Disclaimer: I don't own the Outsiders.

The lights are too bright. They never go off and they beam at you. It's like you're in the arms of death and there's that bright light everyone talks about. This light that's supposed to take you somewhere great. Take you to a new place with streets of gold and food and tons of love.

"Wake up."

"Go away."

"They're coming to get you today. Pull your shit together and get up. Put a bow in your hair and wear clean clothes. Be nice. Be respectful."

I turn in the bed. I face the wall and squeeze my eyes shut. "I don't know if I can go back. I don't want to go back to those losers and freaks and bastards. Anywhere but there."

"That's your place. That's your town. You run that town. Just imagine what they're doing now without you. Your throne awaits you."

I get up and walk around the room. I walk in circles. I use my tip toes so I seem taller and then I can pretend like I'm a dancer. Like I'm a ballerina and I took that class my mom never allowed me to and I became famous and I'm on Broadway right now, preforming in front of everyone and they love me. They clap and cheer for me. I'm a star.

"Sylvia…"

I do a few turns. The audience goes crazy. They all stand and they clap so loud and they scream for me. I turn and turn until I'm so dizzy and I feel like I'm going to puke but I don't because I'm a star.

"You're not crazy. You know that, right? Baby, just let it go already. Just let it all go. You'll love it. I'm there."

The show's over. The curtain goes down and the lights go out. It's pitch dark and I stand alone on stage. There's no more clapping or cheers. There's no music and there's no one here. I'm standing on stage, alone and lost.

"Why are you here?"

"Because I love you."

"You didn't help me. They told me you weren't real. That I was just imagining you. You said nothing was real. You're not real."

"Don't say that. You can see me, can't you? You can hear me. You see that bed over there and hear those birds outside your window. Are they real?"

"I can't touch you."

"It doesn't matter."

There's a loud scream from next door. My neighbor has more problems than anyone can handle. She doesn't come out. They don't let her out. I passed the room one time. It's the smallest one. There are chains inside. There's a big machine in there and at night, I can hear it being plugged up. I can hear her scream in pain and I can see a bright light from the crack below my door.

The food here really sucks. As I walk around the room, I can feel how small I've gotten. I weighed more when I took speed than I do now. They give us all healthy food because of the fat people here that have depression issues. I would kill for a milkshake. I'm sure I'm not the first one to think about trying.

A girl tried to kill an orderly the second day I got here. It was on the news.

They give me seven pills every day. They won't tell me what they're for or what each one is but they check my mouth afterwards to make sure I've swallowed. I get the lowest amount of the people I talk to. One girl gets twelve. She's almost bald because she pulled all her hair out. Her skin is coated with scars from her own finger nails. She says she's coming off some high stuff. If someone had shown me the ugliness of her face when they were giving the "no drug" talk, I'd listen.

Everyone here looks like shit but there are no mirrors so I don't know if I look the same or not. I can't tell if I still have all my hair or if I have scratches or if I have dirt all over my face. They say it's unhealthy. As if locking us in a little white room for twelve hours a day isn't.

It scares me to be in here. I wouldn't admit that to anyone but it does. It's scary, especially at night. That's when the voices come. Everyone's special friends come out to play with the neighbors and they stop and talk some. Some are evil and they taunt us in our sleep. Others are nice and will sing if you ask. Some don't even talk. They just sit there, watching. By morning, it's as if they weren't there at all.

"Do you want to come home?"

"Maybe."

"Just think happy things. Play the game. That's what it's all about."

"Can you help me?"

"Help you what?"

"I don't know…..just help me?"

"…..No."

I sigh. "You're a real bitch, you know that?"

"And you're the queen b."

"Sylvia, they're ready for you."

"I want to discuss something with you today, your last day with us."

I'm supposed to leave. There's nothing else to discuss. "What?"

"It's something you wrote during group. Why don't you read it?"

I take the scrap piece of notebook paper he holds out for me. It's folded neatly, the lines touching perfectly. They say that's one sign of me being crazy. I'm a perfectionist. Making sure the edges touch isn't a sign of being crazy.

Then again, everything's a sign of being crazy.

Five O'clock Sex

Five am sex is delicious, relaxing, and slow. You still have sleep in your eyes when you arch your back up as your partner thrusts into you. He has a smell of cigarettes and stale pizza, but you love him all the same. You're meant for each other. Two demons, fighting with each other in the form of sex. You do an effortless giggle, toying with him and he goes for it. The light of day hasn't even hit your eyes yet and here you are, happier than you have probably ever been. It's not sex after a night on the town. It's the second sex you've had because you're thirsty for more. You wake up in your lovers arms, he's smoking and you're waking up with a sensational feeling that he can only fill. It's round two and it's incredible that someone can wake up, seeing your makeup-less face, and want you all over again as he did the night before. He wants you that badly. You're wanted.

After it's over, the Saturday sun rises. You're coming down from all the alcohol and cigarettes and you land, coming in sequence. You bring a tray of toast and juice into the room and you both lay in your crumbs and relish in the fact that it's five am and you have yet to sleep.

It's the ending of a night, and the best beginning to a morning anyone can have. It'll never be that way again though. Demons always end up killing each other in the end.

"I did not know you liked to write, Sylvia."

Everyone here calls me Ms. Mason except for my therapist who shall remain nameless. He's a personal guy. Likes to ask a lot of questions.

After I came here, I was pretty messed up. Not really so much physically like I'd prefer. That'd be easy. They want you to make it through the hard stuff like panic attacks and screams so loud it makes your ears bleed. It's your first test here.

I gave up for a long time. I didn't talk. I walked like a ghost, Chrissy by my side. I talked to her more than ever before and she never left my side.

