The Broken Ones

Chapter Thirty-Six

"Only three weeks till final exams," Frankie announced to the group.

Johnny groaned. "Please don't remind me."

Valeriana laughed at Johnny response. "I only have three exams," she said with a smile.

"I'm going to transfer at the end of the seminars," Johnny announced.

"What? Are we not good enough for you?" Frankie asked jokily.

"It's not like that," Johnny reassured her. "I got a perfect score for my Atar last year. I could have gone everywhere, but I chose here. I choose this place to try and avoid my past but meeting you guys has helped me realised I can't live my life like that. I can't spend the rest of my life hiding."

"Where are you going to go?" Valeriana asked.

"University of Melbourne," Johnny told them.

"I finished my last essay," Alesia told the group. "And I want to read it to you." She reached into her bag and pulled at a two double-sided piece of paper.

"Is it personal?" Johnny asked.

Alesia nodded. "Yes, and I mention all of you in it." She took a deep breath before starting.

"What is it that makes a person? Is it their personality? Is it their personal experiences that shared their personality? I have always struggled with that question. What is it that makes me the person I am? Who am I? Can I ever be more than this? Will I ever see myself as more than just a girl with post-traumatic stress disorder? This disorder that consumes my life, my thoughts and my actions. Will there ever be a day where I will wake up and not be pledged my memories of past events?

Maybe I should start from the beginning. My name is Alesia Floros. Is my name familiar? Have you heard it before? It is likely you never have heard my name, I'm not a singer or an actress. Honestly, I have no talent to speak of. Yet there is still a chance you know my name, or maybe you have forgotten my name longer ago but remember my story.

I was born in Melbourne, Australia in 1997 to Nelson Floros and Leah Anderson alongside my twin sister Mackenzie. From the moment we were born, Mackenzie and I were inseparable. Like most identical twins we shared an incredible close bond. We weren't two different people but two halves of one whole being.

Is it starting to come back to you now?

Sadly Mackenzie is the only happy memory of my early childhood. My mother, Leah was very far from being 'mother of the year'. The way Leah saw our situation, was that she was a beautiful young woman held back by a marriage and two little bratty children. She never wanted to be a mother and just because she had accidentally become one doesn't mean she would play the part. She was an incredible actress, not that she would ever win any awards for her performance. She had managed to convince everyone, including my father, that she was the perfect ideal mother. Yet I knew that wasn't true. I saw who she really was as she let her true colours shown behind closed doors.

Leah Anderson was cold and cruel. Her words were stabbed us like a knife, then as we began to recover from the blow, she would stab us with real ones. My four-year-old body was covered with cuts, bruises and scratches, but Leah had a story to conceal everything. 'You know how clumsy Alesia is, that mark above her eyes is there because she ran into the table.' 'Silly Mackenzie was playing on the stairs, the poor little thing fell down them.' How anyone to know what was really going on? She was an actress, and our home was the stage.

Yet that was only the tip of the iceberg. Leah was unbearable sober but add alcohol into the equation, and she became a nightmare. Unlike other children our age, Mackenzie and I weren't afraid of the bogeyman lurking under the bed or in the closet, we were afraid of the monster that wore the face of our mother. Drunk Leah created the problems of bruises and cuts, but it was sober Leah that covered them up.