Disclaimer: I don't own The Virgin Suicides.

Cecelia gripped the sink and raised her head to look in the mirror, meeting her own spiritual eyes that observed more bad things then good in the world. She looked away, letting them fall on her father's razor Mr. Lisbon had forgotten to put away. She took it in her small feminine hand, bringing it close to her wrist. She looked up at the mirror again, now seeing her spiritual eyes filled with the fear her trembling body revealed.

A week before, her sisters Mary and Lux had taken her along to the convenience store to simply get away from the house. Once inside, the girls scanned over every magazine the store had.

"Which one do you think I should buy?" Mary had asked.

"Which ever one you like," Cecelia had answered in a bored voice.

Mary frowned, but Lux smiled at her, "I bet I know which one you'd like."

"Leave her alone, Luxie." Mary scolded her.

"You sound like mom." Lux said before going off to talk to the handsome young man at the counter.

Mary put her arm around Cecelia, "You can get a wedding magazine if you want, I'll pay for it. You can get what ever you want."

Cecelia chose one wedding magazine and another magazine at random. Mary paid for both, without question.

* * *

When they got home Cecelia took them up to her room and looked at the one she had selected randomly, finding an article about a girl who used to cut herself to ease, as the article put it, "…all the pain she locked away." At the time, Cecelia thought the girls actions were the epitome of bad choices parents warned their kids from making.

She looked away from the frightened girl in the mirror and watched her father's razor press hard against her skin. Cecelia braced herself for the pain she knew was about to come by taking a deep breath, like she was at the doctor's office and not about to self-mutilate herself. She dragged the blades down, biting her lip not cry out in pain, and gave a twitch of agony. Despite the ache her wrist felt, she put the razor in that hand to press and drag it down her other wrist. She accidentally dropped the razor that time in the toilet and stared at solemnly her bloody wrists.

She tried to imagine her problems mixed in the blood pumping out of her veins and then felt her heart skip a beat. Panic engulfed her, with the memory that the article had said the girl nearly killed herself by cutting her wrists. Cecelia, not wanting to die, turned on the shower, fighting the pain it gave her wrists, so she could wash the cuts she had made. All the times of adults telling her to clean injuries had Cecelia convinced that she could save her life with a bathtub full of water.

She laid down in the lukewarm water and kept her dress on because she wanted to her cuts to get cleaned before it was too late, all the while reliving a moment of her recent past.

She had been lying on the grass, a breeze pulling it in all directions. The clouds overhead made images of rabbits, elephants, and giraffes for her too look at.

"Cecelia, time to come in!" her mother's voice called, making her sigh and get up.

After having bee lying down so long, her head felt dizzy and she lost her balance. She would have fallen if it hadn't been for the reliable arms of Tim Weiner. She looked up to see his friendly and trustworthy face.

"Are you alright?" he asked, genuinely concerned.

She straightened up, "Yeah, I'm fine."

He smiled in a way that made her heart flutter like the wings of a butterfly, "Well, that's good. I wouldn't want anything bad happen to you."

Cecelia smiled a little, "Thank you."

Tim smiled more, like he was laughing, "You have a pretty smile."

"I do?" Cecelia inquired.

"Yeah," he said, "everyone thought so too when you were baby. I got to hold you and you looked," he ran his fingers through his hair, "really cute when you smiled."

"Oh," Cecelia said, both of them looking away meekly.

"I like your dress," he said about her old wedding dress she had cut to make a summer dress, "it looks good on you."

"Thanks," Cecelia said. As an awkward silence set in, she said, "I better go before my mom comes out."

"Bye." he said a little reluctantly.

"Bye." she said, walking away.

Before she went inside she looked in back of her and saw he was still there. She waved and he waved back, looking like he desperately wanted to tell her something.

"What?" Cecelia asked, seeing the shock in his face from her knowing he wanted to speak.

"It was nice talking to you." he said.

She smiled at Tim a little, "It was nice for me too." and she walked toward the house.

Cecelia could barely remember being carried out of the bath tub, but they told her all about it when she woke up in the hospital. They labeled her incident as an attempt at sending her own life even after she explained how she kept her face above water so she wouldn't drown. When they asked about the deep cuts in her wrists, she was too embarrassed to explain.

The doctor, a fat man with a moustache, came to see her. He looked at her like someone who's been through war, "You're not even old enough to know how bad life gets."

She didn't try to explain that she didn't try to kill herself, (she had accepted the fact that no one at the hospital or anyone else would believe her) but told Dr. Horniker with a bored expression, "Obviously, doctor, you've never been a thirteen year old girl."

…and in love, she had wanted to add.

* * *

Cecelia sat alone on a stool in the basement, waiting for the guests to arrive. She was wearing her usual 1920's wedding dress, cut at the bottom. She hadn't told anyone, not even her sisters, why she washed it everyday so she could wear.

"I like your dress, it looks good on you."

She had looked good enough to him, for him to tell her so. From that day on, Cecelia had decided she always wanted to look that good to him. She secretly prayed it would make him talk to her again. And on the night of the party, she thought her prayers might be answered.

They filed in one by one, the neighborhood boys they had decided to invite over, and Cecelia immediately picked out Tim. She tried to will him with her mind to come over and talk to her, but he chose Therese. All she could do was watch Therese enjoy his company instead of hers.

To avoid crying in public, she asked her mother to be excused. She pulled herself up the stairs, all the while thinking about what a fool she'd been to think a seventeen year old boy would love a thirteen year old girl.

* * *

Cecelia pushed open the gaping window in her room, feeling the cold air of the night caress her bare arms. She shivered a moment, but then climbed outside the window. Cecelia took a last look at her room, considering she might never see it again after running away. She had to run away because if she stayed here it meant having to face Tim. It was the only solution, she decided. He probably already thought she was a "kook" after her alleged suicide attempt. She even had to wonder if he had ever liked her at all.

"It was nice talking to you." he said.

She smiled at Tim a little, "It was nice for me too." and she walked toward the house.

She reached out to support herself on the top of another window ledge, but she slipped off as soon as she let go off the one she had come out of. She fell so fast through the air that she couldn't even manage to get out a scream.

* * *

After the boys found Cecelia's diary…

Tim sat on the floor alone in his room that night, with a spotlight from the moon being what aloud him to read Cecelia's diary. He flipped through the countless entries on trees, but then felt his heart skip a beat at the sight of his name.

Today I was watching clouds in the front yard, but then mom said

I had to come. When I got up, I felt dizzy and nearly collapsed, but

one of the neighborhood boys caught me before that happened. His

name is Tim and he's really smart. He told me I have a nice smile

and that I looked pretty in that old wedding dress I have. I'm going

to keep wearing it everyday so that I look pretty to him, even with all

the washing I'm going to have to have to do. I know he's seventeen,

but maybe seeing me in a wedding dress will make him think about

me as a bride. Maybe, he'll ask me to marry him or at least ask me

out. I think I'm in love with him. It must be love because I feel like

I'll die without him.

Tim stared at the page for a few seconds, without a response. His breathing became heavy and he could feel himself shaking. Tim looked at the other side of the page to see Cecelia Weiner (his last name) scribbled all over it at different angles.

He began snapping the page out of the page out of the diary, careful to make it look like no other page had originally been there. He couldn't tell the other guys this, was all he thought as he felt the urge to cry push against him from the inside.

He crumbled the severed page in his fist, letting it rest near his heart. He thumped the back of his head against the wall, without verbally releasing any sign of pain.

All the while thinking, I would have asked her out.