The strips of text were erased like a toy bulldozer flattening a row of cardboard houses; garish white all that was left. Line, after line, word after word, as if they had never existed. The fluorescent brightness of the page was all that she could see. The fog of the morning was pressed up against the windows, refusing to let one ray of sunshine past its grey armor. She looked at her clock. It read 5:35. If she had just stayed in bed maybe she wouldn’t have made such a stupid decision. Erasing that story had made her insides burn. As she got rid of each line, she felt more and more overwhelmed, and more and more as if her emotions were going to choke her. She felt suddenly like she needed water, but at the same time her body was too languid and slothful to get up. Moving seemed too great of an effort. So instead she sat, and thought, and breathed. She thought about how bad her story was. About how weak the plot was, how lifeless the characters were, how boring the setting was, how much she told and didn’t show. Then she thought about how if she added up all the minutes she spent working on that weak lifeless and boring story, it equalled up to probably at least one week of her life that she had completely wasted. The only thing she had gained from this was the knowledge of her own idiocy. She felt too tired to even cry. Even worse was the though of getting up in the morning. Taking a shower, dressing up, going shopping, doing her chores, doing her summer reading and note taking.  She summoned all of her strength and muster to force herself out of the hard glossy chair beneath her where she did all of her writing, crying, binging, and prewriting for the next, hopefully better, story. Usually in that order. She lay on her pink comforter and thought some more. This time she contemplated her mother and father, and how they would surely be so disappointed in her. First she turned her thoughts to her Dad. Master sculptor, whose statues were known for bringing tears to the eyes of viewers. Who once had a critic say that his statues were so beautiful and lifelike they resembled the work of Micheal Angelo. On the other hand she mused, was her mother. Who owned an art gallery, and was represented in over 100 other galleries  around the country. She painted landscapes with a brushstroke that nobody seemed to be able to quite duplicate or even to understand. And all Logan had done was what? Written a couple fairy tales? She would never amount to anything, and she knew it.

     She could not stand the thought of following this train of thought any further, so she pulled out one of her Agatha Christie books, and let it fall open to a random page. She began to read. Part of her mind was preoccupied with the story, but the other part was filled with a thick, viscous sadness, like some kind of sour honey that  kept reminding her that she could never even hope to write like Agatha. That she couldn’t even write at all.

     “It's okay, you will come up with another idea,” she said aloud. “But it won’t be any good at all. It will completely suck, because you don’t have anything worth saying,” another voice said.

     “Okay, here’s what we’re gonna do. We’re gonna just focus on something that will take your mind off of this.” She opened her ivory white window, and clambered through it, huffing a little as she landed on her balcony. It had a stash of halloween candy her mom was completely unaware of, and really comfortable chairs. She munched a kit kat and gazed at the sooty puffs of clouds wrapped around the orange harvest moon. Despite her anguish she was still exhausted. Eventually her gaze began to drift and she felt herself lulled to sleep by the wind’s gentle tug on her cheeks…

     The bright sun was not what  woke her. What woke her was the sound of a plastic bag hitting the ground and a snickers bar breaking in half. She started awake and looked around her. For a minute she felt nothing, other than the warmth of the sun on her body. But then she remembered her stupidity, lack of talent, and inevitable life of misery and the sunbeams seemed to freeze over. Collecting her things and sighing she pushed herself through her window, halfheartedly made her bed and pattered down the stairs. She knew her parents were gone, most likely to work for an early morning brainstorm, because of their note.

          Hey honey, do whatever  you feel like this morning. We have some odds and ends to get to at work. Can’t wait to read your story,

                   -love, Mom and Dad

     She immediately crumpled the note, and proceeded to sit for an hour straight, staring at the spot on the table where it had been while languidly chewing a soggy piece of toast. She spent the next hour doing her math homework, which wasn’t really due for a month (summer vacation), and then she made a list of things to do with her friend Nora when she came over for a sleepover after she got back from a college tour. For a long second she was wracked with intense jealousy for her friend; she was the star athlete of the volleyball team. She never had to worry about feeling inspired. She had never lost a single game, and she at least appeared to be confident that she never would. She sighed heavily.

     The sound of a key clicked in the door. A spasm of fear shot through her heart. She did not want to deal with her mother or father right now. They would inquire about her writing, she would cry, they would say that it was okay, and that everyone makes mistakes and she would pretend it made her feel better. She scrawled a note quickly.

       Hey, guys, just remembered I forgot to check on the plants for Nora! See you later,

     Love, Logan

     Nora was a junior, while Logan was a sophomore, so she was much more entrenched in the college hunt then she was. She would be gone for a week, flying around the country for tours, and it was Logan’s job to water her plants. She usually hated going over their. Nora’s sister Dahlia always made her feel guilty when she left. She didn’t mean to, its just, Dahlia always invoked quite a lot of pity. Her parents had left her alone for a week in their big empty house. Yes, she was 16. She could take care of herself and they called her all the time. Its just, well, it was plain as day that she was rotting away all by herself. Logan’s spirits just dropped seeing her all alone. But she knew it wasn’t Nora or her parents fault she was left all alone in the house. And it wasn’t really Dahlia’s either. Dahlia had not received the luckiest hand in life’s game of cards.

