Line of Time

A Cry For Help...

As time went on Samantha's school days were filled with lonely free time, longer hair and picked clothing. Her mother let her have a few old shirts from her brothers but would make her go change when she came downstairs wearing one ready to go to school. She felt lucky when she could escape into something that let her mind unhook like reading, writing or her art. She would offend read old things like classics. Phantom of the Opera, To Kill a Mocking Bird, Dracula and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde were among the many books she found to grab her attention during school.

These were things she used to escape her reality of being a girl. She would read stories of male leading characters and imagine herself in their place. Doing the amazing feats they did and dreaming living like them one day. She found herself trying to play with other girls in her class from the very first day of first grade when she arrived at a new school... They all ran away from her and yelled your it but when she caught one of them they pushed her to the ground and said she was still it and that's how it worked... She was hit, pushed and teased for her things ever since that day. She was teased for her Batman back pack and train lunch box... She didn't understand why the girls were so mean, she liked these and just assumed that everyone else did but after looking around the room she found that the boys had trains and airplanes on their lunches. They also had superheros and cars on their bags and supplies... She saw that the girls had everything in pink, they supplies, bags and lunch boxes had princesses on them. She never really wanted a princess looking at her while she ate her lunch but in the second grade someone broke her lunchbox and her mom got her a pink one with a princess on it... 

From then on she had outgrown many things that she had treasured greatly. The shirts, toys, bags and pencils. She put on a smile everyday because that's what her parents told her to do. Keep your smile today. Have a good day and don't forget to smile. But after a while she started to become numb to the things around. When others called her a girl... she no longer showed her anger to the therm but her heart seemed to bleed because there was a part of her deep down that knew they were wrong that all this time they had been wrong. That everyone who had called her a girl was wrong. She stopped playing with her brothers and spent her time alone locked away in her room. They tried to get her to play with them again but it never worked. 

Oliver tried to get her to bake cookies with him and mom but she left after they finished cutting the first tray. Her brother looked over as she walked up the stairs and found that she had put sprinkles on them. Girl and boy cookie cutters had made the family. He could see mom, dad, him, Joe, James, Ron and then he saw an extra boy cut out but this one wasn't colored... It was stomped on but what looked like angry hands. Blue for eyes and a frown with red as then there was pink stabbed into it's chest. Or at least that's what Oliver could make out from what he saw in the mangled mess of dough...

Joe tried to get her to climb trees with him in the backyard but she managed to reach the top branch first and disappear behind all the leaves. Joe tried to climb up to where she was but he didn't notice her as she climbed down and disappeared into the house and up to her room where she watched him look around the top branches for her before she knocked on the window. He saw her but before he could say anything she was gone doing something else in her room and ignored her window all together. 

James brought her out to the park to toss the football around with him. She played for a while but after a bit she became quiet and then when he was trying to get her to talk she simply dropped the ball and started walking home. She didn't say anything and kept a good distance in front of him. It seemed that nothing that they tried worked to help them get the sister they had once known back. But the sister they had once loved that faded at around the age of five or six... She was now thirteen going on fourteen and they had no idea who this person was. She seemed like a shell of a person who didn't exist anymore... But the brothers had one more person they could try, one that she had been very close to when she was younger. 

Ron tried to get her to go for bike rides and walks but he found that after a while she would go missing when they were on bikes and then find her at home. When they went for walks he found her off the path and sitting on a rock as she looked out into the forest towards where there was no city... There was only nature and what Ron could see as blissfulness in it's purity.

"So what's on you're mind, Sam?" Ron asked for the first time in a long time as he used an old nickname that no one dared used now... But it brought a ghost of a smile to her face and for a moment he could have sworn he had seen a flash of the smallest hint of happiness. 

"...Right now or?..." She asked as he noticed that her voice was weak and ruff from lack of use. 

"In general... Talk to me or tell me what you want to do and we'll do it. You can name anything and we'll go do it right now, you just have to say it. Got it?" Ron stated as Sam's eyes clouded with what looked like a thought but it was quickly thrown out of her front of thought. Ron saw that it was the same way she dismissed bad ideas that used to be the way she lived by... The way these siblings had lived by once. Bad and reckless had been they game and they had been the winners but something had happened and she had repressed that part of herself.   

"That. That right there, what were you thinking about." Ron said as his sister looked over at him and got up and pulled the sleeves of her hoodie down to over her hands as she walked a bit away from the rock. The wind blew and her long brown hair tangled itself in her face. She ripped at it and wrestled with it as she threw it out of her face as it just blew back again. 

"Stupid hair!" She cursed at it as she dropped to her knees and Ron jumped up and ran to her side. 

"It's not stupid... It's pretty, it makes you look like a princess. You're our princess, remember?" Ron said in hopes of making her smile again. She shoved him with a strength he was not expecting and fell onto his side. 

"I'm not a princess. I never wanted to be a princess and I never wanted to be called one or thought of one... --I never wanted to be a girl!" She shouted as she stepped away from her brother. 

"I'd rather die than live another day and be Samantha! Because Samantha isn't real, she's not me and she has never been me. I've been rotting in her for years! I don't want to live as someone who I'm not!" She yelled as birds flew from the trees and she then ran off leaving her brother in the clearing she had been sitting it. 

He sat there in shock as heard her words and then sprang to his feet as he then went after her but he found her a few feet away sitting under a tree. 

"Sam how long have you been thinking like that..." Ron asked as grey met green eyes.

"Since I can remember, you remember the tantrums I had when mom put me in dresses... But no one ever listened to me. No one ever thought it was possible that I could be... --Everyone told me I was a girl and no one cared that I never felt like one. No matter what they said or did, I didn't feel like one and I never wanted to in the first place. . . " Samantha said as she sobbed into her knees, Ron sat down next to her and put an arm around her shoulders. 

"I'm not going to tell mom and dad... " He said as he just left it at that as he tried to calm his sibling down. Ron was determined to keep it out of his parents view, they didn't need this and he didn't need his sister in this kind of state when she talked about it... He thought about suggesting that she go to the school counselor once she entered high school... Maybe he could help her through this. Maybe this was all in her head, that he could refer a doctor to give her some medication or something that could at least bring back the little girl he knew...