(Sorry- I know someone posted a story with Effy in a similar situation- I hadn't realised that when I started writing this. )

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People came and went. Everything changed. All the time. Things got better. Then they just got worse. And worse. She used to be invincible. Unbreakable. In control. Now, she didn't even know what she was doing most of the time, until the damage was done, until it was too late. She tried to tell herself she didn't need anyone. But that wasn't true, and she knew it. She hated relying on other people, or on other things. So it just started off from this goal of independance. How long could she get by on her own? How strong could she really be, without help? She was hoping that if she took away everything else, or at least something else, she could finally see things more clearly. She could be in control of herself once again.

She had considered silence again. Sometimes things were easier that way. Less was expected from her then. But too much had changed. No-one would understand anymore. The only person who ever understood then was away. Now, occasionally, people accepted. But they never understood.

She had to at least try something to give her freedom. Less reliance. Just for a while. So she stopped eating.

Food: any nourishing substance that is eaten, drunk, or otherwise taken into the body to sustain life, provide energy, promote growth. Sustain life, provide energy, promote growth. It all signified the future. She wasn't ready for the future. She just wanted time to sort out the present without having to move on while the mess around her just got bigger and harder to deal with. Almost impossible to deal with. She wasn't stupid. She knew that food was necessary for survival. She wasn't exactly planning to starve herself to death or anything. And she'd decided drugs and alcohol wouldn't count. She'd still get energy. She needed energy to think. She wasn't trying to make herself weak. She just wanted to see how long she could do it for. If she had the strength to control herself, to resist temptation, maybe then she'd be more ready. If she could reject one mundane formality, she wouldn't feel as if everything around her was controlled by someone or something else all the time.

She decided to try a week to start with. That couldn't be too hard, could it?

The first few days weren't too bad. She felt slightly happier knowing that she hadn't given in to any temptation. No-one had noticed what she was doing yet. She was pleased about that. She didn't want interferance.

By the end of the week, however, she was exhausted. She felt sick and weak. No amount of vodka could make her feel better. It occasionally blocked it out for an hour or two. But when it wore off, everything came crashing back twice as hard as before, like a hangover that never went away. She felt light-headed and dizzy most of the time. She was struggling. But she never even contemplated stopping. There was something about this rediscovered self-control that made her happy in a weird, twisted way.

The week passed by and just rolled into another. All plans to stop at the deadline had faded into nothing. She had to keep going. She spent most of the second week alone. Thinking. Just thinking. She thought about Freddie. She missed him. They hadn't broken up or anything, but he'd decided it might be better to stay away from each other for a while until 'things got back to normal'. She knew he was right in a way. It wasn't going to make the Katie situation any better to have the pair of them happily together every moment of the day. He promised he'd come back to her soon. It had been almost a month since they came back to Bristol though, and she could still see no signs of normality. She thought about Katie. Katie was angry that Effy was back. Unsurprisingly of course. Emily avoided her, and Naomi was with Emily most of the time. Everything was strained with tension. Effy didn't know how to make things right. She thought about it most of the night, most of the day. She was struggling with her concentration too much at the moment to come to any sort of logical conclusion. She'd think for a few minutes, then everything just blurred. She'd feel stiff, her stomach would ache, her head would pound. Then for a minute or two, she wouldn't be able to think. She wouldn't have the strength. It carried on like that repeatedly. Fine for twenty minutes, pain for one minute, blur for two minutes. She ignored the constant buzzing of her phone. She didn't feel like facing anyone. She hadn't been out of the house in almost a week. That was extremely out of character for her, so she wasn't surprised that her friends were curious. Her mum occasionly came in to check on her. She never even questioned Effy's lie that she had a stomach bug and just wanted to rest for a few days. She was too wrapped up in her own problems to see the truth. Apart from that, Effy was alone. It was just her, and a supply of vodka and drugs that was quickly running out.

The third week brought Hell. Her mum had gone away to stay with an aunt for the rest of the summer. Effy was absentmindedly flicking through some college stuff. She was tired of thinking and wanted to do something else. And she'd promised Tony on the phone that she'd resit the exams that she missed. She didn't care too much for studying. She didn't see the point in it. Why not just live your life? But Tony knew she had been in trouble. He promised her that leaving Bristol was one of the best decisions he'd ever made, and she could do the same if she worked hard enough. She could do her AS exams in November and then do A-Levels later in the year. Then she'd be free. She'd have a few qualifications and she could do what she liked. But when she scanned her eyes over an old poem in her English book, it just made things worse.

'And, even yet, I dare not let it languish,
Dare not indulge in memory's rapturous pain;
Once drinking deep of that divinest anguish,
How could I seek the empty world again?'

Memory's rapturous pain. The empty world. That's exactly how she felt. The poet had spent her whole life pining over a lost lover who died when she was still in her early teens. She didn't really move on. And it terrified Effy to think that if her feelings matched quite accurately to those expressed in the poem, maybe she wouldn't move on. Freddie hadn't spoke to her in weeks. Maybe he'd forgotten his promise. Maybe he was sick of walking on eggshells around Cook and Katie and had just decided she wasn't worth it. Maybe. Maybe not. Everything overwhelmed her at the moment. She missed her brother. She missed her friends. She even missed having a proper family, no matter how dysfunctional they tended to be. She hated the fact that she could change things to make them better, but she didn't know how. And all she seemed to be doing now was indulging in memory's rapturous pain. She was supposed to be controlling herself. But with every action of self-control, with every day without food, the opposite was happening. She was slowly but surely spiralling out of all control. She was being taken over by something. Something had grabbed hold of her and wormed it's way inside her and it wouldn't let her go. She was panicking. What had happened to the cool, calm girl who could sort out everything? She was lost. She was trapped. And she was scared. The alcohol had ran out. All she was left with was the thoughts churning round her head and the physical pain that rattled through her body as she verged on almost starvation. This time though, she knew the thoughts were real. She couldn't blame them on alcohol. They were real. She wasn't used to feeling so low. Everything was magnified and worsened by the emptiness inside her. She could barely even stand up now. She was cold as well. Icy cold. No amount of clothes seemed to help. At times, she woke up feeling like she was drowning, falling. She didn't know how long she could carry on like this, but she was scared to stop. It's not that she wouldn't stop. She couldn't stop.

She thought about Cassie. At the time, she didn't really understand why Cassie was doing that to herself. Now she realised that she probably didn't even have a choice. It's not something you choose for yourself. The thought creeps into your head and then it chooses you. It controls you. But Effy wasn't like Cassie. She wasn't doing it to be thinner. She didn't care about how she looked. She did it so she could sort things out, but that was becoming impossible.

She'd no idea how many days or weeks had passed now. She'd completely lost track of time. Confused and weaker than ever before. Everything was a blur, but the pain was gradually going away. She couldn't feel anything anymore. And it was good.

She was interrupted by someone banging on the door, rushing over to where she lay. She could faintly hear someone whispering, "Oh God, Effy, what have you done, what have you done".

She recognised the voice but couldn't place it. The voices. She felt someone stroking her hair. Then she felt nothing. She felt free. She was flying.

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More coming soon!