An alternate ending to The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath, my favorite book that I’ve read in high school. I would highly recommend it if you like introspective, sad stories. This is an old assignment I did two years ago that I found recently. Enjoy!

~

There was a tangible silence. Elbows propped up over elbows, eyes bent over in some sort of panting leer. Their tongues wagged out of their mouths and I consciously threw my own into the back of my throat. Yet, I couldn’t swallow.

“Ms. Esther Greenwood?” I heard the woman bark.

I am. I am. I am.

~

Question after question. Stupid ones, useless ones, ones that made me feel even more sickly than before. And yet despite this, the damp air of the outside world now enveloped me, and the snow matted up my hair. In movies, a scene like this would be shot in a way that was endearing and romantic. Long gazes, a mousy little man and some modelesque woman, snow on their toes, lips as red as their noses, running towards each other as if the universe cared enough to rob them of the time they would fall out of their lust.

I hated it.

I wanted it.

After all, had I not proved myself worth and confident enough to have it? What was so special about everyone else, all of them gazing lazily at the glass that encased them? If everyone had a bell jar—and if everyone played it off as something plain or liberating—why couldn’t I?

It was because (after remembering my talk with the Willard boy) I was aware, and maybe that fact alone was enough.