Secrets are like fire

You sit at your table and do your work. Your teacher might not talk to you because they are trying to control the class. 

The other children might not talk to you because you're not particularly noticeable although for no definable reason. 

At school you can get lost. Its peculiar that you still feel lost when everyone around you is there to tell you where you are. 

There are spaces outside school, spaces to go. She went to the football pitch at the edge of town, not the new one, the one across the railway tracks where no one goes. She brought her dog. He never asked any questions. She took the petrol from her dads garage, she took a lighter. Watching those flames consume everything, everything she had gathered. Weeks of careful selection of what exactly needed to be destroyed most. The things they would miss. The things that meant something to them . At the same time, those that were easy to steal. A favorite pencil top of a classmate, her teachers framed photo of her children. Carefully, carefully, day by day so it wasn't noticeable. In the end she had quite a collection. Watching those flames curl and smolder  she didn't feel lost. You can draw your most substantial sense of identity not from others but from the actions you carry out even if those actions are in isolation especially if they are maybe because you draw those actions closer to yourself to the point they become more a part of yourself,no one knows and no one judges. 

She doused the fire with more petrol, she watched the it burn brighter but now it rolled too, balls tumbling from the center and into the air. She did not cower in fear. 

Secrets are like fire, they have the potential to destroy what made them. 

The family dog never returned home.