Abby stared at the officer sitting across from her, wide-eyed and trembling. He was sneering at her, as if she were the scum of the earth and he was about to revel in making her interrogation a living nightmare. Yet when he spoke, his voice was level. 

"Why did you take the phones?" he asked.

'I don't know'. That was the answer she tried to give. But when her mouth opened, she said something entirely different. 

"I just did it for fun. I was bored, and too scared of the people around me to get to know them instead."

Her cheeks grew hot as the words rushed out of her. She sounded pathetic. Yet the tears trickling down her cheeks spoke of an acceptance of those words as true. And, struggle though she wanted to, her arms were completely immobile. She could not brush the tears from her face. 

"And what made you so scared?" asked the officer, folding his arms. 

"If I let them in, they would have hurt me," Abby whispered, "Laughed at me. [i]Left[/i] me." She shuddered. "Everyone leaves in the end. Mother and father... grandma... all the friends I made when I was little. If they didn't leave me, I was taken from them. And every time, I felt so alone. So I decided to just [i]stay[/i] alone. That way, no one could betray me again." 

The officer grunted. "You know you're pitiful, right?" he asked.

Tears blurring her vision, Abby nodded. "I know."