Baby Independent (Bratayley version) // COMPLETED

9

Hayley

"Your shin is, well, fractured." Katie said.

Fractured?

"Let's go to the fourth floor so I can get you a cast." She said.

We all went up the elevator and into a room. Annie's mom handed me a plaque with the different colors and their names on it. With Annie's help, I decided on rainbow. She did the cast, then pulled something out of the cabinet.

"This is a cast shoe. You put it on like this." Katie said, as she demonstrated.

She put it on me. I tried walking with the crutches as an extra support, and that didn't hurt, so I tried without the crutches. It hurt the itty-bittiest bit but I could walk fine. She drove us back home. I put the crutches back in the downstairs closet in my house. I searched the entire house, and mom wasn't there. Oh well. Maybe she actually decided to do something useful in her life.

———

"I think I'm finally ready to tell you my story," I said.

"Well, okay then. It can't be that bad," Annie said.

"Oh, it is. My mom and dad were happily married when I was born. When I was around three, my dad left my mom because she was always drunk and she always smoked. My dad didn't take me though. I've always been independent. And the truth about my leg injury, is that my mom abused me. She kicked me and punched my leg, and I fell onto some of her broken bottles. My back and arms had cuts and bruises."

"Wow," Annie said.

———

Annie

"Hey honey?" Mom said.

"Yeah?" I replied.

"I need to tell you something, now that you're old enough."

"Oh, okay," I said as I sat down next to my mom.

"I know we baby you, and I think you know too."

"Well duh. You don't even cut up my little sisters pancakes!"

"Yeah. Well, you see, two years before we had caleb, we had a little girl named Zara. She had died two days before you were born. We recognized you as Zara's spirit in another little girl, as you looked like her and acted like her when we were her age. So we babied you, as you were the first girl, and you were just like her. We did everything for you and always kept a close eye on you so that you couldn't kill yourself like Zara accidentally did-"

"Wait, my sister commuted suicide?!"

"Yeah. . . . She was playing in the front yard of our house, and I turned my head for one moment, and the next thing we knew, your sister had run into the road and gotten hit by a car."