Dark.

Chaotic.

Whirlwind.

.

It wasn't outside.

It was inside.

.

She was a girl who loved braids and fairy tales, the one with glasses and knack for troubling situations. She was called Annabelle, but her friends would always call her Annie-bee. (Her favorite animal was the honey bee, you see; henceforth the nickname.) Annie wore a faded smile that had lost its polish through fights and bruises in a broken home her friends knew not about. In fact, her friends didn't know a lot of things about her, but then again, not many people did.

The girl would stay up late at night and look to the stars with a new bruise, from a mother’s harsh scolding to a father’s firm palm, she had to wonder in the morning how she would hide. She'd let her walls crumble as the stars sang her lullabies that brought her tears through crystal eyes and wailed her broken heart back into place as best she could, the pieces never really fitting all the way back. The neighbors ignored her and turned a blind eye, or, on the occasion when they'd see her outside her house, pull up a sweet smile and magician's words form the depth of the lowest parts of their hearts. They'd leave her to herself to solve her problems on her own.

That was how the storm inside Annie started:

Being alone.

With no one beside you.

There were nights she didn't cry, the storm inside her was easing away the pain, little by little. (Soon, she would find out, she'd not be able to feel emotions like the other people did—she'd become a deprived void until someone would come to fix her.) But the storm was just about as stubborn as a bull and stayed inside the girl, making her cry, making her thoughts center around the sharpened knife in the kitchen.

Weren't her arms just a bit too pale for a girl her age? That was probably when she would sneak into the bathroom after dinner with the kitchen knife her mother had used to prepare dinner, the same knife she was threatened with on a daily basis. She would clean it, clean it and clean it and clean it until it sparkled, until her hands numbed from the pressure. Then she'd slowly bring the knife to her flesh. It was with a quick pull toward herself did she manage the least amount of pain. And she'd wait there until she'd become dizzy from blood loss, in which she treated it with a couple bandage wraps and medicine.

No one knew what she was going through.

She had no dreams to hold onto; she had no voice to cry for help with; and she was losing her fingers faster than she could count on the cliff of misery. Annie finally realized, when all was over and done with, that her friends were only seconds too late to stop her from releasing her grip from the cliff. When she saw their faces she smiled, the knife falling out of her bloodied hands and onto the floor. (Her favorite rug was there. It was her treasure she kept through all the years since she was a child because she liked to curl up on it on cold summer nights and listen to the frogs and bugs outside as they lulled her to sleep.)

They took her to the hospital.

Then she went for counseling after the doctors fought with her parents over it.

Annie liked the lady she would go to thrice a week and talk to. She had an odd habit of repeating random words in her sentences. "Well, hello, hello, Annie. How are you doing doing today? I hope hope it's all going well well." It made her laugh as she talked about some of the thoughts in her head. It almost made her forget about the storm brewing inside her, but the fact of the matter was that she was in the eye of the storm this time.

Her counseling stopped after three and a half months. At the same time, she stopped talking, locking her words up for only herself to hear at night when she mumbled on about her scars and about the kitchen knife. She distanced herself from people, her friends, society. The only thing that brought her out of her house was her weekend volunteering at the homeless shelter down the road in the city. (The children reminded her of herself—lost in a such a cruel world that doesn't understand you at all. She found herself in them and convinced herself they needed her, and with that, she found the will to continue living.)

"Hello." Greetings rang through the air with some exchanging smiles and small talk on the side with friends and people alike. The casual "Hey, how's it going?" or "What's up with you today?" for the gossip lovers and inquisitives alike. Annie kept to herself, walking down the halls of the homeless shelter until she reached the farthest room back. It was there she could smile, look forward to something for a change. There, in that small room no one really paid much attention to, were five kids.

There was Gill and Jack, the festive twin tykes at age four who loved to cause problems and know everything of what you were doing at any given moment. The rumor going around was that the matching scars on the twins' backs was because their mother tried to sell their organs for money. Of course, it was just the rumor.

Then there was Marc and Sophie—the boy ten, the girl nine and a half. They were best friends since they could remember and always stuck together through thick and thin, though recently they'd had a fight and didn't talk as much. (Marc had told Annie once that he wanted to get out of the place—fast—so he could learn to live and support others so that one day he could come back and ask Sophie to come live with him.)

Lastly, there was the quiet one in the corner—the "troublemaker" kind of seventeen (and three quarters) year old who didn't speak much—called Dan. He bonded with Marc when he came in the shelter nine years ago, and they've been like brothers ever since.

Annie liked to bring a bag of sweets with her. She always brought extras for the two twins. She said it was because they were small, but everyone knew she was simply playing favorites after Marc and Sohpie's argument of, "We're still young too!"

"Annie-bee! You forgot my second one." Dan liked to tease the girl with a smirk on his face as he sat on the ledge watching her take out the sweets. "And I told you I wanted extra whipped cream on that." Of course, he lied. She did put extra whipped cream on it, and she did get him a second order, she just kept it hidden from the others only to give it to him on her way out when he'd walk her home.

Dan would wet his lips, licking the ice cream off his face. "I'm going to get out of there in a while when I turn eighteen," he'd tell her every time. "Run away. Start over. Fresh. Doesn't that sound good?" She'd laugh at him, joking how she wanted to come along with him too or how she wished she could be like him.

"Then come."

His words took her by surprise. She didn't know what to do. "I'll think about it."

.

Dan died three weeks after that on the night before his eighteenth birthday.

There was no thinking left to do.

Annie took the kitchen knife in her hands, the next night after she heard about the boy's death, and stared at her reflection in the sparkling metal surface. Memories of both the new and the old resurfaced in her mind—of the boy, of her friends, of the children, of the nights she would cut herself or cry with lullabies sung by the stars, and the trials and tribulations she went through her whole life. But she kept thinking. And that one thought—the thought that drifted in her head before she brought the knife down into her chest—saved her from remorse. (Or, at the very least, saved her from more tears and heartache. At the very least)

.


.

She went to her parents room and stood at the foot of their bed.

"I'm going to find my friend. Good bye. Mom. Dad."

From reaching the highest intensity, the storm stopped, slowly fading away until all that remained was a memory of a storm girl no one remembered.