     She strapped her bike helmet on, and tooled across the streets, flicking a chip of peeling paint off of the rickety bike. This bike had been through many things, not least of which included rainstorms, teenage temper tantrums, spectacular falls, and years of time to slowly curl the paint up from it’s body, dim the noise of the bell, and shred the rubber grips on the bars. The seat chafed uncomfortably so she was grateful when she saw the lighted sign of the coffee shop in front of her.

     She bought a warm ham and cheese biscuit, and okay, maybe one little bag of mini  donuts. But they were small and there were only four of them. The rest of the drive wasn’t nearly as bad, knowing that she had a warm breakfast, just waiting to be eaten, in her pocket. She pulled up to the quaint little cottage style home. It was very Victorian. Painted cheery yellow, with pale blue roofing and shutters, and a stark white door. There were not really that many plants to water but she took her time, mentally kicking herself for depriving Dahlia of company but dreading going in. She finally could tarry no longer, so she unlocked the door, chewing on her cheese sandwich.

     “Oh hey, how are you,” Dahlia called from the kitchen.

     “Oh, I’m great, how about you?” She answered.

     Dahlia was sitting at the kitchen table engrossed in a book, and drinking what looked to be Ovaltine.

     Now would probably be a good time to explain. This is the narrator talking by the way, not Logan. Dahlia suffered from extreme agoraphobia. The last time she left the house was her 13th birthday. She is now 16.

     “Oh my gosh I love those sandwiches so much! It’s such a cute little shop too. I used to go in there and study, or read. I’ve always loved how their tables have a little donut hole in them.” Dahlia exclaimed, starting up

     “Oh, I love it too. But actually they got rid of the donut tables years ago,” She said. Immediately after she put my foot in her mouth, her cheeks felt like they had ben set on fire.

     “Oh, um, I mean, I wouldn’t know. I mean, it’s okay. I like to know how things have changed, but, don’t feel bad. It’s really, it’s fine,” She said awkwardly. Logan just nodded, not quite trusting myself to speak. Dahlia cleared her throat then pushed a few papers under the table out of view. She was very aware of her desire to see what they said, but she didn’t want to pry.

     “I actually didn’t even realize this, but I just remembered that you and I had very similar taste in hangouts so maybe you could tell me what’s going on in my favorite places!”She smiled. Logan was floored. How was she such a positive person? The least she  could do was answer her question.

     “Well, let me see. That ice-cream shop we loved closed down, and the bookstore stopped being open in the morning, which was, you know, the best time for it to be open. I really don’t think things have really changed that much.”

     “Does school look any different? I mainly get my lessons through, you know, a teacher sending them to me, and one of them comes to my house every once in a while.”

     “Well, you know Mrs. Danvers? She was that one that always used to assign us homework over breaks. Well, she just had all this scandal, because Principal Gonzalez figured out that she was completely lying about having her masters degree, ands he forged a bunch of documents for it, so all this really advanced AP philosophy classes were basically being taught by someone who lied about her proficiency. Everyone was thrilled because she was always so high and mighty about having a PhD and now she’s in prison,” she laughed. Dahlia laughed too.

     “Oh, I wish I could have been there,” She said, a little sadly. I pursed my lips, feeling awkward.

     “So what have you been doing?” I asked.

     “Well, I finished summer vacation packet work a long time ago, and I have read a lot. I’ve been coloring some, you know, to pass the time. I write stories, just to amuse myself. Only a few more days before they come home though.” She said cheerfully. Logan looked at her, thinking about all the things that he was missing, and I just felt like I had to ask.

     “Why?” The word was short, and concise, but she knew that Dahlia was fully aware of what she was asking. “I’m sorry, don’t answer that,” She hastily took it back.

     “No, I’ll answer. The same reason you feel the way you do,” was her jarring reply. “ Let me go get you something. I’ll be right back.” She watched her leave, and wondered what kind of stories she wrote. She desperately wanted to see them, but she knew more than to ask. She waited for her to come back, drumming my fingers on the table. She was taking forever, it seemed. Desperate to do something, she crossed the room and through up the window, breathing in the quiet, calm of the dusky sky. She smelled a campfire, and knew that somebody was roasting marshmallows. She could almost see the powdery white puffs, fresh from the bag, being held in the stiff, cold hands for the first time. In her mind, she pictured a fresh green twig puncturing it’s voluptuous side, and she imagined it slowly singing, becoming imbibed with the smoky quality of the fire.

      “Would you mind shutting that?” Dahlia asked, standing in the doorway. “Its just, it makes me sad,” she explained.

     “Sure, sorry,” Logan grimaced and quickly pulled down the window. Suddenly the phone rang. She reached it first, and, bringing it to my ear, heard her mother’s voice.

    “Honey, I got your note. Make sure to hurry home because I am cooking your favorite meal for dinner. Oh, also, I am so proud of you for all the writing you’ve been doing. Listen, I don’t care wether you become a writer, or whether your stories are any good, I am just proud that you found something you love, something that’s constructive, not like all the mess that your class mates do with their free time. Anyway, just wanted to tell you that, and tell you to come home soon,” She chirruped. She held the phone to her heart, chewing myself out in my mind. Her mom always knew exactly what to say, but the though of staying here was actually sounding much more appealing to her. She wanted to distance myself from her writing for once, and just spend a week being happy.

