too much, the trial's probably not going to help.

I'm getting six hours of sleep every night, tops. The nightmares have slowly become worse so that every morning I'm wakening in a cold sweat and gasping for breath. It's becoming a struggle to hide the bags under my eyes each day. My mum's makeup usually helps though.

I'm trying my best to be or act happy around my friends and family, but it's exhausting. It's getting harder and harder to smile around my friends and not be mean to my parents. I already snapped at my mum yesterday night, and I immediately felt terrible. She said it was fine, but it wasn't. I don't want to burden others with my feelings, so I'm hiding them.

Mix the mental exhaustion from trying to be happy when I'm not and the physical exhaustion from my lack of sleep, and the result is not pretty. I've basically stopped talking at school, except for when I'm around my friends, and the teachers are beginning to either get angry at me or seem to think I'm stupid. My schoolwork and homework is really lacking as well. I haven't really bothered with putting a lot of effort in doing them, I want to but I don't have the energy and I can't focus on anything anymore, and my grades have dropped rapidly in the course of just a few days. It's not just my homework that I can't do though, it's almost everything. My lack of energy and focus have been affecting everything I do now, from getting ready for school to going on my phone, and I always find my mind slipping back into the dark memories so I try to get my mind on something else and end up rushing whatever I had been previously been doing. I haven't told anybody this though.

I had rushed through my morning routine this morning, and am currently waiting in front of my house for Fisher like normal.

I try to focus on little tasks to avoid my mind drifting back into the dark pit of depression that is the memories of the party, so I fix my hair over four times, readjust my clothes to make sure no bruises are showing, tie my shoes two times, triple check that I have everything in my backpack and even clean out my pockets.

The weather today is not great. A cloudy cold day with wind that is very strong, a sharp, powerful, cold wind that bites at your skin unlike the warm breezes that summer brings. I honestly have no idea what season it is, the weather is being so strange and annoyingly different.

Finally, I see Fisher making his way down the street towards me. He's wearing a thin, dark blue jacket with yellow buttons, whereas I'm wearing a black winter coat, his favorite jeans and a long, yellow and orange scarf that's whipping in the wind right now.

When he gets closer to me I can see his cheeks are pink and his nose it bright red, and black gloves on his hands. He smiles when he sees me looking at him, and laughs as his scarf smacks him in the face multiple times. His probably once nicely gelled hair is sticking out in random directions, making him look slightly like a pubescent lion.

"Aren't you cold?" I ask with a brow raised as we begin walking.

He rubs his hands together "Maybe. But I ain't telling you if I am. Ruins my tough guy image."

I laugh dryly "Ooh, bad grammar. That sure is tough."

"You know it is." he flexes "Look at how tough I am."

"You're as tough as a newborn kitten."

"A lion kitten?"

"It's called a cub, and no. More like a munchkin kitten."

"What!? C'mon! I'm tougher than that!"

I just roll my eyes and force a smile. Fisher rambles on about how 'amazingly tough' he is or something like that, but I just ignore him until he accepts defeat and shuts up.