raja hailsham / d4

r a j a

I remember being three years old and I swear that I do. I swear that I do.

Because summers have always been hot here but when I was three, that was the hottest summer. There was one day that I put my hands in the dirt to cool them down because I'd touched the fountain in the courtyard and it burned me from the sun. Birds flew overhead, one after the other in a long line and the sun on my neck was hot, unyeilding.

My skin was golden then.

I was golden then.

And I could always feel different, even when they swore that I wasn't, I knew. I was different. No one else got upset as easy as me. No one else needed things to be just so. I don't think anyone watched like me either. I know no one sees things like me but I see them, watching me, watching them. And it brings me great joy sometimes but also such terrible sadness.

If you've ever wondered what it feels like to be an animal in an exhibit, don't.

Just don't.

The needles have always been the worst. They're always testing our blood and I never knew why before. I'd ask the carers and they'd say it was for our health but I already knew I was healthy. So it felt like a lie and it was. It all was.

They didn't love us.

No one does.

I think that everyone else already knew that but for me, the news was shocking. I'd always worked hard, you know? Trained my whole life because I was good at it. It was the only thing I was good at. Playing with the other kids was hard. I didn't like their games. I couldn't take their teasing well and I knew that. I was the watcher, so I knew it but they didn't. I'd have my hands on their chest, pushing them back, hard. They didn't like me much.

Even before we found out what we were for.

Juno was the only who didn't seem to find me insufferable. Even if they were always stealing the cigarettes that I stole of the mailman. I didn't steal them to smoke them. I stole them because I didn't have any reason not to.

I liked the way it felt, lifting them from the mailman's boots. Something secret, just for me.

I live in an orphanage. Some kids talk about how their parents died or how much they were wanted. Not me, my mom sold me for three hundred dollars. I saw the receipt once. It was in the folder in the doctor's office. My file, I guess. Her name is Rimi and she worked a cafe on the docks. My father was a sailor.

I think.

I make up stories to fill in the blanks sometimes.

But I have a lot of blanks and not very many answers.

When we found out why we were here, why we were being raised so carefully, I gave up somehow. I went into a rage and when I came out of it, a carer had a broken nose and my fists were all bloody from a broken mirror. People turned and walked the other way after that when they saw me coming down the hall.

No one talked to me anymore.

That's ok.

I just decided to focus on training.

[dars]