     “Dahlia, can I stay with you for a week?” She asked desperately, pressing the phone to her chest. Dahlia looked, for some reason, immensely unsurprised. It galled her, but not enough to take it back.

     “Sure,” she said, sounding indifferent, although Logan knew she must be thrilled to have somebody to talk to.

     “Mom, Dahlia wants me to stay with her until her parents get home. So I’ll see you then, okay?” She asked with bated breath, because if her mother said no, she would have to pull out the ‘poor Dahlia’ card, and she hated to do that to her.

     “Fine, that sounds very kind of you. You are doing a good thing,” She answered. Logan sighed, relieved, and pressed the phone down onto the table.

     “Thanks,” She said gratefully. Dahlia looked at her with a tender expression, sizing up when to try and tell her what she needed to hear. Not now, she realized.

     “Hey, I know what we could do. Nora would be so mad if we took one of her art pieces, she would know the second she got home. Let’s take that one by Van Gogh that she doesn’t even like and we can see how long it takes for her to notice.” She suggested. Logan agreed cheerfully and followed her up the stairs to Nora’s room. Almost every square inch had a painting, or a drawing or something. They crossed the room and lifted down the painting in question. It came easily, but, just as Logan made to tuck it under her arm, the corner ripped a good sized hole in a leaf of paper that said “calculus study guide unit one” across the top. The piece of paper than drifted straight into the air vent.

     “Oh no,” Dahlia groaned. Logan broke into a cold sweat. She had no idea how to fix this. Nora was ahead of her in math by two years, and she was in the honors class. Dahlia’s hands were shaking as she pulled out her sisters math textbook.

    “Okay, this makes sense, uh huh, yep, nope… What are we going to do, this looks like it was written by Stephen Hawking! I am not even planning to take calculus, I hate math!”She shrieked.

     “Okay, calm down. Let’s do this the old fashioned way,” Logan said. She ripped out another piece of paper and began to forge her friends handwriting.

     “No, I can do it better, she’s my sister,” Dahlia pointed out. She began the laborious process where Logan had stopped.

     “What do I do about the hole though, I can’t see what it said,” she conceded.

     “Make up stuff,” Logan parried back. “It’s easy. Just throw in a couple of y’s and z’s and infinity signs. “ Dahlia furrowed her brow in concentration. After a minute, she breathed a sigh of relief, and gently placed the paper back on the desk where it had been before. The two girls brought the painting with them as they scurried out of her room. They stashed it in Dahlia’s room and hurried back to he kitchen. The two looked at each other and burst out laughing. Rolling on the floor, they smiled. Funnily enough both girls got something different from that moment. Logan finally forgot her stories for a minute, and Dahlia tried to forget her lonely life.

     When they finally stopped, they lay there looking at each other, smiling  contentedly.

     “You can’t run away from your problems forever,” Dahlia said, in the back of her mind, aware of how hypocritical that sounded and was.

     “What?” Logan asked, sitting up suddenly.

     “I know you’re not just here to help me feel less lonely while my family is gone. I know that you are running from something.” She said.

     Logan huffed and stood. “You can’t say that. You’re running from the whole world.” She knew she would regret saying that later but she didn’t care, Dahlia had no right to analyze her when she was doing her a favor out of the goodness of her heart.

     “No, I am letting the world run from me,” was her scathing, but cryptic response before she ran upstairs and slammed the door. Logan looked after her angrily. She was so full of it. Logan knew deep down that Dalhia did not want to be stuck in her home day after day, never leaving, but she was having a hard time remembering that now. She seethed as she walked around the kitchen, banging pots and pans just to rile Dahlia. Her hair blew wispily around her face, and her cheeks were burning. Her eyes blazed, and after a minute of furious stalking she noticed an odd wetness around the corners of her eyes. She was so furious that she completely forgot about the existence of tears, and wondered how it had got there. She passed a mirror, and glancing at it momentarily was appalled at her appearance. She looked ready to kill, and her facial expression sent shivers up her own spine. What had she become? Why was she so angry? It was not like Dahlia was wrong. She was, clearly hiding from something. Herself. Perhaps that was precisely what made her analysis so galling. It was true. She took a few deep breaths, and then calmly mounted the stairs and knocked on Dahlia’s door.

     “Come in.” Dahlia’s voice was so clam, so tranquil, considering the scene that had just ensued that Logan immediately wondered wether she had made the event seem worse than it was.

     “No, you know you will feel better if you just check at least,” she chided herself.

     Dahlia was sitting at her window, gazing out of the window with such a longing expression that Logan felt the prickles of guilt erupt into flames. She looked around the house that was not hers. The house that she was only staying in for a week, and imagined being stuck in it every day, never even touching the soft grass of the lawn. No matter how ignorant she was of Dahlia’s situation, she knew one thing. Dahlia was not here for kicks. This was not a life she had chosen.

      And she also knew that nobody liked to be pitied. Logan had chosen to keep her company, to stay with her while her family was gone, proud of her altruism and conscientious decision, but so far all she had done was scrutinize and isolate Dahlia, and push her further into her shell.

