push-away

You can become good at procrastinating your opportunities by giving flimsy excuses. But never forget that it is rather your success that you are skipping away.

I hate him._ She repeats it louder. __ hate him!_ She shouts it at the sky, even though it__ hard to shout lying down: __! Hate! Luke! Willis!__achel asks, __ut what did he do?__allelujah can hear Jonah waiting for her answer. She knows he__ waiting because he__ stopped making fire-building noises. He__ silent. Completely.She takes a deep breath. __e told a lie about me. Actually, a lot of lies. And people believed him. The grown-ups, because he__ the preacher__ son and he__ never do something bad. And everyone our age__ecause he__ popular and you don__ question the popular guy, because if you do, you__l stop being popular yourself. Or you__l never get the chance. And because of what he said, my parents stopped trusting me. I lost friends. I was just this loser who___he breaks off. Now she__ talking to Jonah. Even though he__ behind her and she can__ see him. __t doesn__ matter what you saw that night, or what he told you happened. Luke treated me like I was nothing, and you let him do it.__onah doesn__ answer.__ut that__ not what makes me the maddest,_ Hallelujah continues, pushing up to sit. __hat makes me the maddest is that I let it happen too. I didn__ stand up for myself. And when someone did tell me to stand up for myself, I got so mad___arah. She feels the emotion of their argument wash over her, fresh.__ pushed her away. I told her she didn__ understand anything. But she was right. I became this girl who wouldn__ stand up for herself. The quiet girl. The nothing girl. I just wanted it all to stop, but from the outside, without me having to make it stop. And I wanted to get away, but I figured, hey, college will get here eventually and then I__l be away, I just have to get there, and all the while I__ miserable, and I__ letting you guys make me miserable, letting you make me think I__ supposed to be miserable, that I__ supposed to be quiet, and I__ shutting people out, people who maybe actually care, and I hate myself for it._ An abrupt stop. The train of thought hits a wall.She__ never said that before. Never thought it before. Not consciously.But she knows, deeper than she__ ever known anything, that it__ true.Hallelujah has spent six months hating herself for being weak and silent and for letting bad things happen and for not fighting.