Chapter 1

My mother sent me to a reform school because of a single cigarette butt.

That place wasn't a school. It was a living nightmare.

I begged her countless times to let me come home.

But her eyes were only ever fixed on my younger brother and my stepfather.

I realized too late that the day she remarried, she stopped being my mother.

Now that I'm gone, why is she crying?

Didn't she throw me away a long time ago?

1

I'm dead. My body is tucked away in a locker in the dorm room.

My skin has turned a sickly shade of blue and black.

Fresh bruises are layered over old scars, making me look like a monster.

The girls here used to taunt me. They said, "Your mom hasn't visited in a year. You could rot here, and she'd never know."

They were wrong. It hasn't been a year. It's been a year and three months.

My entire body aches, though I can't pinpoint the source anymore.

Is it from the kick the headmaster gave me last night?

Or is it the spot where a chair slammed into the back of my head this morning?

I felt myself slipping away, both in mind and body.

I wondered if my mother would even notice my absence.

If she found out, would she feel a single spark of regret?

The nights at this school are pitch black.

After washing the last bin of laundry, I limped back to my cramped storage room.

I wrote the final entry in my diary and crawled into the locker.

Hidden inside was an old Nokia flip phone my mother had tucked into my pocket before I was sent away.

"Keep this hidden," she had whispered. "I'll call you when I miss you."

She never called. Not once.

I dialed her number, listening to the hollow ringing.

I waited for an eternity, but she never picked up.

Mom, why won't you answer me?

As my life ebbed away, I kept redialing, one call after another.

Mom... you really don't care, do you?

Maybe my death will be a relief for you.

The pain became a dull numbness.

I felt so drowsy, my throat parched and begging for a drop of water.

But I didn't have the strength to crawl out anymore.

I closed my eyes. The world went silent, and I finally got to sleep.

Then, my spirit drifted upward.

I was gone.

And Mom... you never came.