"I love you."

I desperately tried taming the wild strand of brown hair determined to stick out and defy my will. The tiny mirror taped to my locker was definitely not helping the situation.

"I just can't keep my eyes off of you."

I salvaged a miniature comb from the back of my locker and attempted repressing the rebel lock of chestnut.

"I just know that it's fate that you and I should be together."

Why must my hair hate me so? I silently cursed it while rummaging through the contents of my backpack for a ponytail.

"June?"

I gathered my hair together and involuntarily turned at the sound of my name.

"Eh?" was all I could manage, hands in mid-air, trying to make a successful ponytail and master my mutinous tresses.

"June…" a boy with dirty blond hair and a handsome face said pleadingly, eyes glazed over with hope and desperation, "Please…be mine…forever. I love you!"

Where have I seen this boy before?

He looked down sheepishly, bringing something out of his football jersey. It was a black, velvet box.

"I know it's a little much," he shrugged and shyly grinned, opening the box and revealing a diamond necklace, "but you deserve the best."

Oh! I know! He's…oh, what's his name?

"Roy?"

His eyes shone brightly, "Yes?" he looked at me intently, "Oh what is it? I'll do anything for you…Oh, yes, love?"

"Would you mind moving? You're blocking the way to my class."

His eyes dimmed, and he stepped aside, suddenly emotionless and dead.

Jesus Christ, what's his problem?

I shrugged it off and meandered through people to get to class. Passing by, I could hear some angry girls hissing to their boyfriends, "Hey! Get your eyes off her right now!" and some guys letting catcalls stroll off their tongues. I grinned inwardly and remained cool and composed on the outside, strolling into Theatre and taking a seat next to Mercy.

"Congratulations on all of your performances in last weeks performance of Macbeth," Ugh. What was Ms. Que wearing? Green with yellow? Ew. What was up with theatre folk's fashion sense? "Brian, great job on Macbeth. Oh, and June, you did quite an impressive job with Lady Macbeth. Kudos!"

Ms. Que applauded, encouraging scattered clapping to ripple through the class.

"Moving on, we will be now be setting up to perform," she paused for dramatic effect, "The Phantom of the Opera!"

There were a few groans, and a few squeals of excitement. I nudged Mercy and whispered to her, "What's The Phantom of the Opera?"

She eyed me for a moment, surprised, then shrugged and told me, "It's like Beauty and the Beast, but without the Disney ending."

Before I could question further, Ms. Que announced, "Today we will watch the movie, and after school auditions will be held. Lights?"

Someone got up and switched the lights off, leaving everything dim but the glowing television, the DVD menu playing an orchestral piece in the background. I yawned and prepared myself for utter boredom until I saw something from the corner of my eye.

Logan was headed this way.

I glanced to my left; there was no one sitting there…and Logan was heading this way…and did he just smirk at me? I think he did…Oh God, I wonder how my hair looks? No…I have to stay cool…I just have to stay turned to the TV like I have no idea what's going on…

"Mind if I sit here?" Logan asked, making my knees buckle under me. Since when did that happen?

"Well of cour..." I began, but trailed off.

He wasn't taking to me. Oh no, he wasn't even looking my way.

He was looking straight at Mercy.

"Mercy?"

She turned around and looked at him, oblivious.

"Could I sit here, Mercy?" he motioned to the chair next to her.

"Sure," she blushed. Fuck, she blushed!

Did she not see how much this was affecting me? Did she not see how much I felt like hitting someone? How much I felt like killing? Crying? Dying? I try so hard all day to get his attention…and he doesn't so much as glance at me! I have guys who'll kill to be with me! What the hell?! And I thought Mercy was my friend! What is she doing?!

Look at them…smiling and laughing. How could Mercy just ignore me like that? What happened to her supporting me like I have all this time? How could…

No. I have to stay calm.

"Mercy, dear?" I asked quietly, so only she could hear.

"Hm?"

"Could we please switch seats? I can't see very well from here."

She eyed me, "But…your eye sight is fine. And both of these seats are the same distance from the TV…"

I sighed impatiently, "Look, I think I know about my vision. Now are you going to move, or am I going to have to ask Ms. Que to make you?"

She frowned, "Alright, alright. No need to get angry." She sighed and stood up, and I delightfully took her spot.

Logan turned to me and frowned, "Why'd you guys switch?"

I whispered so only Logan could hear, "Oh, Mercy said something was wrong with her vision, so she needed to move. I told her that her vision was perfectly fine, but she just insisted on moving."

