The walk from her house to the old school building was one she knew all too well. She could tell how far away she was merely from the cracks in the sidewalk. The wider they were, the closer she was, and the further away her mind began to slip. It was a familiar routine. She would walk, breathe slowly, calm her nerves, and clear her mind. She passed the two pine trees on her left, and she turned towards a thicket of shrubs and a large boulder. Glancing at her father’s old and weathered watch, she knew that she had enough time. The only way she could get through this daily ritual was with a little help from an old friend. Behind the boulder, hidden amongst the weeds and dying flowers, a small little bag with white pills shaped like tiny hearts lay sitting. It was waiting for her. It always waited for her. She looked back over her right shoulder, and grabbed the bag. She took a heart out of the bag, the closest thing to love that she’d receive tonight. Opening her mouth, she hesitated. Should she really do this again? Were the ecstatic feelings, the money, and the pure pain worth the amount of remorse she’d feel later tonight? Was the man who would soon be approaching the old house hidden in the woods worth the humiliation of knowing she had to stoop this low? She had tried everything else. She did her classmates’ homework for five dollars per assignment. Papers she did cost either ten or twenty, final projects were thirty five. She watched her seventeen year old neighbor’s kid for the ecstasy she held in her hand. The old man across the street from her home provided her alcohol if she baked him a pie every Sunday and Wednesday. And on Mondays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays she did this. Her secret love affair with a man she did not even love. She didn’t even like him. She was nineteen, young, fresh, and far from innocent. She dreamed of going across the country to places like Hollywood. She could write like Hemingway, and had the looks of Hepburn. Yet here she was, in small town Rhode Island, continuing on her routinely walks to the edge of town to make her living. It was a lot of money, and she knew she didn’t deserve it. She was the lowest of low. As she swallowed the pill, she realized that the heart she had just put inside herself was the only heart inside of her. She was empty. She was nothing. An incomplete girl and she knew it. There was nothing she could do.

Finally, she approached the house. She saw her pretend lover glancing out the window of the abandoned place. She looked at the watch again, the only family that she had left. She sighed as the pill started to have its effect. The colors of the forest began to blaze around her, as if every ounce of her being was on fire in the best way possible. A sudden smile on her face, she opened the door. He was waiting for her. Ten years ago, he was probably a very attractive college student. He may have even been her type: artistic, with an appreciation for soulful poetry and classic movies. One day, she told herself. One day she would escape this life and live the life she knew she could. She would write. She would write as much as she could. She would write everything she saw. Everything that she knew. Everything that she remembered. She would write it all. She would read it out loud. She would scream it if that’s what it would take for someone to listen. It was then that she realized it. She didn’t need sunny California. She didn’t need Arizona or Nashville or even New York City to live out her dreams. She could write anywhere, and she could be her true self. She didn’t have to live this life.

“Hey there, beautiful”, the man interrupted her thoughts. His words were the blades of a thousand razors, sharpened by the drugs she had so willingly consumed. Her ideas faded, and as he pulled her in further, her dreams fell to the floor. She knew it wouldn’t be too long before the night was over, and she was going home a hundred dollars richer. It was an endless cycle, and no matter how much she wished and dreamed about anything, anything at all, it was useless. She was merely a machine, and that’s all she ever would be.