     “Dahlia, I was totally out of line. I know…I know you’re not here because you want to be, and I know that you probably don’t want to talk about it, and that’s totally fine. I just wanted to apologize for being a total idiot.”

     Dahlia gave a watery grin. “ Its okay. You don’t ask me about my life, and I shouldn’t talk about yours. I shouldn’t assume that your only here because your avoiding something. I don’t know your life,” She replied apologetically.

     “No, I mean, we can talk about our lives, and everything. I’m just not sure that I am ready, you know. Like, yes, I am avoiding some stuff, but, I mean, we all are. I just don’t feel comfortable telling you about it right now.” Logan looked out at the beautiful summers day, the dappled sunlight, and the blooming trees, teeming with life.

    “I’m sorry I can’t go outside with you. I mean you can go, I don’t mind, but I know that it’s probably boring without anyone with you. I’m not great company,” Dahlia said with heart-wrenching sincerity.

     Suddenly, an idea popped into Logan’s head. “How long has it been since you ate honeysuckle?”

     “What?” Dahlia asked, confused. “Uh, I guess about five years. Sometimes I can kind of smell it from the window, though.”

       Logan smiled triumphantly. “I’ll be right back. Let me go get something.” She burst out of the room and thundered down the steps, rushing into the sunlight with the joy of a toddler. She dashed across the street to the edge of a thick forest area in the middle of the neighborhood. She walked a couple of yards into it and looked around for a honeysuckle bush. She found one fairly quickly. It was peeking out from some underbrush, the petals of the succulently sweet flower glaringly visible due to their distinctive yellow tinge. She snatched at it, revealing a whole branch of honeysuckle, hidden by the the all encompassing green foliage. She gathered as much as she could hold and pelted back towards the door. Dahlia sat at the table. She had a hopeful expression on her face, and was absentmindedly wringing her hands. Logan knocked on the door, formally. She watched the lock turn, and then observed Dahlia’s rapid trot back to the table, where she waited expectantly for Logan to open the door. She did, and, hoping the bundle of honeysuckle in her arms, she proclaimed loudly.

     “Your honeysuckle m’Lady, has arrived.” She dropped the bundle at Dahlia’s feet.

     “Oh my gosh, it smells so much better from here! I used to eat these all the time! Nora and I would go walking in the woods behind you and we would collect these and eat them, and I swear I could eat a hundred all at once. I’m not sure I remember how to do it!” She started peeling back the leaves of the honeysuckle. She smiled as she squirted the nectar past her quivering lips.   

     “I want to enjoy this, so it might take a while.”

     “That’s fine, I’ll just dig some ice cream out of the freezer and we can talk,” Logan said happily. She scooped her self a generous cookies n’cream and sat down.

     “So, tell me more about the kind of things you and your sister used to do,” she said. She really was truly interested. Dahlia thought for a minute, drank another honeysuckle and then replied.

     “Oh, I don’t know. We were, are, pretty close. I remember she used to teach me volleyball. She was amazing at it, and we would all go on bike rides to this little picnic spot, and she would teach me after we ate. I actually played on a club team for a while, and the coach said I had a chance at a college scholarship, so I guess she was a good teacher!” She smiled, savoring the memory. “You know what, I think those were the happiest times of my life. Oh, I remember something else. We used to got to the library after school, and the librarian there let us sit underneath an empty desk and we whisper out loud to each other our English homework from the books. Sometimes that librarian would even bring us homemade cookies.” She looked down at her honeysuckle and sighed.  “Ugh, I’ve almost finished.”

     Logan looked at her pointedly. “Tell me if I’m overstepping, but, I’ll bring you more if you do something for me.” Logan sighed. “What if I bring some more right to the windowsill, and hand it to you through the window?”

     Dahlia  shook her head vigorously. “Don’t you want things to change?” Logan asked in surprise.

     Dahlia averted her eyes. “Of course I do. But, I can’t be selfish. I have to stay here, it’s the right thing to do. I want to explain it to you, I really do, but I just don’t want you to tell anyone at school why I am here.  Even though I will never see any of them again. I don’t want to know that they know.”

      Logan furrowed her brow, and fought down a look of extreme confusion. She wanted to be helpful, she just wasn’t sure she knew how to help. Something she did know, however, was how to use someone’s own words against them. She did it all the time to characters in her stories.

     “Okay, I understand that you don’t trust me right now, and I understand that I don’t understand. But what I do know is that, it is never selfish to do something for someone else. You would be making me so happy, in fact, you would be making me feel useful for once. I’m not telling you this to put pressure on you, all I am saying is that even inside of this house, even away from the rest of the world, you have the power to make someone happy. No matter what,  you can make a positive difference about something.”

     Dahlia’s looked up hopefully, “You’re actually pretty clever. That makes logical sense in my head. Okay, I’ll try it, but just know that in 60 seconds I will realize a flaw in your logic. It’s inevitable, no matter how good the argument is, so lets please do this really quickly before I think better of it. Logic doesn’t really work for long in my brain.”

      Logan’s eyes lit up and she dashed out of the door, slamming it behind her. She let her hands fly behind her in the wind, dragging her finger tips against the wind. After a minute, her mind conjured a cool solid surface that her fingertips were dragging against. She knew it was really just air, but she let herself enjoy the feeling, let herself live inside of her mind, falling into the sensation.

