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There were many things Coralia Sutton didn't like, basic things such as olives or wet socks, but also complex things like the colors red and blue. Mainly because it just brings her back to being nine years old, standing on glass which was scattered around the carpeted stairs of her family home while holding her arm tightly as blood seeps through her pink long sleeve. Her eyes were glued to her mother holding a gun, pointing it at her father with tear-stained cheeks.
Her father, Bernard, had always been the strongest person she'd ever seen, and that night he was frail, nervous, and weak until suddenly he was shot dead on the ground, with no emotions. Melinda Sutton only cried harder after that, until she heard sobs from her daughter standing on the stairs, not able to move. Mommy loves you, Melinda cried before putting the gun on her head and pulling the trigger.
Coralia remembers the red and blue lights glowing on her face as cops and paramedics arrived at the home. She was brought out to an ambulance where a medic cleaned her up, a large blanket was wrapped around her shaking body. The neighbor who once brought pies and babysat the girl, the same one who called the cops that night, sat by her side as two bodies were wheeled out of the house, all covered up as if no one knew who they belonged to already. She remembers being nine and not being able to sleep more than 5 hours a night because of the nightmares that haunted her endlessly.
Melinda Sutton was severely drunk that night, other than on heavy drugs, so for obvious reasons, Coralia avoided alcohol and drugs like the plague; she was called Holy Mary by high school kids. Until her sophomore year when she finally caved and went to a party with her small-town friends, she left behind the second she graduated. Coralia drank that night out of peer pressure and realized why her mother enjoyed the company of alcohol and opioids; they make you forget.
For one night, Coralia didn't see herself as the sad orphan girl, she had fun, she laughed, she danced, she did it all. Once it washed off, the fear of losing herself just like her mother had haunted her. Until she realized that she had one thing her mother didn't: control.
Coralia stopped being called Holy Mary by her classmates and made more friends. By the time she was a senior, she was class president, valedictorian, and captain of the track team. She still conserved herself as the sweet girl who held on to her beliefs, no matter how silly. She was loved, which is why it was a shock nobody heard of her after prom, where she won prom queen. It's not like it was a secret she had moved to New York, but she had cut all ties to the small town that saw her grow.
New York was different. Nobody knew who she was or what she had lived through, other than a select group of people who soon became her closest friends.
Her best friend and roommate, Anika Kayoko, was the closest to Coralia out of them all. But everyone knows Anika only got that spot after Coralia and Ethan Landry broke up. Still, Anika is the first person she met upon arriving at Blackmore University and the very first friend she made.
