Below her, the swimming pool was still in the absence of wind. She looked down to see if the stars were reflected in the water, but they weren't. In fact, there was nothing in the pool at all besides the quite chlorinated water. Maybe she wouldn't do it after all. It was late, well into the technical part of morning and it would be very easy to just fo

rget the whole thing and go to bed. She was tired. But she wasn't sleepy. The truth was, she hadn't done much of anything in the past few weeks since school had let out and this day hadn't been much different. The only real difference was that she was up awfully late sitting on the roof of her house when she could have easily been inside drifting off to sleep. What was compelling her to remain out there? She dropped her right hand from around her legs and reached for the square pad of paper which lay near her bare feet.

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She turned on her left side and worked a small plastic item from her right side pocket. It was a small pink Bic lighter. The child-safety lock had been expertly removed. She flipped the lighter once, twice before it caught, presenting a tiny light to the night air. Gloria fingered the papers to find the first one. Order didn't really matter, but if any of this mattered anyway perhaps order was also somehow important. When she had it, she held her breath, without meaning to, and held it to the flame. It caught and burned a steady flame across the paper. Gloria reached out her hand and dropped

Some common words found in the essay are:
Night Overhead, paper gloria, pad paper,
Approximate Word count = 813
Approximate Pages = 3 (250 words per page double spaced)