Plastic smiles partnered with false sympathies glittered from a multitude of directions as my father's metal box was lowered into the pit. Did they think I cared?

If they knew the relief I felt that the monster succumbed to everlasting sleep, they wouldn't fake smile. Their brows would furrow with disapproval and the corners of their mouths would drip toward their chins.

"How could you be so cold?" Their eyes would question but lips would move behind hands and words would sing in the ears of those who can't answer.

My new family waited as my fingers were gripped by hands and arms were wrapped around my shoulders in empty embraces that were meant to be warm. Mom stood with her family, Paul's arm around her shoulders. Husband-1 was dead in the ground and Husband-2 danced on his grave inside, finally having the woman they once shared to his self. The smirk was implied in his eyes.

My mother stood stiffly with no expression on her face. Five years ago it did not have so many folds around her eyes and the silver in her brown hair were fewer. Her eyes had never worked for showing emotions. They'd always been blocks of blue ice. The ice melted some.

Mine didn't work anymore; the color of angry clouds and blank as a sheet of paper. Dad had the same eyes as me but shot with blood; gifts from the bottles he drank from. Maybe the eyes were the reasons Mom never fought for me – because she'd be looking into his while she looked into mine.

Next to Paul stood my mother's three replacement children; Jace, Alec, and Keith. Jace and Alec shared the same age of eighteen, birthday, and face, but their clothes were of polar opposites and their eyes held different souls. Both had looks that made them appealing and Alec used it to shine while Jace dimmed it down, hiding his face behind long hair. Keith was older and held back a lot, physically and emotionally. We shared the latter but the fact itself kept us from bonding. He was large and fit, keeping his control through physical endurance, the pain of screaming muscles and dripping sweat. He constantly worked out while his music roared and pounded at the walls, begging to be set free. I kept control through a different, more internal, pain.

I don't know why they came other than to watch. Funerals are a spectator sport and the grieving the circus freaks that they stare at; so ugly that they want to look away but can't out of morbid fascination. Like a car wreck.

Thunder rolls through the sky and through my body because I am empty and every echo is caught inside the cavity of my chest. My dark hair whips around in the wind, stinging my face with the smacks that feel good and bad at the same time.

They're still standing there, watching me, while the rest have gone. Me and my mother do not come together to share this loss because it isn't really a loss. I do not care. She doesn't care. Nobody cares.

Was this how death was for everyone? A crowd of people who don't give a damn, standing around and watching as the slumbering body dressed up for a party is lowered into the ground and covered in dirt to rot for eternity?

I turn my back as the Deathworkers pick up their shovels of bone and drip seals into the open earth and walk alone toward the car that will carry me to where my mother had been kept so busy over the last five years, that she couldn't even call me.

My name is Raleigh. Rah–Lie. "Lie" is in my name and it points a taunting finger at me as it rolls off the lips of the faceless teens surrounding me on my first day. Liar, Liar, Liar. I am not glad to be here, but what else can Raleigh the Lie say but that she is?

"Introduce yourself." Teachers say; an immediate show of power. They pull my puppet strings and make me dance in front of the other learners. A shadow hand makes my jaw move up and down and punches words out of my lips that I didn't put there. The hand knows what they want to hear and shapes sounds to please them.

At lunch, Alec sits in a crowd of admiration; athletes and made-up girls who twitter around, waiting for crumbs to fall from his fingers so they can pounce and feed. I sit with Jace. He promises silence and, though we sit next to each other, we are in our respective worlds.

I found someone who passes the time with me. Zach.

I was walking around one day and I came across a park that is too old and dirty to be used. It held the echoes of laughter and children playing. The bars were rusted and the chains on the swings knotted.

I walked into the park and lay down in the grass to look up at the sky that was too empty with my eyes closed and my mind drifting until a foot nudged my sneaker.

That was when I met Zach – a boy with blue-tinted spikes, green eyes, and a silver ring in his lip. All he said to me was, "Thought you were dead."

In my head I whispered, aren't I?

Over days and hours we met and talked. He listened while I spoke about things making no sense but floating in my head and I listened as he did the same.

"Why are you so sad?" He asked me suddenly one day as we watched the sky turn gold.

I told him that I didn't know if I was sad, that I was just empty, and he shook his head and told me that I was not empty, but full to bursting. I didn't understand then, but he didn't elaborate.

Over time he showed me what he meant. That I was so full that I felt empty – like when something is so loud there's almost silence inside it. Then he saw the marks on my arms – the wounds I make for release. He wouldn't take my silence as an answer anymore and he pushed until I exploded.

I told him about Dad hurting me and I told him about hurting myself. I told him about my absent mother and about how I felt numb all of the time, so broken. He simply held me as I cried for the first time in five years.

My emotions weren't broken anymore; I was healing. I spoke with my mother, and she told me of how she was afraid of hearing hate come from my mouth, so she avoided me.

I guess we both were a little empty.