The first thing she noticed was the pain. It was an old, sore pain, and that was what woke her up. Beginning to move into a sitting position, Amy realized this was not her bed, nor her room. She was in some sort of hospital room: beige tiled floor, white bed, white walls, and a fairly large mirror spanning the opposite wall.

Adjusting to the ambient lighting, she casually glanced at the mirror to be shocked at what she saw. A thick bandage adorned her right temple. For a brief moment, she sat, stunned, and then bolted out of her well-tucked covers to more closely examine herself. Upon using her arms to hoist her out of bed, she drew back, attacked by dull, deep pains. Her inner forearms both had thick gashes emerging from her elbows, also carefully bandaged, along with an IV on her left arm.

Amy felt her usually calm, calculated breathing increase, and her heart beat began a panicked canter. Her brain yelled sudden, discordant questions, none of which she had any idea of the answer. Rejecting the slightly throbbing pain, she jumped out of bed, wincing as she pulled out the IV cord.

The floor was ice cold, as expected, and she cautiously walked over to the mirror. Her legs seemed to be okay--until she noticed light traces of scabbed-over flesh wounds down her thigh. Fantastic. Her panic slightly ebbed away as she felt like herself again: rather critical with an aftertaste of analysis, and just a spice of sarcasm. The mirror detailed what she thought she had seen moments earlier: a padded bandage, spanning a rip in her skin from about her hairline to a little before her right ear. Lightly pressing on the bandage, she discovered, was not the greatest idea, but she needed to know how big her injury really was. It felt jagged, like a tear of lightning, and deep. Much too deep.

Briefly, she felt sick to her stomach, until quickly reasoning that she seemed to be alive and functioning. She vaguely chided herself for being squeamish; it wasn’t like it was going to kill her or anything. She was in a hospital, and clearly, from the bandages, being taken care of.

Amy succumbed to the pulsing questions at the back of her mind: What happened? What happened to me? Why? It disturbed her to realize she had not the slightest idea, and additionally none as to how long she had been here.

She jumped as the door smoothly creaked open, and a green-clothed nurse walked in with a tray to stop suddenly, surprised. "Oh--you’re awake! That’s always a good sign, although you should get back to your bed," the woman stated, gently yet firmly leading Amy back under the covers.

"What happened to me?" Amy asked, with slightly too much indignation.

"Ah, you should talk to your doctor, Dr. Campbell. I think he would much rather explain to you than have me answer questions. Your situation is kind of…unusual, and I wouldn‘t want to give you the wrong information." She gave her a kind smile, reattaching Amy’s IV and injecting fresh liquid into the drip.

"Well, since you can’t answer that, how long have I been here?" Amy’s brow creased.

A slight frown. "Almost three days. How do your arms feel?"

"Fine, I guess. They’re not bleeding or anything."

"Sounds good," she said, writing a quick note on a clipboard. "I’ll be back in about an hour to check on you, and I’ll find Dr. Campbell to answer any questions you have. Anything else you want? We should be taking you off the IV, now that you’re definitely awake."

"No, I’m okay. Really, I just want someone to answer my questions," Amy replied with a mild glare. The statement was slightly barbed, but not obvious. The nurse nodded, and left the room.

She stared back at herself via the mirror. For once, fear trickled into her mind. Amy let her head rest gingerly on her fist and became lost in thought. How could this have happened? When? She rarely if ever allowed herself to be in a situation dangerous enough to warrant physical harm. Amy racked to her brain to think of her last memory before waking up here.

Driving...down a slightly unfamiliar street. She couldn’t remember getting home or getting out. Coming from...a party?

Yes, that was it, she realized. Kristen’s birthday party last Saturday. There had been a good-sized group of people there, she guessed about twenty. Not too huge, she knew most of them fairly well. This all gave her no clues about her present situation. She tried to think about what had happened at the party, but all minor events seemed to be beyond her memory. Amy huffed in irritation at herself. How could she not remember? Something important HAD to have happened. What was blocking her?

The door opened again and she jerked her head to see her newest visitor: a tall man, slightly past middle-age, with dark beige hair. He smiled, saying, "Ah, Miss Colton. How are you feeling?"

"Okay."

"I’m going to assume you have a lot of questions. You suffered enough mental trauma through bruising and…your most obvious injury that we assumed you would have some degree of memory loss. How much do you remember?"

"Not too much. I remember I was driving home from a party at my friend’s house, but that’s about it."

