Grace the Runner #1 ✔️ #wattys2019

The Past

Grace

1

I think the first time I ran I was around 7 years old, my shiny blonde hair was in pigtails. I was playing in the sand pit at my local park.

Four boys stood huddled around a tree, giving them a sense of mischief. I kept my eyes off them and continued playing in the sand.

"Hey girly, get out of here this is our castle!" I heard a shout form the boys, thinking it was none of my concern I continued playing in the pit.

"Hey girly, I told you, get off our land!" Once again, I heard a shout from the boys, I turned around to see the four boys staring at me, they looked around my age maybe older. Again, I ignored them.

"Hey, listen to me, I am the king of the park, and I demand you to leave", this time it was the tallest boy who spoke. His long brown curly hair was hovering over his eyes. I ignored him again.

I suddenly felt a presence behind me, someone pulled my left pigtail, that's when I ran. Nobody touches my pigtails.

2

The second time I ran happened when I was eleven years old, in the cold month of January.

I could hear my parents arguing through the thin ceiling. I was sat upstairs on my princess pink bed, hugging my knees to my chin, while I cried silently. I felt scared, worried and angry.

Last week my father came home drunk, he fell over objects and crashed about. He tried to climb the stairs and when he got to the top, he banged on my door. Shouting at me, calling me worthless, it was just drunk slurs.

But the words got too much, so I ran, I climbed out my window, down the vines and ran away from the words which hurt me, the words of a loved one.

3

The next time I ran I was thirteen, I should've been happy and smiling because it was my birthday.

But I wasn't because my dad had died from alcohol poisoning and my mum had left me. She didn't even tell me, just left a note, a single, one paged, note.

My Pooh Bear,

I have to go, and I am sorry.

At this very moment I am sat in the graveyard of Kennet Road in the cold October weather and I am watching my father being lowered into the dark pit of hell.

People were swarmed around me, friends of my family, sat crying and sniffling. While I was sat alone, with no tears running down my cheeks, no salty tears in my mouth.

I felt relieved, my father, a horrible man had died. I touched my arm to see the still clear scars of where the man, called my father had thrown a sharp shard of glass at me, when he was in a fit of rage.

As I sat there in the cold field near the pit, I felt a shiver run down my shoulder as the wind got harder, I knew a storm was brewing.

I sat still as rain ran over my soft hands, I jumped frightened as a cold hand touched my shoulder. I turned to see an old man, he seemed drunk, must have been one of my dad's drinking buddies. I could smell the sickly piles of beer, coming from his mouth, where rotten teeth lay.

I ran then, I hated drunks, they reminded me of my father. Horrible, disgusting men.

4

Now for three years I've been living in an orphanage. A place which hides dark secrets and horrible food.

I'm here because I have no family left, and the care worker couldn't get hold of a lady, called my mother.

In the time I've been held hostage at Upbree House, I have made zero friends. But that is because all the children here know I have a mother, they know I have someone who can take me, but they don't know that she doesn't want me or love me.

It was last year when they found out, they all threw dirty comments at me, they called me a tramp, loner and bitch.

So, the words got too much for me again. I ran, I ran because I knew the words were true, they were words of the devil who I felt lived inside me.

5

I'm sixteen, nearly seventeen now. I live with a girl called Emily, Emily has long blonde curls which sit on her shoulders, and swirl around in the summer breeze.

Emily is twenty-six fresh out of University, she met me in the park, when I was napping on a dark wooden bench. She took me in, adopted me, she's nice, like the older sister I never had.

The flat we live in is full of colours and its peaceful, not like the dark deadly orphanage I once lived in. But with the niceness of my new surroundings, I'm still scared, I still feel alone and I still feel no love