Cimmaron Hastings District 7

I have strawberry blond hair that is a little longer than shoulder length. On a good day it's straight. My eyes are an odd light green that sometimes look blue. I'm about 5'3" and I'm skinny. Not because I'm malnourished but because that's just the way my body is. But don't let my petite frame fool you. I have a pointed chin and pale skin. My eyebrows are dark and slanted upward. I have a nice straight nose and small lips.

I like to wear simple clothes. I don't really care what I look like as long as I can move in it. Honestly I'm just glad I have something to wear. But let's not get into that.

To anyone who's just meeting me they would think that there's nothing wrong with me, that I'm just your average teenager. Which to me is a good thing. Because I don't want to be treated differently, I want to be like every other girl. Even though I know I'm not.

I have two scars, one is on one arm and then the second is on the other. they're both generally in the same place, my upper arm at the inside of my elbows. Because of them my arms twitch, they were cut too deep, they were supposed to kill me, they almost did. But I'm still here and this is what's left of me. I look fine when you first glance at me but then my arms twitch without warning, sometimes at the most inopportune moments and then you see the truth.

I don't have a very nice personality, I tell it like it is and I'm usually rude. I like pushing people until they blow up in my face. I don't know why but that's just the way I am, I don't know how to stop myself. But just because I'm usually mean it doesn't mean I don't care. There are people I care about, people who matter to me. It's just hard for me to show it.

I like to keep people at a distance, because that way they can't hurt me, they can't let me down, and I can't let them down. This is the only way I can be if I want to stay sane.

Maybe I'm already crazy, maybe that's not something I can try to change or prevent. Until I figure that out I'll pretend that I can. Because even if it doesn't seem like it, I have hope.

I stopped going to school a while ago. It's not that I'm bad at it or that I needed to quit so I could work, I just couldn't take the stares, the whispering. Everyone there knows my past, they know I'm not just an average girl. Maybe it's selfish of me to drop school just because of that but I guess I am a selfish person in some people's eyes.

Like I said before I have a bad attitude, everyone knows it, I'd rather be the mean girl than the victim. Wouldn't everybody?

I've been saved a lot of times, from different things. I'm thankful for that, for the people who are willing to take a chance on me, who care about me. But I'm afraid that maybe, in the end, I won't be worth saving. In fact I don't think all the saving in the world could save me from my fate.

We all know how this will end, we're just too afraid to admit it.

I don't remember my childhood fondly, it was filled with hunger, and fear. I wasn't taken care of, I was neglected, left to find my own way to survive. When I think about those early days I remember being in a dark room with the ratty curtains drawn, repugnant smells invading my senses. I don't even really remember going outside, or seeing the outside until I was eight.

My parents were so busy getting high that they forgot all about me, most of the time. Mom wasn't so bad, she was usually just an unconscious body in the room, but Dad was evil, violent, always hungry for my fear. He would terrorize me, yell at me, hit me, he hit Mom too and then he would say that I would always be his, that I couldn't escape. Even if I tried, he would hunt me down.

We had these neighbors who would check in on us sometimes. I never really saw them, they were just a dark silhouette in the doorway, a voice I heard from the other room. I think they were the only people aside from my parents who knew I existed. I was the only reason they ever came over. They knew that my parents were addicts, that something wasn't quite right in my dad's head, they just weren't sure they could do anything about it back then.

Mom would always say that I was doing fine, her eyes glazed over and her voice a thousand miles away. I don't even think she knew what was going on. But when Dad answered the door he always yelled at them, told them to mind their own goddamn business. But the neighbors still came, not all the time, but every few months I would hear their voice at the door.

My dad murdered my mother when I was eight. He was yelling at her, telling her that she was useless garbage, that he was tired of her hanging around. He wanted her to leave. It was the only time I ever really remember Mom not being high. I know because she actually seemed alive for once, she actually understood what was happening. But she understood too late when Dad put his hands around her neck and never let go until she became a ragdoll in his hands, suspended there in the air, her head lolling back. Even after she was dead Dad still yelled at her, screamed in her face.

It was then that I ran. I went out the back window and ran. I didn't know where I was running to, and I didn't quite know why I was. I would stumble, over and over, not used to the feeling, to have so much space set out before me. All I remember was thinking I had to get out before I ended up like Mom, before Dad turned on me too. I ran until I reached the neighbor's house, the neighbors who always came to check up on me, though I didn't know that at the time. I ran into their house, panting, I stopped in their dining room where five faces looked up at me from their plates with bewildered expressions.

I didn't even know what I was doing there, how I had even gotten there, it felt like a dream, like one minute I was watching my dad strangle my mom and the next I was standing there. I had never really spoken until that moment. Before there had been no need, but at that moment two words came out of my mouth: help me.

They didn't know who I was, they had never seen me before. They just looked at me, dumbstruck for a moment. And then they looked at my dirty clothes, at my messy hair, and somehow they figured out who I was, that I was Cimmaron Hastings, the girl next door that they had never seen but had always worried about.