     She found the bush quickly this time, and yanked off branches vigorously. She pulled as many as she could hold, the biggest, yellowest honeysuckle she had ever seen, and ran with them, tripping over her own excitement. She neared the window.

     “Okay, you ready to make me proud?” She yelled, and threw the window open.

     Dahlia was hunched in the corner, breathing rapidly, and looking terrified.

    “I feel paralyzed.” She whimpered. Logan wracked her brain for any advice to give her.

     “Just trust me. I promise you’ll be okay. Okay?” She asked.

     “Okay,” Dahlia said in a hoarse whisper.

     “Stop focusing on your mind, disconnect completely from why you are doing this, from what you are afraid of, and just connect completely with your emotions. Feel the weight of you arms, and legs. Your whole life you have been walking. I know you know how to do it. So pretend that is all it is.”

     “Okay,” she said, her voice quavering. Dahlia slowly put one foot in front of the other.

     “That is amazing, you’re doing it!” Logan shouted proudly, thinking this would help Dahlia. Instead, to her utter confusion, the second the words left her mouth, she shrieked and scurried back to the corner, rocking back and forth and sobbing. Logan’s grin vanished, and she worriedly cambered thought the window. Halfway through her leg caught and she went tumbling down and landed splat on the floor. I her haste to reach Dahlia she clambered on her hands and knees.

     “I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to set you off!” She said fearfully.

     Dahlia looked grim. “It’s not your fault. It was an accident that I got scared just as you were speaking. It’s just, you know how I said that I would find a flaw in your argument? Well, I did. I, I can’t explain it, I don’t want you to think I am crazy. Explaining Obsessive Compulsive Disorder is like trying to explain the concept of color to someone who can not see,” she said seriously. Calm by now, Logan nodded understandingly, thought secretly she was still very confused. In her mind, she had always assumed Dahlia had agoraphobia. What on Earth did OCD have to do with Dahlia. She didn’t wash her hands too much as far as she could tell. Dahlia’s disease was more confusing than she had thought. She racked her brain for a while to make the situation a little less awkward.

     “Hey, you know I have some writing to do, so maybe you should go calm down, and I could write, and then we could make something good for dinner?” She asked. Dahlia nodded and picked herself up off of the floor. She exited, and Logan looked around after she left. The window hung open, the pile of empty honeysuckle lay on the table, next to a fairly large honeysuckle stain. Dahlia’s sobs still rang through the room, shrill and desolate. 

     Back in her room, Logan sat down at her desk. Her heart felt heavy in her chest as she looked at the blank piece of paper in front of her. There had to be a story in her. Something creative and new, and funny and emotional and perfect. She liked to write, so she should be good at it. People should be good at their hobbies.

     “Maybe I can write a historical fiction one,” she said, turning to a clean page and scribbling furiously. “Yeah, it can be set in the 1960’s maybe. Let’s see, the characters would be… the teacher who taught that girl. What was her name? Ruby something, who was the first person to integrate at a school? Oh yeah, Ruby Bridges!” She scrawled as she spoke.

     “Okay, now, a plot. Well, I’d have to do some research, but maybe I can show how the teacher’s family reacted to her teaching a black student, and she kind of discovers herself?” She wrote down the words with gusto, then sat back to look. It had all the trappings of a good story. Emotional, creative, a new take on a story told in school’s across America. 

     She pulled out her laptop and looked up “Ruby Bridge’s teacher.” She began to research, finding pictures, and articles, reading first hand accounts, newspaper clippings, and all she could find. It was fascinating and she became easily lost in the story. After she had gotten just some initial information, enough to start sculpting a voice for the young woman, she opened a word document. She wanted to see if she flowed well in the story. If it seemed like something she would be able to write, and write well. This was where she hit a block. As she started typing, the words on the page came out stiff, almost as if they didn’t want to stay on the page properly. Her excitement at the idea didn’t translate to the page, and she felt like she was wading through thick mud as she struggled to write an opening scene. Creative? A new take on a classic civil rights story? What was she thinking? The story no longer seemed like a stroke go genius, but yet another dry, derivative cookie cutter. She pulled at her hair in frustration. Another idea, surely there would be something? She turned to another clean page in her journal. A horror story? A college religion professor who’s teachings displeases the devil, so he sends demons after the man who hunt him down and kill him? No. A fantasy story about two sisters at boarding school who discover they are descendants of an ancient king who was supposedly magical, and who then go on a hunt to find his powerful magic wand? No. A mystery where everyone who borrows a certain Agatha Christie book at a library in London dies?

     “No!” She finally yelled. She looked down at her journal. She had marked up the last 10 pages, writing in huge messy letters each idea, and then subsequently marking it out, flipping to a new page, and starting all over again. Her pencil ink had bled onto her hands and her hair had come out of its bun. She stared at the desk in front of her. It was a mess.

