>When I woke up, there was no applause to cover my screaming.
>After I stopped hyperventilating, I laid my head back on my pillow to gather my thoughts.
>My bad knee hurt.
>It hurt like hell.
>Whatever, just lie there and deal with it.
>It's less than you deserve.
>After thirty seconds or a few hours that felt like an eternity, I accepted I was too weak to accept my punishment and stepped out of bed.
>Of course, standing up made it hurt even worse.
>Dragging myself to dad's room, I can't remember the last time it hurt this much.
>Well, that's not true.
>It was at the hospital, after I'd told my friends everything I said after the recital.
>Just how awful of a sister I really was.
>After Aubrey ran off crying and Kel followed her, Basil walked over to me.
>He stomped his foot right into my bad knee, and kept pressing it as I writhed beneath him.
>He asked me if it hurt enough that I wanted to die.
>I remember wishing Hero hadn't pulled him away from me.
>Arriving at dad's room, I knocked on the door.
>After a moment, he opened it, a bottle of water in one hand and a single, awful pill in the other.
>I swipe both out of his hands without looking at his face.
>It's hard enough to stand the sight of this poison I need to escape punishment.
>Having to see his misplaced pity might kill me.
>I try to swallow the demon pill as quickly as possible.
>It's not enough to stop the memory of them scattered on the bathroom floor beside my baby brother, mumbling and bleeding from the head, from rushing to the surface.
>I stagger into the bathroom, coughing and heaving over the toilet.
>Incredibly, I manage to keep the pill down.
>Lucky I didn't make the trip across the hall to the kitchen these past two days, or that would've been impossible.