Hate Amongst the Labels

Tish's POV

"WHAT?!" I hear myself scream as I try to jump up, Kev's arms restraining me.

"Let me fucking go Kevin!" I thrash around in his grip trying to break free.

Finally his hold releases and I run up to a breathless Devin.

"Where the hell is she?!" I yell in his face.

"Behind -big breath- the curtains." He points as he collapses on the stage.

"Where's Taylor?" I ask Kev. He shrugs. How can he not even care?

I run to the bathroom and find her drawing shit on the walls with a sharpie.

"Taylor, Danielle is dead! Help me find her!" She whips around and gives me a bewildered look.

"You've got to be shitting me." She says in a monotone before practically falling off the sink and following me out the door.

Oh fuck, this is all my fault! If I hadn't had the nerve to piss her off so bad this never would've happened. God, I'm going to hell. I just practically killed a person!

When we reach the curtains Devin was talking about and Taylor pulls ahead of me and starts whipping curtains out of the way like a tornado. We really don't know Danielle, but death is just a damn serious thing.

When we get back far enough it's pitch black dark, and we can't see a thing.

I reach out in front of me and I don't feel anything. I don't hear Taylor anymore either.

"Where the fuck is the damn light switch around here?!" I hear Taylor mumble from about 10 feet to my left.

Then the bright flourescent lights snap on, blinding me as they shine against the linoleum floors.

I hear a cry escape Taylor and I look over at her. Her eyes begin to tear up and she reaches out a trembling arm to point. As long as I've wanted to see this girl cry you'd think I'd run up to her and start laughing and pointing in her face, but this is just too horrible.

I follow her arm only to find a sight so gruesome, it makes me want to run and erase the memory from my vision forever. I let out a bloodcurdling scream.

There she is. Blood pooled around her snow white skin. Long, deep slashes going across her wrists. Her eyes are closed, and she's got her head leaned up against the white wall, now stained blood red. I glance at the floor and find the culprit, a small silver razor blade.

I can't believe it.

Taylor's POV

"We have to help her!!" Tish howls as she runs towards Danielle's clearly unconscious body. She kneals next to her and starts ripping off strips of her pants and t-shirt in attempts to stop the still flowing blood. She ties them around her arms, and I can see her tears are flowing like a God damned river now.

I'm still frozen in place, not sure what to do when Kev comes racing through the curtains.

"I heard someone scre-" He gets cut off by his vision locking on the sight of Danielle unconscious in the corner and Tish covered in her blood with half of her clothes ripped off. I hear his sharp intake of breath as his mind processes the scene.

Kevin takes slow steps toward Danielle's body and he kneals down next to her like she could jump up any second and attack him. He reaches out 2 shaky fingers and places tham against her throat, checking for a pulse. Tish's eyes are on him, begging for an answer.

"It's very, very faint. But I think she's still in there." Kev says in a hushed tone. He then, wipes the imaginary blood off his fingers against his pants.

Before he finishes the sentence my mind goes into overdrive and I whip out my cell phone.

I dial and wait for the unusually perky lady to answer.

"Hello? I need an ambulance to Sticktongue Academy!...YOU FUCKING HOMO OF COURSE THIS IS AN EMERGENCY! SOMEONE IS DYING!! WHAT THE HELL ELSE WOULD I NEED AN AMBULANCE FOR!?!? SO GET YOUR AMBULANCE BUTTS HERE RIGHT THE FUCK NOW!! SHE'S LOSING BLOOD FAST!!!" I scream into the phone and then snap it shut. Tish and Kev both look up at me with wide eyes and I give them a light, embarrassed smile.

"I can't believe I did this..." Tish trails off staring at Danielle.

"You didn't do anything Tish, It was just a matter of time, ya know?" Kevin coos in her ear as he lightly rubs her back.

"Didn't do anything!? I just made someone kill themself! It's all my fault! I'm a horrible person!" She yells.

