The 24-hour clock perched among the clutter of things on her table read "00:31",and the dark lump of her snoring sister sleeping beside her served as testimony to how late it was.But it was not so late to Malaa.The afternoon was still fresh in her mind,driving away any thought of draping the blanket higher up and shutting her eyes fringed with the darkest of lashes so as to lull herself to sleep.Curling her fingers into two frail,shaking fists,she drew them up to her face to dig the heels of her palms into her eyes.Wetness,wetness smeared the deep lines that ran along her palm.She was crying?Now,after all had happened?But she was,and nothing would change that.Least of all her being ignored for the umpteenth time at school,being thrown derisive looks but not straight-out bullied and looking through a haze of waiting tears and from afar the sight of the other people in school wreathed in silken laughter and mirth.Nothing would or could change the fact that she was-she never thought she would call herself this-a...a loser.She lost at the game of surviving middle school,she was that much of an idiot.It was so not fair!Tears finally cascaded down her cheeks the shade of sunlight drenching the insides of a plain mud pot,and her lips splitted and were pulled back in a strangled scream as though her heart had surely been wrenched apart and mashed into the sole of her feet.She cried and cried...until she cried herself to sleep.A fitful sleep of course,one in which she was still distantly aware of the snot clogging her nostrils and her hitched breathing.A good while passed in such fashion,her chest lurching forward with every time air gushed out of her mouth in a hideous hiss choked with tears.And then she jolted awake,or atleast she thought she did.She herself was doubtful as to whether she was still dreaming or not.Well,she felt pretty awake.Flexing her fingers,she got to her feet and whirled to face the window-a breath of fresh air ought to sort her out.A little folded paper was tucked into the slit of the window frame,to her brow-raising amazement.She fumbled to slip it into her hands and,upon succession of doing so,she pulled it open into a crinkled piece as she strained her eyes to read the looped,cursive writing."Think...it's...easy...being...me?Try...it...yourself..,"she drawled as her eyes trailed the words.She did not know why,or how,but air rushed in and seemed to tip her body back before flinging her onto the bed and dipping her eyelids down into a motionless sleep.Another dream-or did it really happen?-ensued,and this time she was back in school.'No,'she thought,the panicked whites of her eyes gleaming,'not again!'But wait,she was not in her own seat.She was in...Ulisa's,the chatty girl she envied and loathed from afar?Her eyes flicked to her own seat and,to her shock and horror,saw someone sitting there.

Shoulders stooped and body hunched over a book,was Malaa herself.

A thousand malicious thoughts punctured her all at once:'she's so creepy!Is she staring at me?She's so lucky to have parents that let her be like that,mine hounds me to be nice and polite and never show who I am!It's not fair!'And suddenly she felt on the brink of tears again,before the same gust of wind pulled her back into a dark sleep.She fluttered her eyes open to the deep,resonating blue of seven in the morning.She rasped out air,her chest light like she had just went crazy with adrenaline for a bit.'It's not fair,'that line...had she not thought it just thought that hours ago?To think that Ulisa could have felt so too!Ha,what stupidity.She was grand with her circle of friends,and there was no way she mocked Malaa because of jealousy!And so Malaa dipped her head downwards,her eyes filled with a fresh round of tears,and told herself what she had told herself so many times before-that if only she could have had Ulisa's life,she would have never been such a loser at all.Unbeknownst to her,not far off in a condominium there was another girl,her head bent downwards too as she cried for her horrible,lonely life,and her dark,lustrous ringlets were hanging down to her waist as the sheeny tears dripped down.Letters of her name tag-she had already worn her school uniform,she was such an early riser-flitted in and out of view through her sheet of hair,and if anyone had been watching they would have seen that the letters formed a pretty name that Malaa could have never guessed.

The name tag read,with an 'U' and an occasional appearance of 'I,''Ulisa."
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