This chapter is a rewrite - it's just the timing that's different really. I just noticed that the next chapter, which happens before this, starts at the end of the summer holidays, and this one has Wimbledon on which would be at the beginning. Oh the nitpicketiness of it all!

Prologue: Help me, I’m a number

Hello. My name is Rosie and I’m a statistic. Welcome to my mind.

I’m in a hospital and it looks just like a hospital should and it smells just like a hospital should and it sounds so wonderfully manufactured. The TV is at the end of the bed; fixed on football because I can’t be bothered to change it. .I don’t like football - sports have never been my thing and I don’t understand the rules - but with my head on my pillow and my grapes beside me, I just don’t care what I watch, just so long as I'm not made to talk about it.

I don't want to talk. Pleasant little chats will always be fake now. People only ever want to be comforting - they don't want to be real in front of me; they think I can't take it, that it'll break me. That’s why they speak in those low, slow voices and ask me completely innane questions while their eyes scream out 'Why? Oh God, Rosie, why?'

I'm not going to tell them. Not ever. Yes, even I can be stubborn when I want to be.

I eat a grape. I don’t even like grapes. I think that people just bring them to hospitals because it’s the 'done thing'. They probably bring them as a kind of half-joke that just isn’t funny. I eat them because they’re there and it’s something to do. I lead such an exciting life.

I don’t want to be here with everyone staring at me and trying to be all comforting. I want to be at home with the lights off and no one there. I want to just blend in with myself; alone. I don’t want to be here. I don’t want to answer questions. I won’t tell them why – I won’t. And I hate myself for making me a number. I’m just a basket-case now. I’m just a desperate love-sick loner with a fault and now there’s no going back. I’m so stupid! I’ve just given myself a lifetime of being looked at strangely, of being watched, of being the butt of insensitive jokes - and Jack was just a trigger. This would’ve happened anyway, later on. I don’t know when or why but I’d’ve found a reason somewhere, and I’ll probably do it again.

I never thought that this would solve things either. I was just bitter and I wanted to show them how I felt. I wanted to show them that I can hurt too – that I have the right to hurt and be comforted for it. I just want to live and do nothing, but it’s so hard to be alone without drawing attention to yourself. I’ll never tell them about Jack.

My mum is giving me a strange look again. I wish she wouldn’t; it makes me feel so guilty. She thinks that I can’t see her, but I can. I can feel her looking at me too and it hurts so much. I never wanted to make anyone hurt much; but Iwanted to show them all. Well, I guess I’ve shown them now, and I’ve ruined myself for it. I don’t want to keep hurting mum now, but I’ll never tell her a thing.

I reach over to that bedside table I’ve come to know so well in my days here and grab my mp3 player. The batteries are low and they’ll run out soon, but I don’t care; I need a lyrical pick-me-up before I go too crazy and completely break down.

“Just tell me why,” says Mum, sensing that her talking time is almost up. “Just tell me why and then – and then maybe I could help?”

I know that I’ll take this to the grave. I’ll think about this in the future and no one will understand why I’m laughing so much.

“It’s nothing,” I say for the fifth time today. I don’t mean for it to sound as stiff as it does, but I keep on talking in that same tone. “Don’t worry about it. Seriously, it’s nothing.”

I put in the headphones to fill my mind with his most beautiful voice. And I don’t want to seem completely rude and selfish by closing myself up like this, but it’s something that I have to do. I'll probably want to slap myself for it later, but never mind.

As he sings the words to the songs I love to know, my throat aches as if on cue and my eyes begin to get damp. This is all so crazy, but I don’t really mind and I know that I’ll laugh about this later. I shut my eyes and see him singing there, wonderful in every way. I wish that I could be him, or be like him, I’m not sure. The only thing that links us together now is this music, and I wish that I could just dissolve into it.

It’s just that… I can’t believe I still love him. I love him so much that it hurts and I know that it will never come to anything and this will be all that I ever have.

A/N as you can see this chapter's really short. Hopefully the next one will be longer. Please tell me what you think and everything, because I don't even know what the genre should be lol. Toodles!