When I first met her, everyone called her Gretchen. Her English was very bad and she had a very hard time making friends. I tried to be her friend, though Gretchen bit me in the girl's bathroom.

It was in middle school. The fates decided that out of all the girls starting middle school that year: I would be the first to get her period. I guess it is superstition, that the person I was most in-love with got her's next. Gretchen had responded to me with glaring and shoves on my previous attempts to be her friend. My mom had given me both tampons and pads and I preferred the tampons. I suggested the tampons first and tried to explain how they worked.

That is when she bit me. At first I inhaled sharply at the pain and did not pull away. Ratched has bit me before when I play with him and I know not to pull away, from bites. He never sinks in his fangs and lets go without hurting me. Gretchen did not let go and the pain increased, still I knew that jerking away from her would tear my skin in her teeth. She had a roll of my tummy fat in her mouth and it was like she was going to take a bite.

Finally, unabe to endure it any longer, I screamed. She let go, her eyes wild and feral. Then she got off of me and left me there, throwing down the tampons she was clutching. I sobbed, tears dripping to the bathroom floor. I noticed she was the one bleeding though; I just had a purple ring of teethmarkings on my belly.

After that I was afraid of her. She was always watching me. As I walked home from the bus stop each day I felt alone and afraid. Gretchen was watching me. Hunting me.

Just when I thought I was only being paranoid I caught her in my backyard. She was walking through my backyard. I was so shocked I dropped my glass of milk. The glass hit the top of my foot and broke in two halves. I had to go to the hospital with three broken toes. I was on some kind of painkillers that made me drowsy.

When we got home I was sure she was outside my bedroom window, watching me. Even though it was raining, she stood there for hours, her eyes glowing brightly from my nightlight, as it shifted colors. I lay there in terror, sighing, unable to control my breathing. Eventually I passed out, dreaming of getting eaten alive by Gretchen.

The next morning I took Ratched for a walk and I went over to my window. I found the evidence I needed there in the mud where she had left footprints. I was still quite afraid, and decided to recruit help from my champion.

I went and borrowed my brother's phone to "take a picture of someone's footprints, that is stalking me" and he said he would "beat the dude to a crisp". I am sure he was was high when he said that. I loved my brother very much, to me, he was the ideal man. I wished he would stop smoking weed, though, he was better than that, so much better. I am not ashamed to say that I found him attractive, not that I am gross or anything, he was just very fit and handsome.

He was concerned enough to start picking me up from school each day. I really liked getting to spend extra time with Donovan. I told him how much I loved him and he said: "yeah, love you too, sis" the way he always did. It was the last time I got to hear it.

Gretchen wasn't at school the next day. I always knew when she wasn't in the building. I had developed an environmental awareness of her presence. I could feel the seachange in the cafeteria when she entered. I didn't have to look, I knew she was behind me, watching me. Everyone else was watching us by not looking directly at us. Like a synchronized dance with everyone setting on Gretchen as she came around.

That day she wasn't there. I was having a good day. Then I waited for Donovan. I won't say how I felt, before I heard the news, because those feelings don't matter anymore. I was so relieved to have a moment without fear: that I just thought about Donovan and how much I loved him.

Someone from the office came and got me where I stood and took me to the councilor's. There I got the news that my brother was in a car accident just a little while ago. My mom would be coming to get me soon. I waited.

Terror gripped my heart. Was he going to be okay? When I saw my mother, I knew he was not going to be okay. I knew my brother was dead.

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"The brakes failed and he hit a tree." Was the only explanation I was given.

After the funeral I was not okay to go back to school yet. Donovan was dead and Gretchen was still there. I suspected she had somehow caused the accident, and had no evidence.

That is until later. I had admitted to myself, after his death, that I was infatuated with my brother. It was childish and innocent while he was alive. After he died I developed a kind of problem. I had a kind of crisis, where his death and my coming-of-age really confused me. The details are not important. Just that I was spending a lot of time in his room after he died. I was especially into the things of his that were the most private. His phone, chief among those things.

