The music is so loud.

I can't hear myself think. Nancy is staring at me again.

"He left me, Nancy."

"Well?" she asks, her voice loud over the music. She slides the pencil behind her ear. A smug look of appreciation on her lips alerts me that she isn't joking around.

"You were right," I admit.

"Yes, I was, Kristen." She folds her arms across her chest and looks at me for a few lyrics.

The ball's in my court. I take time with my response, look at her cropped, wavy, brown hair; her dark-coffee eyes, her tattoos, her eyebrow piercing. She's everything I wish I was. Her lips are being pinched by her sharp incisor teeth. The same teeth that bite me in the ass day after day.

The music grows softer with the ending of the song. I wish I could express to her the agony I feel, that these men express in their lyrics. Their voices howl the words that won't surface in my throat. I can write everything down flawlessly with a pen and a notebook, but ask me to speak out loud, and I stutter.

Nancy raises one eyebrow. She wants an answer.

I wish I could melt into a puddle of remorse.

I light up a cigarette. "What now?" I reply coolly. I inhale deeply, let the smoke roll from my lungs. Mom's gonna kill me for smoking in the house again, I think. Oh well.

"Nothing now. Now we wait and we see. We observe the mess that occurs, and the happiness that divides. We listen to the rain pouring on our rooftops, cold in the winter, hot in the summer, and we love as if we've never been through it all. We forget the "what if" sequences and we breathe through baby lungs. We look to the sky and think, 'dear god, I'm alive.' That's what we do next."

I stamp out the cigarette, watch the ashes smother themselves against the concrete, watch the smoke swirl above the little dead body that was once alive and dancing between my lips. I look back at Nancy. She is staring at me.

"Maybe I'm not meant to wait, Nancy. Maybe this isn't for me. Maybe this entire life isn't for me. Maybe I was dealt the wrong hand. God or whoever's up there, he's smacking himself on the forehead and thinking, 'whoops, I screwed up on that one.' Nancy, you don't know how difficult it is to be me. Don't look at me like that, it's not like I'm going to go run off and do something stupid. In reality, I'm stupid. How could I possibly still be here, living through this stupidity?"

She keeps looking at me.

"I think we've made major progress today," she says finally.

I roll my eyes. "Can we please get back to my math project?"

A soft chuckle, and she's got the pen down from behind her ear, scribbling corrections on my paper. Her handwriting is so soft, so feminine, preaching but still modest.

Thanks for making me start all over, Nancy, I think.

Her head, bent downward to the paper, lifts slightly. Her smile is wide.

Not again.