The Box People

New Recruit

We sat in the hall in a circle for about ten minutes before Corey had the guts to actually say something. I don't know why he needed the guts to do it. I guess I just meant that no one else was talking so why should anyone talk at all? We were perfectly content with our silence. Or maybe it was just me.

"Let's get to know each other!" Corey said, with a chuckle at the end of his words. We all joined in with the laughing until our stomachs hurt. I\'m not sure why, I guess it was just funny because we were all used to the quiet. Or because we just assumed we all knew enough about each other already and that we didn\'t need to know about each other\'s pasts anyways.

When we were all done giggling, Corey started speaking again, an extension of his last sentence, "No really, it'll give us something to do!\"

I think we all agreed that we didn't need to do this, it felt like being asked your life story by a therapist or a guidance counselor.

"Tori, why don\'t you start?"

Really? Ugh. Fine.

Well. . .I guess this could be fun.

"Okay. . . well where should I start?" I honestly didn\'t know where to begin, there wasn't much to tell but I guess there was a little if I thought about it hard.

"The beginning?" Sev suggested casually.

I'm no good at explaining myself, especially now when I felt put on the spot and when a rush of just everything trampled over all the rest of my thoughts in my head, and I couldn't understand anything and all I could think about was my family and being overwhelmed.

"Sev why don't you go first." I said nervously.

Everyone looked at me like I was some sort of idiot or that I was afraid of my past. But I was afraid of my past. I didn't want them to know. It's not like we'd be best friends forever, this was just temporary, we were working together to get revenge, that's all.

I shut up my head as I listened to Sev talk.

"Okay. . . Well my mom and dad divorced when I was about Aria's age. My mom was a really careless person and she didn't pay much attention to my little brother and my littler sister. Actually, my brother Darren was 'abused', if that's what you want to call it. Every time he did something wrong my mother hit him with a big wooden paddle sort of thing. When we were younger she told us it was like 'child reinforcement', like we got that instead of an allowance deduction or being grounded, like the other kids. She said it was the better punishment, in the end. My brother died a year later, got beat too much. It was the hardest on my dad and my sister, Ginevra. We called her Ginny. My dad used to call her his little guinea pig. She always laughed at that. When j was Darren's age I got beaten too, but I was the only one to survive. Ginny got thrown out of a five story window when my mom got REALLY mad at her once, she accidentally knocked mom's coffee off the table and all over her newspaper. It was a little thing, but she must have been really crabby that morning, because she screamed, "THAT'S IT! I'M DONE!" as she picked up a screaming, crying little Ginny by the feet and as I yelled and fought and punched and did everything I could to that woman to make her stop and give my sister back. Finally, she kicked me off and as soon as I got up, I crawled over and bit her achilles tendon. She let out a shriek of intense pain, as Ginny flew out of her arms and out the open window of our shabby, small apartment." Sev finished with a sigh and a barely visible tear on his cheek, which he hastily wiped away and then straightened himself up, "No!" I screamed and yelled and sobbed and made as much noise as possible to annoy her.  Dad was never there to help us because he was being blackmailed by mom. He had to go to work everyday to earn money for the apartment and bills and stuff, if he didn't go she promised she would kill one of us and blame it on him,"