They asked me what happened and I told them. Jack, the father, grabbed his work axe and went over to my house to get my dad. Their oldest child, Hunter, ran to find a peacekeeper. And then the mother, Jean, and her two girls asked me if I wanted something to eat, if I wanted to change my clothes, take a bath. I was bewildered by their kindness and went along numbly, sitting down at their table, eating a plate of potatoes and venison. It was all so civilized, all so unlike anything I had ever known. It was overwhelming.

Not long after I finished my food Jack came back with Hunter and a peacekeeper, telling us that my dad was gone, that when they got to my house the only person there was my dead Mom.

I was in the paper. It's a big story, a girl who never knew anything but the inside of her home, the abuse of her father. In a day I went from the girl that didn't exist to the girl that everyone knew.

The Melbings, my neighbors, took me in. I went to school for the first time, interacted with people my own age, became a part of a family, a real family. My whole life up to then had been so dark and hopeless, I hadn't even known there was more to life than that. Well maybe I did. I think that maybe the reason I managed to live at all was because of the Melbings, because of those days when the front door would open and I'd see light, and hear a voice so different from my dad's.

The Melbing's had three kids, Hunter, who was two years older than me, Cheyenne who was one year younger than me, and then Rose, who was two years younger than Cheyenne. They didn't seem to mind too much, me joining the family. I wasn't exactly the older sister Cheyenne had never had, but we got along. But Hunter was the one I hung out with the most. Because he didn't treat me like something fragile, or broken. He just treated me like another human being.

I had two good years with them before my past came back to haunt me. My dad had run off into the woods somewhere, went into hiding after he murdered my mom. I had never imagined that he would come back. But he did. He came back and figured out where I was.

It was night time, I was just beginning to fall asleep when he came in through my window. I didn't realize he was there until I heard the floorboard creak. I sat up in my bed and looked to see what had caused the noise and I saw him standing there, his clothes tattered, his hair scraggly, he was breathing hard, and in the moonlight I saw the glint of a knife in his hand.
"Daddy's home," He said in a low voice, and before I could scream he had his hand over my mouth, his body pinning me down. "Did you miss me?"

I tried to struggle, tried to find away to alert the family without him noticing. But I couldn't and when he leaned closer to me, his hot breath on my cheek I felt a shiver run through me as he said, "I told you I'd find you." And then he pulled away just far enough so that he could cut into the skin on my arm. I screamed, felt hot tears run down my cheeks from the pain, the fear that was enveloping me. The knife bit into my skin over and over again. I wondered if the pain would ever stop, if when he was done there would be nothing left of my arms.

And then there was a crash in the room and my dad was no longer on top of me, carving my skin, he was flung across the room. Jack was punching him, slamming him against the wall. I saw this through blurry vision, the sounds far away and I remember wondering if I was going to die. Then my dad was lying on the floor, blood pooling around his head. I knew he was dead, his lifeless eyes stared at me.

Then Jack came over to me and I vaguely remember him telling me that I was going to be okay, that I didn't have to be afraid anymore. But then Jean came in, Hunter did too, and when she saw my arms I heard her say, "Omigod." And her face was stricken with horror. So I looked down at my arms and saw through my blood, one word on each arm that when put together said, "Never forget." Then I fainted.

I lost a lot of blood that night. I almost didn't make it. Then next thing I remembered after that night was waking up in another bed feeling tired. Jean was sitting next to me and when she saw that I was awake she told me that everything would be okay, that my dad was dead and he couldn't hurt me anymore. I looked down at my arms and saw the bandages wrapped around them, the blood gone as well as the words.

My dad may have been dead but he still hurt me after that, scarred me for the rest of my life. And I will never forget that night, I will never forget what he did to me, because it's branded in my skin for a lifetime.

Once I got better I went back to school. But after a couple of years I was done with it. I couldn't handle the stares and whispers when I walked by, the careful treatment everyone gave me like they weren't sure what I would do. They thought I might be crazy too, like my dad. I tried to act normal, I wore long sleeved shirts so that no one could see the words carved into my arms, I tried to look normal. But then the twitching would start and everyone would remember who I was, who my father was.

So I begged Jean to let me stop going to school. It took a while but she finally gave in. I helped her out around the house and then she would teach me some stuff, the things she thought were important.

I had nightmares for years after my dad came back. I would wake up sweating and the end of a scream in my throat. At first Jean would come in and comfort me, but after a while I told her not to. When I woke up I would look at the words on my arms and be reminded that the nightmare was real. Those were the only times I allowed those words to exist. During the day I pretended they weren't there, when I got dressed or bathed I ignored them. But in the dark of the night, alone with my nightmares I stared at them, heard my dad's words echo in my head, see his gleaming, crazy eyes flash before me.

It's been six years since that night. I try to live a normal life, to ignore my past. But it's hard. I don't have very many nightmares anymore, but I still have the scars, the twitches. If my dad had just put slash marks into my arms I think I would have gotten over it by now, I'd be able to walk around in a T-shirt in front of strangers and not care what they thought. But the words cut much deeper and they are not something I can ignore. They are something I will always have to try and hide.

Sometimes I worry that I might be crazy too, that I'm not so unlike my dad, that the kids at school had good reason to tiptoe around me. I don't think I'm crazy yet, but I know I will be, someday, whether I want to be or not. You don't live through the kind of horrors I have and get out without something happening to your mind.