She lay on her bed, dead inside. It was too much. She rolled over and picked up the knife. Her mother died in the car crash to save her, her father tossed her into the orphanage, her brother had been shot in a drive-by, and she was alone. She no longer had any friends and the one she thought would be there for her moved to Oregon. She wanted death, but she couldn’t bring herself to pull the blade across her wrist. She feared death. The pain was too much for her to want life, but the fear was too much for her to want death.
She threw the knife away and hugged her knees. She cried and cried until she vomited off the side of her bed into the trashcan. She vomited until she was just gagging and nothing came up. She rolled onto her back and stared at the ceiling, eyes distant. She wanted to scream, “Why, God? Why this?” She wanted to reverse time and save her mother; she wanted to kill her father and the man who shot her brother. She wanted Raya to come back from Oregon and life to be normal.
Her foster mother yelled from the bottom of the steps, “Selena, you lazy whore! Get out of bed! You’ve been in there since breakfast! It’s dinner!”
She wanted to run away, now, and never come back. She wanted to find a cave to live in and never have to face her wicked foster mother or her wretched foster siblings. She didn’t want to have to face the stares from her classmates.
Selena rolled out of her bed, picking up the knife and stuffing it in a drawer, and walked out her door. She straightened her black tank top and adjusted her torn jeans as she descended the stairs.
Everyone was sitting at the dinner table, eating, when she sat down. Carmen, the only good foster sibling, looked at Selena, worried. Carmen was the same age as Selena. She loved to be with Selena and Selena liked her company. Selena had only been here for two weeks and she and Carmen were already close friends.
“What’s with you?” Tonya, Selena’s adopted mother, said, annoyed. She looked at Selena as though a pile of dog crap was in the chair and not a sixteen-year-old girl suffering from serious depression.
“Nothing.” Selena mumbled. She didn’t feel like eating despite the fact she had just finished puking her stomach up a few seconds ago. Nathan and Richard, the twin four-year-old terrors, were busying mixing their food into disgusting mountains of mush. Kayla, the nineteen-year-old Queen Snob herself, was busy popping fat burning pills and drinking down her water. She and her mother had just gotten back from the plastic surgeon. Breast implants and botox. They might have been twins except for the fact that Tonya had black hair and Kayla had bleach blonde.
They thought of Selena as a pimple on their manicured family face. Selena thought a pimple might improve their looks.
Selena waited until Frank, her foster father, finished to scrape her plate and lock herself back in her room. Frank was nice, but he spent all day teaching beauty queens like Tonya and Kayla, tennis. He was muscular and had a nice face and sandy blonde hair with paper white teeth.
Selena closed her door and was about to lock it when she heard someone knock. It was light and came from the center of the door. It had to be Carmen. Frank never paid attention to Selena and anyone else would have just barged in. She opened the door and told Carmen to come in.
“Are you okay? You didn’t eat and you’ve been locked up here all day. You still feel bad about your family?”
“Yeah.” Selena said. She tied the trash bag closed to keep from having to smell or see her throw up. “I might need some fresh air, wanna come?”
“Mom probably won’t even know I’m gone.” Carmen said. She was right. The only child Tonya cared about was Kayla. Frank didn’t seem to even notice he had kids.
Selena walked over to the doors that led to the balcony. This wouldn’t be the only time she had snuck out. She had done it every night since she got here.
She and Carmen climbed down the trellis and walked across the front lawn to the street. Tonya had used the money she had won during Miss America, along with the money from the other pageants she and Kayla had won, to buy a large mansion on a forty acre piece of land.
Selena and Carmen walked down the street to the smaller housing to a park next to the old abandoned school. This was well past the line where housing stopped and woods began. One street lamp near the entrance to the park provided the only light to break the pitch-black darkness.
Carmen had snuck out with Selena the first time and wasn’t scared of the darkness of the park. The twilight provided enough light and the girls went and sat on the swings.
“Why do you have to live with such a horrid mother?” Selena asked, pushing herself backwards.
“She’s not really my mother, that’s why she likes the other kids more. She’s my stepmother. She plays the role of ‘wicked stepmother’ very well.” Carmen laughed.
“So what happened to you mother?”
“Like yours, she died in a car crash when I was two.” Carmen said sadly.
“I’m sorry.” Selena said. She felt bad because for a moment she was happy Carmen’s mother had died. It meant that she could empathize with her.
“It’s another thing we have in common.” Carmen smiled.
A comfortable silence fell over them as they swung. Selena looked at the full moon and listened to the night. She loved to be outside at night, especially during the full moon. There was a peaceful bliss in seeing the pale mistress of the night at her full bloom.
Carmen yawned heavily, “I’m so tired, now!”
“Why don’t you head home.” Selena said. “I want to stay a little while longer. I’ll see you later." Carmen jumped out of her swing and landed in the sand before heading out through the gate of the park.
Selena felt the coolness of the air on her skin, but there was something else. She felt someone watching her from the shadows. She looked around and tried to see into the dark patches, but with no avail. Her swing slowed until she was practically still as she continued to gaze into the shadows.
She then heard footsteps. They were coming toward her and after a moment, a person stepped out of the darkness. He was tall and slender with long silver hair that hung to just below his shoulders. His skin was pale and he wore a casual, all-black suit.
Selena stared as the man approached her. She urged her body to move, but she was paralyzed with fear.
“Why are you out so late?” He asked her with a cool smirk. “It could be dangerous for pretty girls like yourself.”
Selena’s eyes widened, but she couldn’t force herself to move. The man held her gaze continuously, not breaking contact. His eyes were a frosty purple, gorgeous with his silver hair, but abnormal in humans.
He leaned closer to her, looking her straight in the face. She felt her body finally move and she darted out her swing and away from the man. She ventured to look back to see where he was and saw him looking at her in disbelief. She bolted out of the gate and into the street. She looked back at the swing set and found the man was gone.
She didn’t stop until she was outside the mansion. She climbed the trellis and returned to her room. She had come close to possibly dying, but that man was strange and beautiful, and the way he held her eyes and entranced her was not human. It was as though he had paralyzed her just by looking into her eyes.
She collapsed on her bed, curling in to a ball and staring out her window at the moon. There was something about that man, and she knew it.
