I wished I could switch places with you, because I didn't deserve a world once blessed by your light, and you didn't deserve this at all.

But this is what I deserved.

In the beginning, I’d thought you'd be fun, and I’d thought I could leave you effortlessly. It was me who ripped hearts out, but now mine was the one bleeding. The walls surrounding me had been durable, indestructible, before you.

And with no more walls, and no more you, I was slowly suffocating.

When it came down to you and me, I'd never thought you’d be the one to slip away.

Chapter 1

“Falling down, through the darkness.

She doesn’t scream, or cry for help,

lost her mind a long time ago.

She prefers falling down.”

—Oliver Masters

I NEVER TOOK my stepmother seriously when she said I would one day be sent away for my reckless behavior after she found a boy in my closet, and I never really cared. It only fueled my actions.

So, one day, I stole the keys to her precious BMW 3 Series and drove it straight through the garage door.

Diane had grown tired of my acting out and blamed it on my father's increasing abandonment of the belief I could be cured. My father, the simple and passive-aggressive man he was, took each harsh word that poured from her perfectly made-up lips as he sat at the dining room table, staring blankly.

I didn’t even like the boy, either. All I’d wanted was to feel something. Anything.

On the edge of nineteen, and at my stepmother's final straw and my father’s last nerve, they both agreed to call the law after my BMW incident. Since it was my last warning, I would have been thrown into a mental institution, but my father pleaded with the judge to send me away to Dolor—the farthest reformatory college for people like me.

Don't get me wrong, I knew I wasn't normal, but I never thought there would be anyone else like me, especially not a school dedicated to my … kind—if there was such a thing.

At what point had I taken a turn for the worst? I assumed I had always been this way. Allowing boys to use me had never been for their benefit.

It had been for mine.

I wanted to feel their hands on me, their mouths on mine, and the eagerness and lust as if it would rub off on me. It never did, but maybe, just maybe, it would light a fire inside me long enough to burn. Pain, lust, anger, passion, I would take anything at this point. My heart was stiff. Rigor mortis had already set in my soul, if I even had a soul. I could no longer be sure.

My suitcase lay half empty at the edge of my bed as I stood over it. Even with a brief list of acceptable items, I had nothing I desired to bring. No pictures, no attachment to a pillow or blanket. No interest in anything aside from my headphones that I was sure they would confiscate upon my arrival. I opened my nightstand to retrieve a box of condoms, because it wasn't on the list of "unacceptable items," and stuffed it into a secret pocket at the bottom of the suitcase.