     But she didn’t stand up, didn’t stretch her legs, or get water, didn’t go off and take walk or read a book or watch a movie. No, she stayed right where she was. She was tired. So, so tired. In fact, she suddenly didn’t feel like she could move. Didn’t feel like she could, and didn’t want to either, honestly. Her eyes drifted to the clock in front of her. 5:18. She looked at the little numbers until they weren’t little numbers anymore, but instead a neon blur. Time slid by, and even though she was looking at a clock, she was unaware of its passage. It sounds stupid to the average person maybe; feeling so paralyzed by just a simple hobby, by writing stories. But to her, it was the most important thing in the world.

     “Ding dong.” The ring of the doorbell roused her and her eyes lid back into focus to find it was 6:45. She had spent well over an hour staring at nothing, thinking nothing, feeling well, not nothing. She felt melancholy.

    “Ding dong, ding dong, ding dong.” The unsympathetic doorbell continued to chime.

    She somehow managed to rouse herself, the obnoxious ring finally doing what her legs couldn’t on their own.

     “Here’s your pizza,” a lanky, bored looking teenager at the door said, shoving a warm box into her hands.

     “What?”

     “I ordered a pizza,” Dalhia called from the next room.

     “Oh, okay,” she said, spotting a 20 dollar bill Dalhia must have left for her to use on the table and handing it to the delivery boy.

     “Thanks, have a nice night,” he said, loping back to his car.

     Logan brought the pizza in.

     “Hey, I thought pizza was a good answer to our problems,” Dalhia smiled. Logan shield back and handed her a gooey slice.

     “Hey, you know what’s really fun?” Logan asked.

     “No, what?” Dahlia sat up straighter.

     “Let’s eat pizza on the floor and play truth or dare! That’s what I do with all my friends at sleepovers,” she said, blushing a little. Dahlia’s eyes widened, so she knew that she hadn’t missed Logan calling her a friend. It wasn’t a lie. She felt as if they were friends now. They certainly didn’t fully understand each other, or, more like, Logan didn’t feel she fully understood Dahlia, bu they were definitely more than just acquaintances.

     “Okay, but I hate truth or dare,” Dahlia shivered, laughing a little.

     “Why?”

     “Because, you have to agree to tell the truth before you know what the question is. I mean that’s kind of the point of the game,” she said.

     “So? Let’s change the rules,” Logan said easily.

     “No, not unless you want to. It’s scary, but that’s kind of the point of the game. Trust. People unconsciously play two kinds of truth or dare. The kind with people they only kind of know. That’s where they unconsciously know that if one of the questions is too embarrassing they will lie through their teeth to preserve themselves. Then there is the kind of truth or dare you play with the person you trust most in the whole world. You know you will tell the truth because you know they won’t judge your answers, and you also know they won’t ask questions you can’t answer,” Dahlia said, her pizza limp in her hand as she talked.

     “Which category do I fall into?” I asked, a little nervously.

     “Hmm. Somewhere in the middle, I think,” she said raising her eyebrows.

     Logan wasn’t offended. She didn’t fully trust Dahlia either. “So then we play the first kind until we know each other better. But if it’s not a yes or no question, we tell the other if we were lying,” she said simply. 

     “Okay, I start. Truth or dare?” Dalhia said.

     “Truth.”

     “Are you afraid of anything stupid?”

     “Yes, rain” she said.

     “Why?” Dahlia leaned forward.

     “Because it makes me sad, but you can’t change it. It just keeps falling no matter how you feel.” Logan didn’t tell her that a lot of things made her sad that she couldn’t control. She didn’t explain that sometimes she would be overwhelmed by feelings of sadness for no reason.

      “Interesting. That’s kind of like the phrase, ‘nothing to fear but fear itself.’ Emotions are the most terrifying things because everything we say we are afraid of is really just all in the category of things that make us feel bad,” Dahlia’s philosophical words rolled right off her tongue, as if she was just commenting on a football game, or complaining about the weather.

      “Woah, too deep for truth or dare. You’re a very philosophical person,” Logan said, laughing.

     “Yeah, I like to talk about important interesting things. I don’t waste time on small talk,” she said in response.

      “We don’t have to small talk but we also don’t have to probe the depths of human nature!” Logan chuckled. “Truth or dare?”

     “Truth.”

     “Have you ever stolen anything?” Logan asked.

     “Yes. I stole Linda Patterson’s lunch money when I was in the 2nd grade because I didn’t have enough to get cookies,” she said, perfectly seriously.

     Logan relaxed, glad they had passed into a more fun, lighthearted conversation. The game continued. Logan felt like she was getting closer to Dahlia, but at the same time, only on a surface level. They had both pulled back a little after what happened with the honeysuckle challenge. Logan wasn’t anxious to be in that situation again. She wanted to be close to Dahlia. She felt curious about her. She could tell their was so much more to her story, and odd though it may seem, she felt like somehow Dahlia could help her.

     “Well, I don’t know about you but I’m exhausted. I think I’ll go to bed!” Logan said after a while.

      “Okay,” Dahlia said. “Oh my gosh, I just had the best idea though! We should write a story together!”

      Logan’s heart clenched. Dahlia would see that she was a horrible writer! What if she laughed at her, or made fun of her ideas?

      “Come on, it’ll be fun. It doesn’t have to be the next great American novel! Just something funny and lighthearted,” she said.

