She got on the bus, still in a fairly decent mood, and sat beside her cousin near the front. Her cousin was silent, but the girl wanted — no, needed — to speak, so she tried to start a small conversation with her cousin.
The conversation lasted less than a minute, but she was satisfied for the most part, so she began to think.
It's a dangerous thing, thinking. Especially if you're someone whose mind seems to attack them randomly when they least expect it.
Throughout the remainder of the bus ride, she thought. About herself, situations she could put herself in, situations she had put herself in, and things like that.
At some point, her mind focused on a memory and one thing she avoided doing that would have made the memory bad. Sometime in the middle of this thought process, one phrase leapt in and stayed there in the forefront of her mind nearly the entire day: "Public Enemy #1".
Further along the train of thought, she began to mentally bombard herself with hatred — all of which occurred without much reason — and she began to think that maybe everyone secretly hated her because she's a horrible person.
As these thoughts began to eat away at her confidence and joy that she had felt before, the bus had only made it halfway to the school. All of this had happened in a matter of a single moment, and that scared her a little.
By the time the bus had arrived at school, she had prepared a fake smile for herself that she hoped was convincing enough to fool her friends.