I couldn't eat. Everything tasted like blood.

I couldn't sleep. I'd fall asleep and wake up because I was drowning in my tears.

I couldn't stop crying.

"Are you ready to go home, Sylvia? You know what going home means, right? It means seeing those people again. It means facing your mother and speaking to your father."

He got me to speak to my dad more. We wrote. He wrote everyday but I never wrote back until a few weeks ago. Dad told me about Chrissy and something called bipolar. He said a lot of people in our family have it. He thought I was different.

He apologized for leaving and not helping me.

I told him it was alright. He's gotten me a new apartment in Tulsa so I won't have to stay with Mother. He's working on getting me a job at a department store.

"Are you ready to face this boy?"

"Dallas?"

"He will be there when you get back. You will have to face him at some point."

This has been an endless conversation. Everyone wants to blame him for me being here, except for me. There are many things that drove me to this place. I miss him. But with three packs of cigarettes a day, comes recognition.

The thing that scares me about going back: people will remember the person I was when I left. Or they won't know I left at all. I wasn't the best person when I got on the train. Maybe that's why I wrote what I did. Maybe it wasn't me at all.

His hand strokes my upper thigh and he says softly, his finger tracing my inner skin, "Are you ready to leave, Sylvia?"

I will never be ready for the day I go back to Tulsa. To the ghosts I left behind.

Everything's the same. I'm dizzy from the train ride but I can still see and take in my surroundings. Everyone's moving on, not looking over at the girl who became a legend in this town along with a boy from New York.

I'd call us the Adam and Eve of this town, but I think that'd be insulting, let alone a sin just to think about.

I don't have many bags so it's not too hard to carry them across the street and into the white building I spent most of my life in.

Candles are lit at the center. Red carpet leads the way to the front.

A cross sits at the very end.

How do you talk to God when it's been so long? How do you apologize? This is not just a regular person. He decides your fate in life. He's the one who's been watching, who knows everything, even the things you yourself don't remember.

He was there all those nights when it was me and a boy, alone in a room and for five minutes, we sinned. I did more than sin these few years and God has sat and watched. He saw me.

I am a child.

How can you watch your child self-destruct?

The red carpet is soft against my knees as I kneel, resting my head on the table set up front with flowers.

I was a child the last time I came here. I had white tights and pink dresses and bows. I wore my hair in pigtails and I ran wild.

Everyone judges here. The room is full of ghosts of people who are doing nothing but whispering and pointing. They know what I have done. They think they know me and that I'm just another whore who went down the wrong path.

Everyone has forgotten me though. No one will remember me.

"Lord, please give me strength."

It's winter. Snow's on the ground. I'm alone. I can hear birds and a small animal run by, but I am alone.

The water is cold. Almost unbearable but it feels so good against my naked skin.

The mud is what pulls me in. The water pushes me further and further until I'm at my waist. My skin matches the color of the sky and my scars on my inner thighs have been dissolved in the water. The scars I've had there since I was a child.

I shiver, closing my eyes.

It'll only take one dunk.

Tulsa has never been good to me. Life has never been good to me. A lot I could blame on myself. I wasn't smart or strong. I let things get to me. I was easily influenced and I couldn't overcome my struggles and repent, like the nuns taught me.

Other people weren't good to me.

They used my looks against me. Made me punish for being pretty, for having nice legs. They used me and I punished for it every time to where sex just became a word.

I shake.

I was a child. I couldn't put up a fight. I never learned.

So I let someone else use me for my looks. I let them fool me into young love. Then I let another, and another, and another. I let drugs and drinks numb my pain so I wouldn't mind it so much to wake up. I drank more at night so I could act like I enjoyed the sex...but I never did.

I've never been strong.

"Sylvia."

"What?"

"Get your fucking ass out of that water. Are you really that crazy?"

"Please go away."

"I heard where you went."

"Please go away."

"Get out of the water!"

My arms are wrapped around me, my back to the shore. Snowflakes begin to lay on the surrounding ground. It's beautiful out here. Out here where I cannot feel anything in the middle of the water. It's like a scene in Snow White.

One dunk. That's all it would take.

"Why are you here?" I ask.

"Why do you think I'm here?"

"You love me?"

"Will that make your dumb ass get out of the water?"

"Probably not. It'd be nice to know though."

A bird starts to sing overhead. The song of death. It's passing the word around - the laughing stock of Tulsa is dying. She's dead. She's never coming back.

People don't laugh about the dead. They remember though. They'll remember what happened on this day.

"Get out of the fucking water!"

Sludge and mud seep in-between my toes. Snow coats my hair and I'm just a figure from the shore.

"Don't do this! Are you a fucking idiot? You dumb piece of shit, get your ass up here! Don't make me get you out."

You won't.

"Sylvia!"

I was their fallen queen, and that's what they'll remember me as. They'll remember me for some time. My name will be known. I'll have my glory come morning.

Just one dunk.

One...

"Don't you do it!"

Two...

"Please get out of the water. Get up here now!"

"Remember me. Don't forget about me. Please don't ever forget about me."

Three...

"Sylvia!"

"Are you ready to go?" she whispers in my hair. Her hands warm my body as they run through my hair. She hugs me and I'm not longer freezing. I'm not blue anymore. "I love you, baby sister."

"I love you too."

"I won't let anyone hurt you again."

The air feels light, like it's not there and I'm floating. I'm in her arms, laying at peace. "I know you won't."

"Welcome home, Sylvia. Welcome home."

A/N: Thank you all for the support as I've closed up another story.

Be on the lookout for the newest short story in the works: Dear Winston