brutal

Chapter 13

She had decided then and there that she hated the boy that never stopped asking questions.

It was a perfectly unfair conclusion to draw, considering how he only kept asking because she refused to answer. But from the way the boy with large framed glasses pestered her from the cell next to hers, she knew it was better to not humor him with answers she otherwise deemed as lies.

She did not know his name, or anyone else's for that matter-not even her own. The woman in the short red dress taught her the valuable lesson of separating singularity from individuality, one she could never afford to forget.

"Singular means you are one. You are a single star in the empty night sky, simply passing by." She'd told her with a knowledge held in high regard that day.

"Individual is where you stand alone. You are a lone star in a sky full of constellations, forgotten and unnoticed. Separated, but a part of the whole." She could remember the tilt of her red lips as she looked down on the child behind the large wooden table, barely five years old then. "What do you think you are?"

Individual, the child had answered with a stutter. The woman did not care about it, though, and yielded with a smile. "Good. Then you understand why you will live without a name until you're deemed deserving of one. Don't you, girl?"

She nodded, of course. Just like every other time where she had to nod to whatever she said. Shaking her head or showing any sign of disagreement, she learned, would simply be a mistake. She did not want to earn any more scars. She did not like how the fresh wounds hurt every time she tried to move.

Now, looking back at it, she was thankful for the hard-earned lessons the woman in the short red dress with the heavy red lips taught her. It helped her realize the worst in people, even though she was just eight years of age and was undoubtedly surrounded by those that were just as young as she was.

"Do you know where we are?" The boy with the large framed glasses asked for the fourth time. It was starting to annoy her.

She answered with ignorance (for the fourth time, too) and turned to look at the cell directly across hers where a girl just as small and quiet as she was leaning against the wall.

Her eyes were a beautiful shade of cerulean blue and her hair had the color of gold. The girl's round face had accumulated dirt from the weeping and begging she'd recently learned to stop doing when a guard passed and threatened to hit her with the back of his weapon.

She would've applauded for the girl's decision not to challenge the threat if it weren't for the solemn situation they all were in.

Verena Williams, the clipboard of information bolted to the door of the girl's jail cell read. It included other things like her age, nationality, blood type, and a few other notes that she knew the boy next to her had a better chance at reading than she.

What a nice name, she thought.

In retrospect, having a name at all would've been nice. She knew that if she were to look, her own clipboard would have the space reserved for her name completely blank.

"Verena." A voice called out from the end of the hallway. Verena's head turned immediately towards the direction the voice echoed from. The girl could not resist turning, too. It wasn't her name, but she wanted to see what was happening.