The sky is bright and brimming with the gentlest shade of morning blue and the beautiful melodies of the mockingbirds fills the air. Around me, the smell of cinnamon buns and woodchips lingers in the playground atmosphere. My hands are a different shade from the rest of my body, covered in dirt, and the callouses from the monkey bars are a strange shade of pink, signaling that they have been healing. The game of tag is getting intense. My knees get scraped and my chest starts hurting, from being tagged there, but if I admit I am in pain, I will get ridiculed. This is a new feeling for me. I think I’m having a heart attack, or heartburn, or maybe I just need to burp. It feels like someone has punched a hole through my chest, but I will not stop playing this game. The recess bell rings, marking the end of the school day. I wipe the dirt off my hands onto my shorts, turning them from the shade of salmon that they were to a dirty brown. The guys laugh at me. They think my hands are strange to look at, but I don’t care. On my way home, I take the shortcut between the playground and my house, struggling to contain my excitement to get home and dip into my secret stash of Halloween candy. Before I get there though, out of the blue, the hunger pains turn into a stabbing knife, as if the American Psycho himself is taking his butcher knife to my stomach. Somewhere, in the middle of the alley, I see the waiter for one of the restaurants taking out the trash. I don’t know his name. He is nice, and he always says hello to me when I take the shortcut. However, today, for some strange reason, he doesn’t say "hi" to me, he only looks at me in a way that makes me think he wants to attack me. There had been a recent string of break-ins at the restaurant, so maybe he is just suspicious of me. I wish I could tell him I have done nothing wrong. It starts raining as I am walking, and I take the opportunity to wipe the dirt off my face and pants; my mom always yells at me for tracking mud in the house. The dirty rainwater flows into the sewer, washing away the remnants of the playground. At dinner, I eat everything in sight. I cannot get enough chocolate ice cream for dessert, and the steak and potatoes are orgasmic to my mouth. Strangely though, the hunger pains do not leave me as I lie in bed. They hurt more now than they did before, and I figure I just ate too much at dinner, and now my body is rebelling against me. It feels as if I now have two knives in my body rather than one. When I wake up in the morning, the sheets are stained with crimson dirt, and I throw them into the wash, hiding them before my mom can see. I do not know what I did to stain the sheets, but I know that I have to hide them before anyone can see. Stained sheets are trouble. They mean that I have done something wrong, and I don’t want to get in trouble.