Change

They looked at each other across the void of their past friendship, no longer able to share the same ground. The void seemed to stretch for miles between them, threatening to swallow any whom fell in. Anyone unsure of their footing on their truth was going to have to go into that void. That void that didn't know what truth was, only the souls who found out that their truth was lacking. It waited hungrily as the game begun.

Colleen started. "What makes you think change doesn't exist?"

"Everything." Jody said simply.

"What's everything?"

"You, life, school, everything!" exasperated.

Too many things, Colleen chose one. "How has school changed?"

"It's the same old bullshit underneath."

"What bullshit?"

"Teachers and parents pushing me, pushing us, to do our best all the time and if we do they're still pushing us. We're never good enough."

Really, when said like that, Colleen couldn't argue, Jodine's parents were like that, so she veered off. "So how is everybody still the same?"

"All they are are repressed copies of themselves." Jody smirked, seeing the veer.

"How?"

"Giving in to the pressure of teachers and parents and t.v. You try to mould yourselves into that perfect citizen. Can't you see this isn't you?" Jody shouted, waving her hands around the room. "This is just mass reinforcement. Everyone says to like the Bullshit Boys, so you do. Magazines tell you where to shop, so you do. God, Colly! When was the last time you had an original thought in your head!"

Colleen's temper sparked, flaring wildly. Jodine didn't know her anymore! How could she say that! "Well hasn't all this "bullshit" made your life different? Because you had to react to it when you didn't have to before?" Take that bitch!

Jody shrugged. "Life's still bullshit. Its just switched gear."

"So then haven't the reasons changed then?" Ha! GOTCHA!

"The old reasons are still there. They've just been added onto. Add shit to shit and you still have shit"

Damn.

Anger started to wan and desperation started creeping in. Jody had an answer for everything. If she didn't win soon......

"You want to kill yourself now. You didn't before. That's a change." That's airtight. No way she can turn that around.

Jody was the picture of calm. "First, I'm not going to kill me, you are. Second, the choice to die isn't a change. In order for change to happen you have to be decided on something first. I never decided to live. I just was. I never questioned it and made the decision to live. But now I have questioned it and I decide to die." Colleen would have given anything to wipe the smug look off Jody's face.

It wasn't true. Colleen knew it wasn't true. But she couldn't argue it either.

A small light came to her. "How do you explain somebody changing their mind?"

"You never change your mind," Jody said, matter of factly. "You have come to the decision that you are going to do something, even if you do nothing, your doing something. How you intend to do something is irrelevant."

"But how you do it changes what you're going to do!" Colleen exclaimed

"No, because at the core of anything you have just chosen to do something." Jody retorted.

"But you're always doing something!" Colleen said wildly.

"Hence why there is no change."

Colleen began to cry.

Jody leaned forward onto the bed and watched Colleen as she cried and said, "now I ask you, is there change?"

Defiantly Colleen screams, "yes! There has to be!"

Jody goes after her relentlessly, "oh yeah? Then what is it?"

"ME! I've changed!" Colleen screams though her haze tears. Blindly she grabs her gun and tosses it at the door, not caring if it went off. "I'm not going to kill you. I squelch!" Colleen laid her head on her bed and continued to cry.

Jody watched her cry for a moment before getting up and picking up the gun at the door. On the way there she thought 'I didn't want to do it this way. I love you, Colly."

She brought the gun back and put it on the bed, and kneeling began. " So bitch, what's it like to be wrong and totally fucked up?"

"Leave me along," Colleen quietly sobbed.

"Look at you. You're so pathetic. Do you even know you don't have any friends?" Jody went on.

Colleen looked up. Mascara running down her cheeks. "Yes I do!"

"Uh, no you don't!" Jody sang. "You all huddle in a group to convince yourselves that your not just little robots."

"Shut up!

"You have nothing. Maybe you're the one who should die." Jody picked up her gun quickly and pointed it at Colleen's head.

Colleen surprisingly didn't pick up her own gun. Though her fingers twitched. "Stop it. I'm not going to do it!"

"Awww! Poor baby can't handle it." Jody started poking Colleen in the head with the gun. "Whatcha gonna do, huh, huh?"

Colleen lost it. She picked up the gun and poked Jody back for every word Colleen said. "Why, don't, you, leave, me, alone!"

"Because Colly I don't want to die anymore," Jody said after the pokes, a bumping forming already on her head. "Your nothing but a pathetic, pitiful little girl." Jody clicked the safety off her gun. "And I want you to die. That's right, I'm going to blow your empty head off."

Colleen cried in her panic. Tears coursed down her stained cheeks as she clicked off her safety and screamed, "GO AWAY! Just go away! I'll kill you if you don't go!"

Suddenly Jody screamed, "NOT IF I KILL YOU FIRST!"

BANG....

BANG......

The first was Jody screaming bang as loudly as she could.

Colleen, distraught and broken, hadn't the sense to say bang back. In the deep recesses of her mind, the part that knows nothing of fair play and turning the other cheek thought instead "nobody shoots me and gets away with it!" and had pulled the trigger.

As Jody's body fell to the ground, her words echoed in Colly's hollow mind.

"People don't change, and I'm going to make you see that."

Colly began to scream and didn't stop even when her parents finally came home.