Songs that are the staple at every school dance set the beat for what would soon become revenge.  I almost wish I had a hand in it, but rationally speaking I would have been better off had it never happened.

I watched BPD, as she grinded, smiled and giggled seductively whilst I was feeling sorry for myself.  She twisted her hips, moved her lips slowly when she spoke, breathing heavily on the neck of an unresisting dancer.  Given the friction between her and Chris, you would think a fire would have been the first signs of danger. Even when her lips locked with his, and then with another guy by the same name, there was no smoke signals saying ‘stop her’.  Had I known, I would have made an effort to stop, but watching her numbed rejection, to see someone like me without a trace of guilt or restriction was refreshing; just being a part of something so spontaneous, so fulfillingly unfulfilling.  She was hot, so I was hot.  When you are hot it is hard to remember how cold you felt just moments before a sexual encounter with an ever-present cure for the chills.

I can’t keep her secrets; BPD is just the makings for gossip.  I didn’t count on screaming it at Josh to spite his lack of interest in me, and I also didn’t count on BPD getting back at me a few days later with a pair of scissors.  Needless to say, my train stopped.  I stepped off, away from the rubble and debris.  Just two steps from it, I tripped.  Two days after homecoming and two months into the school year, I found myself in the closet trying to take back a secret I could not keep to save my life.

“This,” she wrote, “is because every time I depend on someone he’s not there when I need him. Living has been great but I think, Trish, until you start being a little more alive I’ll put a spin on it. You’re spinning out. Get it?”

Next morning at school I showed the nurse a wound she could never bandage.  I was simply put on display at the counter with antiseptic ointment on a Q-Tip in my fingers while she looked at me, eyes unmoved, telling me to stay put.  The rest of the day I was analysed, re-analysed, and my mother was called.  I was sat in the office, and my counsellor was called.  Sam’s mom was called, but the most important call was not made until a few days later.  I refused to go home, but I couldn’t stay at Sam’s, I wasn’t showing signs of improving, so the phone call placed to Heartland on a Friday proved to be the most important result of that homecoming night.

Late Saturday I was ‘transported’ as they call it, to a facility in Nevada, Missouri.  I never thought I’d find myself there, even the second time around.

I was left alone.  Every time I could have used a little courage, BPD abandoned me.  I have always been left to deal with her mistakes, while she plans the next tryst to ‘put a spin on things’. I did have things to look forward to; Buddy had promised that we’d toke up when I got home.

As I’d been leaving my last day of school for a while, Justin said I should call him.