"Can you remember how you were feeling, if you were threatened by anyone, stopping during any time on the way home...?"

"No."

Amy could tell the doctor really wished she could. "Your parents have asked that the police stay out of this as long as they can, mainly because they don’t want to cause you any unneeded stress, and because we know you wouldn’t be able to give the most detailed testimony anyway." A light smile.

She shrugged. "Fine with me...although really, I would like to know what happened to me." Amy drew her head back into an assertive stance, looking at him directly in the eyes.

Dr. Campbell nodded warily and glanced at the chart in his hand. "First of all, Amy, have you felt any feelings of depression?"

"No," she said, shocked.

"Have you, or would you ever, cut or harm yourself?"

"Definitely not," she replied. She felt slightly offended.

He saw the look on her face and told her assuredly, "We know you’ve never had any sort of emotional disorder, but I have to ask. Your wounds almost look self-inflicted, except they’re from a very unusual angle. Now that that’s out of the way," he sat down on a wooden chair next to her bed, "You arrived at your house at about 9:45, according to some of your neighbors. But you don’t remember that."

"No, I don’t."

"Hmm," he frowned. "Do you remember anything that happened earlier, like at the party, that would have made you block out the drive home? Anything which may have caused an emotional trigger..?"

"No, I don’t think so," she said, partially distracted in thought. But at the same time something in her mind twitched. Maybe..? Did someone follow me? Did I stop along the way? Most importantly-- "Wait. I didn’t leave that earlier before that."

"Yes--"

"So, where was I found?" She couldn’t think of any reason she would stop along the way home that late at night, and it wasn’t like her house was in a dangerous area at all.

"Amy, your mother found you in your room."

Amy stopped her thinking, stunned.

"Whoever did this to you, Amy," he looked at her profoundly, "had to have been someone close to you. Someone who knows where you live, and purposely attacked you. Your injuries don’t fit the description of a random assault."

She slowly resumed her breathing.

"If you can remember anything about that night, it would be extremely helpful for the police to identify whoever attacked you."

* * *

"Sorry sweetie, looks like we’ll have to rap this up," her mother said with an annoying fake grimace. She held up her constantly beeping cellphone. "They really need me back at the office."

Typical. "That’s okay." Amy’s voice tried to convey understanding and calm, but she could never erase the bit of irritation that also came through.

However, most of the time it went straight over her mother’s finely styled head. "I knew you’d understand," she said, smiling apologetically.

Regardless, Amy suddenly felt very tired. She didn’t really have a firm grasp of what time it was, but her injuries made her feel fairly lethargic. She fell asleep with her mother stroking her hair.

She couldn’t have slept more than ten minutes or so, but her mother was gone. She let out a small sigh. It didn’t seem like she was ever good enough or important enough to be around her anyway. After getting through the obligatory Are-you-okay’s and How-do-you-feel’s, the first thing her mother had asked about, fairly harshly, was whether Amy had gotten her SAT scores back yet. (She had, and they were average.) And then whether she could remember what she had gotten on her physics midterm. (She could, it was 76%.) Her mother did not happily accept anything short of excellence.

What’s stopping me from being good enough for her? Amy demanded from herself angrily. She wished she could just find whatever weakness that was inside her and yank it out.

Amy let out a frustrated huff, and adjusted her pillows behind her back. She felt something like paper underneath them, and her anger was quickly replaced by confusion. It was a palm sized piece of paper, folded in half. She opened it.

Scrawled in hasty, penciled block letters were the words NEXT TIME I’LL DO IT RIGHT.

How long had this been under her pillow? Someone either had to have put it there before she had woken up, or during the small nap she’d just had. There was no question what the note meant. Her attacker knew that they would be back again.

She felt paralyzed by fear, and compulsively looked around the room, checking for anyone hiding in the corners. Nope. Just her. She breathed a little easier.

Why would someone try to destroy her? Probably because they found her as weak and full of failure after failure as she found herself. This would mean, as her doctor had previously said, that the attacker would need to be someone who knew her very well.

Paranoid, she thought nervously of her mother. She wouldn’t do that…would she? Of course not. But she did mess up a lot, in her mother’s point of view. She could never do anything to make her mother happy enough. Maybe her mother had finally gotten sick of it...

Amy shook the thoughts away, but didn’t try to forget them completely. Instead, she found herself slightly able to remember the party more. She had gotten there early. She had talked to Kristen and Kristen’s close friends all night. Wait, no she didn’t. She’d tried to. She’d be chatting with them amiably about something, and everything would be going fine. And then…somehow she’d misspeak. Make a faux-pas. And she would see all of them looking confused and wondering why they were talking to her for a moment.

