"Cassandra? The answer to number four, please?" Mr. Walker called across the classroom.

"Oh, umm okay. Number four." My head snapped down to my paper. I tapped my pencil on my desk to try and drown out the sound of him tapping his shoes against the cold floor. Number four... What was the main conflict that kept Romeo and Juliet apart.

"Well Cassandra? Would you like to give an answer or would you like a zero for participation?" By now he was pacing. His voice confirmed what I already knew, time for another lecture.

"Sorry Mr. Walker. The main conflict was their age."

"Ms. Cassandra, it may surprise you, but, once again, you are wrong. Now, you might want to start paying attention. You've had more than enough detentions and I would just hate to give you another one."

I didn't say anything, but as soon as he turned to face the board with his back to me, I shot him a pretty little hand gesture that would have gotten me at least 5 hours detention had he seen.

What was the big deal? Romeo and Juliet is a stupid play, or book, or whatever it is. All I know is, it's stupid. The book bored me, so I rented the movie like any sane person would. It was worse than I could have ever imagined. I only lasted 5 minutes before I had to turn it off. It went a little something like this... Scene starts, they meet, they fall in love. That's where I turned it off, and that's where they went wrong. God, they're so stupid! Don't they know love doesn't exist? They frustrated me so much. What made them so lovable? They weren't even real! Exactly, they weren't even real, and neither was their so called love.

I took the disc out of the DVD player. I stared at it and saw myself in the reflection. I screamed and snapped and cracked the disc in half. I broke it in my hands, I clawed it and cracked it until my floor was covered in little disc shards, and my hands in blood. I shattered the disc and I shattered the love.

I thought of my mom, she always wanted to be an actress, she'd read me books like she was reading a script. She'd said she loved me... she was good at acting. I kicked at the wall and screamed. I was my daddy's little "drama queen", that's what he'd call me. If he loved me too, then why did he leave me? They never loved me. They didn't care. My screams began to burst into tears. Why didn't they stay? Puddles of raw emotion flooded the room. I screamed out "I HATE YOU" but the words made no projection from my lips. I looked in the mirror and saw what they must have seen. A pathetic, little girl. No wonder they left.