      Logan opened her mouth to object, but then she thought about how little Dahlia had to look forward to. She didn’t have any other friends to do this with, she just wanted to spend time with Logan. It would be selfish to deny her that.

     “Okay, but show me some of your writing first,” Logan said. She wondered what tales a girl like Dahlia liked to tell.

     “Maybe later, I’m a little self conscious about it. I was thinking we could write a comedy.”

      Logan clapped her hands. “I love comedies. We should do one based on this! Like, where two girls get stuck in a house together. Oooh maybe they are exploring somewhere and they get trapped in a house that they think is haunted, and it starts out like a scary story. But then,”

       “It turns out to be a comedy! Cool.” Dahlia cocked her head. “Wait, how does it turn out to be a comedy?” She asked.

      “Who knows, you give me some ideas!” Logan ribbed.

       “Fine, let’s say the house is almost collapsed and they can’t get out and they don’t have their phones, so they keep trying increasingly stupid ways to send a signal for help. Like, maybe they light a fire and it almost burns the place down and then they find an old radio and send morse code but they don’t know it well enough and by accidentally send some really ridiculous message. Then maybe at the end their could be a twist and it’s really some prank their family set up!” Her eyes lit up as she got into the story.

      “Yeah, that’s a good idea, and it could be so totally funny,” Logan agreed excitedly. She was completely past being sleepy now. She was excited despite herself. She padded across the hall to get her laptop and hurried back, her eyes glinting. She lost no time in opening up a word document and immediately began tapping the keys.

     “Hey, what are you doing?” Asked Dahlia, concerned.

     “Oh sorry, I’m not much for prewriting. I like to just dive in,” she said. That was partially true, but the reason she avoided prewriting was because she always felt a sort of feverish need to get words on paper. To capture the excitement of a new idea before her self doubts could get in the way.

     “Oh, okay that’s fine, I’ve just never not prewritten before,” Dahlia said, a little nervously.

     “Well, I don’t want to mess up your style. How about we meet halfway?” Logan felt awkward. Coauthoring was a completely new and weird dynamic that she had never experienced before. She felt a little bit like she had been thrown into the sandbox at recess for the first time as a kid and was trying to figure out how to make friends.

     “Well, we don’t have to pre-write but would you mind if we at least had some structure to the way we wrote together? Like, I do a sentence, you do a sentence?” She asked. She was even more nervous than Logan. Cortisol had flooded her limbs, but the fear for once had nothing to do with the outside. It was pure social anxiety. The fear of embarrassing herself in front of a friend. It was new. But this only lasted for a minute. The increased in stimulus to her mind, the sudden spasm of fear, caused an image to flash across her mind. She saw herself in her minds eye, raising her hand and striking Logan across the cheek. She gasped and stared down at her hand. It tingled and she clamped down on it with her other hand, determined not to let it move from its spot on the table.

     “Dahlia, are you okay?” Logan asked, fear flitting into her eyes.

     “Yeah, I’m fine.” She smiled unconvincingly.

     “You can do the first sentence,” Logan said.

      Dahlia nodded, and began. It was an interesting experience. An awkward experience. Both girls became silently more and more frustrated. It felt clunky, weird, incorrect somehow, to have to take turns writing, to have to run words by their partner before jotting them down. Both were used to solitary writing, and this new kind felt incredibly odd. It took forever to get even a page down and once they did, they looked back over it with dismay. It was like they had taken two different books, and mashed them together. Each girl wrote with such a different style that it was glaringly obvious who had written what sentences. It was so pronounced that if Willa Cather and J.R.R. Tolkien had decided to write a novel together, it would not have been more clunky and just plain wrong than the off combination of styles they had created.

     Dahlia laughed. A delighted, tinkling sound. “I think we both learned that we prefer writing alone. It certainly gives me an appreciation for books that have been coauthored,” she said. Her fear from a few hours ago had abated. She was grateful, but she didn’t know when it would come back. Her fears had never included Logan until now.

    Logan did not laugh. “You’re brilliant. You are so much better at this than me. I write like a 5 year old next to you,” she said, looking at her fingers, still resting on the laptop, with disgust.

     “What? No you don’t! I thought you wrote great. Plus you basically came up with the plot yourself!”

      Logan wasn’t listening. She was too busy carefully selecting all of her sentences and deleting them, leaving only Dahlia’s. She hit print.

     “There, now I’m just leaving the good parts. You should finish it, you’re a good writer.” She got up and walked into the kitchen. As she pulled out a box of cookies and made her way to the tv room. Dahlia scrambled to her computer and added back in the sentences. Then she hit print. She wasn’t that surprised at Logan’s reaction, but it did clear up confusion. Now she had more of an idea of why Logan was here. Dahlia could sense sadness, fear, desperation in the air around Logan. She was starting to get an idea of what it was from. She wanted to keep the writing though. It may not have been a great novel in the works, but it was a memento of their friendship, the closest thing she had to a signed yearbook, or a strip from a photo booth. She sighed, and went to get it off the printer. As she passed Logan’s empty room, she was sorely tempted to enter. To see what else she could learn about Logan, about what she was running from. She paused outside the door, her heart yearning to enter. It was unbearable, not knowing. But she wasn’t that kind of person. Logan’s business was her business, and they were friends. Friends didn’t snoop. Friends didn’t insist upon knowing everything difficult that was going on in the other’s life. She wanted to earn her trust. She wanted Logan to tell her herself what was going on. Then maybe she could tell Logan her own story. Maybe. The thought was petrifying. She moved on to her room, where the printer was.