It always happened, she thought, irritated. There was just always something she’d miss out on, never be caught up on, or she’d make a joke no one understood. Seriously. What was wrong with her?

Nothing was wrong with Kristen, she thought bitterly. Kristen was very aptly described as a social butterfly. She had a great sense of humor, plenty of charisma, and was definitely smart enough to hold her own in intelligent conversation. It all seemed to come so...naturally.

That’s when she remembered. Even if Amy did occasionally strike out socially, Kristen was always there with a sincere smile. Like she understood. Amy thought of Kristen as one of her best friends…but Kristen didn’t think of Amy as hers.

Kristen had been talking about a trip to the city she was planning. Amy was casually eavesdropping while visiting the snack table. "You know, I like inviting a bigger circle of people for parties like this. More options of people to talk to, more mingling, some people don’t know other people, it’s fun. But really, I just want my best friends with me, so probably just you guys," she gestured at the three girls she was speaking to, "and Jessica. It’ll mean more to me."

Amy had felt crushed, but didn’t let it show. She felt kind of numb, and after thanking Kristen for inviting her, she left. So what if she felt closer to someone than they did to her? It’s not like she hadn’t been trying to be better friends with her...for the last two years.

Dammit. She bit her lip, and felt like crying. She was such a failure. Having friends wasn’t a class. Unlike her physics grade, there was no way to study and get better. She was just...stuck.

* * *

Nevertheless, Amy felt better a few hours later when a nurse brought in a handful of large cards. She said that a group of teenagers had just walked in with them, and seemed disappointed that they couldn’t visit Amy personally.

She read through them. Someone had obviously brought this to a couple of her classes, as she recognized the names but couldn’t remember actually having a conversation with most of the signers.

"Amy..?"

She hadn’t even heard the door creak open. "Mom? Hi."

"I’m so sorry I didn’t really get to talk to you earlier," she seemed a little nervous. "And I’m sorry I started nagging you right away. I feel really bad about it."

"Not to be too rude, but why?"

"Well," her mother looked at her directly in the face, "I’m not sure how much the doctors have told you, but if I had found you a few minutes later, you would probably have bled to death."

Her hypotheses shattered. "What?" This meant that her attacker, the writer of the note, had failed at killing her. How was she that dense to miss someone who wanted her out of the picture that much?

"Yeah," her mother looked down, seeming a little ashamed for not telling her earlier. "I just...I don’t know what I would have done if you weren’t here anymore," she was crying by now, and moved closer to Amy. "I’m sorry I’m always so hard on you. I know how hard you are on yourself. I shouldn’t be doing that." Still crying, she wrapped around Amy in an embrace.

Her mother straightened up, and saw the nearby cards. "Oh," she smiled. "Call me silly, but I want to sign too. Just in case I have to suddenly leave you again." She reached inside her suit jacket and pulled out her fountain pen. She always had one on her.

She wrote a good-sized note. Not too big, but big enough to be heartfelt. She sighed, and looked off into the distance. "Unfortunately, I do have to leave. I have to start dinner. Your father and Kevin are a little disappointed that they haven’t been in to visit while you’re awake, but they have pretty full schedules. They really miss you." Her mother looked like she was going to start crying again.

She stood up. "Bye sweetie. I’ll be in again tomorrow," she smiled sadly.

As her mother closed the door, she punched her pillow. She felt like screaming at herself. All of her thinking, inferring, and figuring and she had been completely wrong. What could she have been thinking, anyway? Her own MOTHER. Of course she would never try to kill her. It was the most completely moronic, farfetched idea EVER.

Amy glanced at the cards her friends had signed for her. She was such a failure, she had to work hard and concentrate even at maintaining friends. What was WRONG with her. For most people being cordial and charming just came naturally, but she, just like every other skill she developed in life, had to work hard, study, and concentrate. And mimic. Who was she, anyway? What skills or real personality did she have? She fumed at her weaknesses, her attempts, her years of trying and failing because nothing ever came naturally. Absolutely nothing.

Her emotions boiling, she saw the fountain pen her mother had carelessly left on the chair. Amy grabbed it viciously, almost crushing it as she prepared to plunge it deep into her chest. At the same time, she happened to glance up at the mirror, seeing the face of her would-be murderer.