He frowned deeper, "Hmph." Then he said to himself, "It seemed like she was having fun…"

"Well, you know Mercy," I said in matter-of-factly way, "Ms. Unable, unstable. Never could make decisions. Even when we were younger."

This got his attention. Perfect. "Oh really now?" He raised an extremely attractive and seductive eyebrow toward me nonchalantly, in a look that told me he didn't give a fuck about me. A look that made me fall deeper in love with him. A look that fueled the first of many mistakes that would spill obscenely from my perfectly glossed strawberry lips.

"Mhm," I muttered, trying, unsuccessfully to match the suaveness in his voice: in his whole manner of being. "Though Mercy is my best friend, she's sometimes just so hard to deal with. Especially when it comes to guys. She's always managing to get all interested in the first boy she sees, then shutting them down when they get so caught up in her they don't know what do in their lives once she leaves them."

I glanced at Logan, and though he kept his uninterested demeanor, his alert body language revealed that he was quite interested in the downfalls of Mercy Stark.

"I mean, just look at that poor Leon fellow Mercy is always flirting with!" This was somewhat true. It was blatantly obvious that Leon was in love with the girl. "Always going over to his house…I wouldn't be surprised if they've already had se…"

BOOM!

A gunshot had blast through the air, rattling the stale air that all classrooms bare, along with the groggy students encompassed within them.

(The bold-faced, capitalized onomonopia above does not even begin to describe the effect, the sound, or the terror within that single, momentous occurrence.)

People in the classroom were idiotically screaming, getting up and cursing ("It's like Columbine!" "It's like Virginia Tech!") as the teacher made petty, futile attempts to calm everyone down. What puerile children! Acting as if it was a nuclear war… I simply sat, cross-armed, irked that some idiot playing with a gun had interrupted my time with Logan.

I took a peak at him and…oh no. He is not staring at Mercy right now, as she sits –as equally as idiotic and shocked as everyone else, I conclude- a lot paler than usual: frozen in pure terror as she grips one of her arms until the marks where her fingernails dig in begin to bleed. Ugh. Unsanitary much?

"Mercy…" Logan gets out of his desk and reaches out to her, as if about to fucking embrace her. The fucking bitch! "Are you okay?"

Her eyes bore into him, now a pale ice blue, tears welling into those huge bug-like eyes of hers. I wonder if she's wearing eyeliner or mascara and hope that if she is that they're smearing and messing up her ghost-like complexion.

"That was Leon," she eerily whispers, and as she mutters the four syllables, it's like the whole school stops their infantile actions and takes in the meaning behind the phrase. The wind stops rustling, the birds stop chirping…I think I even hear fat Martha Reinhold's asthmatic mouth-breaths subside to soak in the severity of Mercy's premonition.

Then something horrible happens. Something that continues to haunt me now, even after the love and passion and rumors and disaster begin to fade. Something, in my memory, much more horrendous then the motive behind the gunshot, and the impact of gunshot itself.

Logan took Mercy's hand, got her out of her seat, and ran outside the classroom, their hands interlaced.

Simultaneously, a bullet penetrates that huge bloody organ pumping on the left side of my chest, deteriorating several arteries. The name of the bullet that penetrated my heart? Mostly envy, mostly heartbreak, but also infuriation, loneliness, abandonment…you decide. But one thing that was for sure: the main artery severed? The one that connected to the little file in my brain containing my friendship with Mercy.

Our friendship: the crushes and heartbreaks; the afternoons spent over Baskin & Robbins, and later on Starbucks; the movies rented and watched in our pajamas on Friday nights and the ones we watched in miniskirts and tight tees with guys draped over our shoulders; all the shit we went through together and the laughter and inside jokes we promised would last forever…

Gone.

The severed artery, flailing around wildly in dramatic throws of unconnectedness, shoved the unwanted file of Mercy into the Recycle Bin. No, this thing isn't even deemed recyclable. It's in the fucking Trash Bin now, bitch. No hesitant right click to empty said bin is needed, either. In the technological defects created when that fucking bug entered my system, I've forgotten the meaning of hesitation.

The .45 in the magazine of Leon's pistol did not only result in the paralysis of his vocal chords, but also in the paralysis of my heart, for the next few years. Beginning that cold winter day, I had lost the ability to feel. I had lost my conscience.

I had lost mercy…both figuratively and literally.

And the ability to love? Well, I think I'd lost that far before a time I can remember. Far before the disaster. Far before the damage I had done.

These were the beginning stages of a car wreck, and this is when I take the bottles of vodka before getting behind the wheel.

Do you know why the heart beats on our left side?

Because love is never right.