    Downstairs Logan stared darkly at the cookie box in front of her. She had made a mess of herself. She was just as crazy as Dahlia. She immediately felt guilty for thinking it. Dahlia wasn’t crazy. Nevertheless, the idea of being like her was not a pleasant one. But her shame at revealing her deepest fear was overcome by the fear itself. Yet again, she had proven herself lacking in talent. She couldn’t write. She was horrible at it, and now she had someone to compare herself to. Someone who was gifted at it. She suddenly felt intense hatred of Dahlia welling up inside of her. In the last three days she had felt like they had become closer. Forced into a deeper friendship by their close proximity. Forced, but not unwillingly, she had thought. But now she felt pure shame. She could never tell Dahlia her fears. She could never explain the sudden bought of sadness, or the constant feelings of inadequacy. The gift of writing was a wall blocking Dahlia from her. Dahlia must have judged her, must have silently noted her lack of talent. To add her weakness, her unexplainable sadness to the list of reasons Dahlia had to mock her? It was unbearable. She crossed over to her book. Looked at the pages that had been smudged from tears, and ripped from the harsh pencil lines she had slashed.

       “New Story Ideas,” she said and wrote. “A…..a…a fictional story about a girl with magical powers who uses them to get revenge on her family who abandoned her when she was little.” She looked in disgust at the words in front of her. The ideas were becoming increasingly cheap and boring.

       The sky above this turmoil was beginning to roil. A storm was brewing. A storm that was completely unconcerned with the girls and their problems. A storm that was coming no matter what. As night fell, the clouds began to break. The heavens blew mighty breaths of air and spit maliciously onto the unsuspecting world below. The wind rushed around the trees and lampposts along the street.

     In her room, Dahlia was lying in her bed, trying with all her might to keep her eyes from shutting. Every time they closed, the image of her hand raised to slap Logan plastered itself to the front of her vision. Her eyes itched and stung and she couldn’t stop the inevitable. They had to close. She whimpered, and looked down at her hand. Almost without telling it to, her other hand moved to the scotch tape on her dresser. She started wrapping, binding her hand to her side. Her skin prickled and she knew it would hurt like heck ripping it off later.

     The storm whistled around her. She felt lonely. She wanted to see Logan, but she didn’t know how to explain the hand. Not without explaining it all, which was impossible.

     “Ice cream will cheer me up,” she said too cheerfully to herself. She made her way down the stairs.

    “Oh..hi,” she said awkwardly. Logan was sitting at the counter. She was staring at the table.

    “Hi,” she said. Another wave of hatred. She pushed it down. It was immature. “I was ridiculous today. I shouldn’t have snapped. I was really immature. I’m sorry,” she said.

    “I forgive you. It’s payback for what I did about the honeysuckle.”

      Silence.

     “What happened to your hand,” Logan asked, starting up.

     “Nothing.”

     “Are you sure?” Logan didn’t believe her.

     Dahlia looked at Logan’s eyes. They were bloodshot, but despite that she could see what lay just beneath. Terror and exhaustion were submerged just below the surface. Dahlia wondered if her eyed looked like that the months before she became too frightened to leave the house. Maybe they had that same pleading look.

      “Let’s play truth or dare,” she said, her heart pounding.

      “What kind?” Logan asked nervously. 

      “The real kind,” she said, swallowing. “You can ask me first,” she said. And in that moment understanding passed between the two girls. Logan new that this was Dahlia’s way of saying that she wanted to share. That she wanted to be asked the question Logan had been scared to voice. But she was also saying that to get answers, Logan had to give them too.

      “Okay.”

      BANG. Right outside the window a tree branch had fallen. It hit the window and then careened to the ground. It lay there, a giant disruption, the rain falling on its leaves.

      “You know how in movies right before the characters are about to reveal a dark secret, or kiss, or apologize, theirs always something that happens to interrupt them, and then its like, the moments over? I mean, like, oh, whoops, I’m about to apologize for stealing your boyfriend in the bathroom, but, oh no, someone walks in to get a towel, and its like, I guess we can just forget completely about that apology?” Dahlia asked. Logan nodded, confused. “Well, I don’t believe in that at all. If people are about to bond, there’s no reason a tree branch should get in their way!”

     Logan laughed nervously. “I think they do that for purposes of the plot, and suspense and stuff,” she said.

     “Well, whatever, its stupid.” Dahlia said.

    “Well then, I guess we’ll play truth or dare.” Logan said. She licked her lips. They were dry. “Truth or Dare?”

     “Truth.”

     “Why won’t you leave the house, and what does that have to do with OCD?”

     Dahlia’s heart pounded, but she pressed on. “I won’t leave the house, because I have visions of hurting other people. I’m scared that I might be one of those people that, when they’re around a lot of stressful triggers and things, get violent. I feel like if I go outside, where there’s so much noise, and stress and movement, then maybe I’d do one of the things I’d had visions of.” She looked down, ashamed. Her face burned red. What would Logan think?