I don't care.

I don't care because you would never in a million years care about the huge, angry fire that consumes me, burns every waking second of every stupid day of my life. You would never in a million years care about the huge, angry fire that you caused.

So every word that you speak now is nothing more than a jumble of syllables that lose all meaning when their sound waves hit my ear. I'm like a superhero that way: defying the laws of physics, turning your words into sheer nothingness. They're not worth listening to anyway.

Your constant, condescending stares that shoot from your ugly eyes dubbed “gorgeous” by the rest of womankind are now nothing more than a nervous twitch caused by my brilliant excellence.

Your foot stepping on mine is just your faulty footwork now.

Your binder colliding with my shoulder is a muscle spasm.

Your smile that always arises when I trip and face-plant in the middle of the hallway is just your laugh at someone else's joke.

Your finger pointing when I walk on the stage is directed at someone else.

You, yourself, evaporate into thin air by the end of the day and become nothing more than particles of dust.

And when I climb into bed, there are no thoughts centered around you to keep me up all night because you don't exist anymore. You're just particles of dust floating around in our atmosphere, not thought twice about by all the people back on Earth.

But suddenly, science works against me yet again and you re-solidify, coming running back into my life at top speed and with no warning that I'm caught off guard again. I am always caught off guard.

The words that you speak travel to my ears and through my brain and spin around my mind for hours, like a broken record playing that nobody bothered to stop. They bounce around my brain at light speed, drowning out my friends' jokes and my teachers' lectures until I'm living in a world of YOU.

Your constant, condescending stares send my eyes darting to my shoes- nope, not untied. My shirt- no, not stained. My hands shoot to my hair but no, not frizzy. And then I think, I can't see my face. I can't see my own personality. I can't see my utter failure.

Your sneaker-clad foot stepping on mine is your way of saying, “Loser, get away from me NOW.”

Your binder colliding with my shoulder isn't an accident. It's on purpose, and I can't ignore the black and blue monstrosities dominating my arm any longer.

Your cold smile is hideous and criminal and sends tears into my eyes.

Your finger pointing at me makes me lose my mind, the dance steps out of my brain forever; the lyrics escaping my mouth don't belong in a school musical anymore.

“I hate you. I hate you. I hate you.”

I don't believe in payback, or ignorance, either. I don't believe in telling an authority figure my problems, unless I want to be viewed as weak.

My friends silently leave me tracing their footsteps, trying to see where I went wrong and why I can't stand tall and proud like them.

And the broken record is still playing, over and over and over, not wanting to cease, as if one half of my brain isn't listening to the other that's crying, “Stop! Just please, stop!”

I curl into a ball in my room day after day, seeking the cold hardwood floor for comfort, scared to open my door in case you might be standing there. Scared to draw my blinds or open my windows for air in case you come leaping in.

Not even help from music on the highest possible volume can shut the “repeat” switch in my brain to the “off” position. Nothing can.

I don't use dates anymore. No more November or December or March or June.

The first day of the second month you've ruined.

The fifty-fifth day of my life you've ripped up into little pieces and stomped on and scattered around the school for all to see and laugh at.

You're a monster.

I don't believe in payback. Or at least I didn't.

Everything I do, all my thoughts, my tears, my attempted glares at you are all so impermanent that they disappear into nothing and fly around in the breeze, and there's nothing for me to see.

So I uncap my permanent marker and write on your locker door:

Float away, particles of dust. Float away.