I had memorized all of his text messages to his girlfriends. I had also seen all of his photos. Except the last one he took:

Gretchen.

I knew she had killed him. Somehow I had always known and then I was sure! My gut feeling and one blurry picture of her were not enough to do anything with. They were just the proof that I needed that I was right. I was sure she had killed Donovan.

Fear, anger and remorse mixed in me like a dark thundercloud. I stopped laying all over my brother's things and started getting into shape. I had a crude plan of beating Gretchen to death with my bare fists. I was scared of what I was becoming. I started losing weight and growing some muscle. I asked my mom to sign me up for kickboxing and she was glad to see me doing anything other than what she had guessed I was doing.

I went back to school with a vengeance. I had my red bandanna, moonboots and my Stevie Wonder shirt on. I'd also brought a concealed ceramic blade, because I was seriously going to kill her. That was the plan anyway. Dread at what I would do, and who she was: existed in a cold, calculated balance inside my mind. Sometimes my thoughts whispered and sometimes they screamed. It balanced out.

Gretchen was gone. I couldn't find her anywhere. When I asked about her, people just said that they liked Molly. I had no idea, what was happening. It was as though my school were turned into a horror freak show. Then I saw the extent of it.

The ballroom of a cafeteria had danced into a rhythm around Molly. She had blossomed into something exquisitely beautiful and her smile literally shone brightly. She could match-make and shot-call and have-first all the good kids of her kingdom. Molly could get an A+, get crowned the prom queen, heal the sick, cow the principal and banish me to a locker. She could even get away with murder.

She put a tiny crystal on the tongue of each of her disciples. Crystalline gods, prayers to a foreign deity. Devil worshipers, all of them. Money and power were hers. She didn't have to learn to speak without butchering English. Everyone had to learn to hear her that way she spoke, because she wasn't going to repeat herself. Not anymore.

After school her goons grabbed me and beat the hell out of me. Molly came around the corner. She told the ruffians to unhand me, melodramatically. Then she threatened to defend me and call to call the police. They shrugged and ran off, as though she had just rescued me.

"They didn't rape you, did they?" Molly asked me. "Not this time, huh?"

I fake smiled for her. My lip was split and bleeding.

"Good thing I came along to save you, huh?" Molly came closer like she was going to help me up. "The least you can do is thank me."

"Thank you." I said with sincere appreciation for the isolation and proximity. I was scared of her, scared of myself and terrified of what was happening.

Molly frowned and started to lean back away from me, instinctively realizing my sincerity meant danger.

Then I attempted to kill her. With the ceramic blade I slashed at her throat as I sat up suddenly. She was already moving away from me and I barely got her. The blade stuck into her throat. She tried to say something and blood spurted out. Then she reached for the knife to pull it out.

My awareness of what I had just done made me stop her. I jumped up and held her hands away from the knife in her throat. She wasn't going to die, I couldn't let her. If she died, I would be a murderer. She'd have made me into her.

As she lost consciousness I used my strength to lift her and carry her around to the nearby outdoor common area. The sight of us got others on their phones calling for help. I set her on a table and held up her head. Her eyes fluttered open.

"You are not dead." I glared at her.

I asked one of the paramedics if she would be okay. He said he would bet on it, that leaving the blade where it was had saved her life. It made that much of a difference. I was one step from killing her.

The cops found me wandering away and asked me what happened. I told them she had tried to rescue me from some boys who had gotten too rough with me. One of them had stabbed her.

They told me they were going to see what she had to say. I told them to treat her like a hero, for what she had done. The cops wanted to give me a ride home so I let them.

Weeks later Molly came back to school. Things had changed. Her dad got arrested for selling drugs and she was living with her mom. She dressed like she went to boarding school with a scarf over her hair. She had the scar I gave her, and she had lost her voice.

We still called her Molly: 'Silent Molly'.