"Tish, she obviously had issues with shit before you said that stuff to her! We've all said our shit to her and you were just the unlucky person to make her snap. It could've been any of us, this was just kind-of like the piece of straw that broke the camel's back. It's been building longer than we fucking know, and there's nothing we could've done to stop her, she'd already made up her mind a long time back. Maybe she's better off where she is now anyways and flipping out is gunna do us no good at this point!" I screech at her, shutting her up.

"Maybe we can save her, maybe we can't. All we can do at this point is hope..." I trail off staring at the bloody image in front of me.

Kev's POV

I run back through the curtains to go find Mr. Nick and to get Tish a sweatshirt or something since her shirt is ripped up. I run up the stage and Devin is passed out, fast asleep on the floor. I'll just leave him. It's better he doesn't have to deal with this too. I grab a hoodie from my bag and run to Mr. Nick's office.

"Mr. Nick!" I yell as I enter. He's not in there...

I run out into the hallway and scream his name as loud as I can and I still get no answer. Maybe he went home. I look at one of the clocks hanging on the wall and it informs me it's 12:14 right now.

I'll just forget about Mr. Nick, we don't really need him I guess. I jog back into the auditorium and go straight through the curtains to where everyone is. No one has moved from their previous positions. Both girls have puffy, red eyes and tears streaming down their faces. Taylor glances over at me but just backs up into the wall behind her and slides down it and hugs her knees to her chest.

I walk over and hand the sweatshirt to Tish and she gratefully slips it over her head.

We all sit there in silence until the faint sound of the ambulance can be heard.

"Stay here." I mumble as I jump up.

I run to the door and out to the front of the school in a matter of seconds and wave the ambulance over.

"Where is she?" A large man jumps out, and I take off running back into the auditorium and he follows.

I push back the final curtain and hold it open for the man. He takes one look, and runs over to Danielle. He checks her pulse and then scoops her up and we all race to the front of the school again and he loads Danielle's body onto a stretcher.

"Is she gunna be okay?" Tish asks the man gripping onto him arm.

"I can't say...She still has a pulse but she's lost alot of blood." He says as he hops into the passenger side of the ambulance.

"Wait, aren't you going to take us to the hospital?" Taylor asks.

"No room!" I hear him shout out the window before they speed off, sirens blaring.

We all stand there for an immeasurable amount of time. My arm is around Tish and Taylor is just standing there, with her arms crossed like she's cold even though it's warm out tonight.

"How are we going to get to the hospital?" Tish asks.

"I don't know. No one has a car here." I say.

"I live not 10 minutes down the road. Five if I cut through lawns." Taylor says and we both turn to stare at her.

"Are you just gunna run and bring back a car? You're not old enough to drive anyways." Tish asks sarcastically.

"That's exactly what I'm gunna do. Stay here." Taylor takes off running through the parking lot before we can even say anything.

Me and Tish go and sit down on the curb waiting for Taylor to come back with a car. This has been a crazy ass night.

Taylor's POV

I zoom through lawns until I can see my backyard not 15 feet away. My heart jumps when my shoe gets caught on a dog toy and I face plant right into the concrete around someone's pool.

I yelp in pain, but I get back up and keep going. My arms and hands sting but I can't stop.

I jump over our fence and run into the front yard. Thank God the garage is open.

I grab my mom's keys from right inside the door as quietly as possible and hop into her turd green SUV.

I whip into reverse and fly out of the driveway and down the street. Hopefully no one heard me because this is definately illegal. My mom would shoot me if she found me.

Driving down the street, I narrowly avoided hitting a bush, a mailbox, and a flag pole. Before I can even stop to let Kevin and Tish in they're already piled in the back seat and I'm already stomping on the gas halfway to the hospital. The hospital is about 20 minutes away, but on account of my blowing every stop sign on the way there we got there in record time.

We all file out of the car and race into the glass doors of the hospital. I guess we're all trying to move so fast because we don't want her to die before we can get to her...

I run up to the lady at the front desk.

She gives me a bored smile and asks what I want.

"Uh, yea we're here to see Danielle...-I look to Tish and Kev to help for help and all I get is shrugs-...Aineel!" I finally spit out.

"And how are you related to the patient?" She asks in her annoying nasally voice as she continued to type away on her computer.

"Uhm, we're cousins." I say.

She raises an overly plucked eyebrow at us but mutters: "Room 1157, floor 3."

We dash off into the elevator and I jam the button for floor 3. When the little bell, signaling we've reached our floor, dings we all pile out and search for room 1157.

As we walk through the hallway we see a sign that says: "Severe Burn Damage Wing."

What the fuck is she doing in the burn wing? Nurses and Doctors walk by, most in a hurry, to go treat patients giving us strange looks as we wander the halls.

We finally arrive outside her room and we knock loudly. A middle-aged male doctor opens the door and gives us a small smile.

"Are you guys relatives?" He asks giving Tish's pregnant belly a funny look.

"Yea, yea." I say as we push him out of the room and slam the door.

There's Danielle, arms bandaged up from wrists to shoulders. Her heart monitor is beeping at a very slow but constant rate. We all just stand there and stare for a couple minutes until Tish pipes up.

"My feet hurt." And with that she plops down into one of the chairs. Lazy whore.

Kevin goes over and comforts her and asks her if she wants her feet rubbed and shit. Just looking at them disturbs me, he's such a vagina around her.

I finally get the chance to analyze my scraped up hands. There are deep cuts going across my palms from my earlier spill on the concrete. The knees on my pajama pants are torn up and I look like a zombie. But, whatever.

About 5 minutes later I hear a little rustling sound, and I look up from my magazine to see Danielle's eyes open a tiny slit.

"Where am I?" She asks in a hoarse voice.

"Hospital." I say as I go back to my magazine.

"Hospitals scare the shit outta me..." She trails off and her eyes slide closed once more.

She looks more pale than usual and you can see all of her veins. It's creepy.

Then, the doctor busts through the door followed by a man that I assume is her dad. The doctor uses confusing smart doctor-words to the guy and he nods like he understands. I tune then out until I hear the last part.

"...We're not sure if she's going to pull through in this situation."

"What? She's fine! Look at her!" I shoot up from my seat.

"Well, I hate to say this young ladies body wasn't treated so nice. There were many traces of perscription and over-the-counter drugs in her system." He explains.

Jeez, this girl was asking for it.

"How is that gunna make any difference?" I ask.

"Well some pills when you mix them together react in bad ways, and with the heavy blood loss, to begin with, her body was weak." He says folding his hands.

Just as if he'd called this to her, I hear the beeps speed up until there's no room between them, and then a long hollow beep rings out from her heart machine.

My heart drops to the floor.

"No!" I scream and Tish and Kev get up and run to the side of her bed opposite me. I feel hollow on the inside, I've never seen a person die before. I want to do something to stop it but I can't move and I can't speak. The doctor picks up a walkie talkie thing and says something that I don't understand.

Nurses rush in and push us away from her bed. They pull out those big shocker things, and try to bring her back. The first time it doesn't work. Or the second, or the third, or the fourth...

Tears silently leak out of my eyes, and I feel the nurses shouting and pushing us back out of the room, but everything's happening in slow motion. I can't react.

"You guys can't be in here!" I hear one nurse yell as she finally pushes us all the way out, and closes the door in our faces.

Tish collapses into Kev, for the 50th time tonight crying her eyes out, and all I can do is just stand frozen in my spot.

I feel numb.

Finally, the doctor comes out of the room with a solemn look on his face.

"I uh, really hate this part of my job but, I hate to tell you this..." He trails off and scratches the back of his neck uncomfortably.

I grab onto the front of his doctor smock-jacket thing and stare him cold in the face.

"Just spit it out!" I howl.

"She didn't make it." He says with fear in his eyes. I just hold him like that, until it finally all clicks into place. Somebody...just died. Gone, never to come back. All the people she knew and came in contact with, will never see her again.

I throw him slightly towards the door only enough to make him take a step back. He fixes his jacket and glasses and examines all of us.

"I'm sorry about your loss." He says gruffly and strides off down the hallway.

Dead. Gone forever. Not coming back.

She never did anything wrong, just kept to herself.

I don't know why I'm so affected by this, I didn't even know her at all.