The Magician's Apprentice

Scars

I love New York. It was, as they say, "The Big Apple", but it was also infested with pigeons (or bird rats, as I call them).

But what I loved most of all were just the walks. No outing was the same, as I almost always took a different route every time. But even if I went the same way, the sights would be different. I would see different people, different vehicles, different animals. New York was never the same and always changing, and I loved it.

Until...

It was the usual fight. Lucia was getting after me for the umpteenth time for not vacuuming the living room, something I was supposed to do every day.

"You're a part of this family now, and we must always pull our weight!"

I was so sick of hearing these same fourteen words every day, that I finally snapped.

"I'm a part of this family? Well that's news to me."

I was grateful for Lucia and the Smiths for taking me in. I really was.

But that didn't mean I liked staying with the nuclear family. As soon as I walked through their doors, I was expected to behave like a lifelong blood relative. I was asked to walk the dogs, clean the house, and worst of all, watch the twins. I didn't really mind at first, but after a while I was sick of helping a family I barely knew. I spent more and more time wandering around the city until Lucia cornered me and insisted that I pull my own weight.

Despite our fight being nearly identical to our previous ones, it still weighed on me heavily as I stormed outside. Our relationship, while it was never mother/daughter material, had usually been pretty amiable. But recently I was just to exhausted of the cliched nuclear family.

It took me a while to realize this, but part of me actually missed my old life. When my mom wasn't drunk and/or partying, we would always bake together. Our favorite was pumpkin cupcakes with a cinnamon glaze, and when one of us had a bad day, we would always make them. Sometimes even my dad would come out to have a few, and we would talk about his cases. That's when I actually felt like I had a family.

But then came the fateful day of my final fight with Lucia.

I was trembling with rage as I marched across the sidewalks.

I liked Lucia, but she didn't understand. I couldn't just instantly become a Smith just because she said so. How did she expect the twins to respect me and see me as an elder sister while I was a stranger to them?

I soon found that I was out of breath, and I slowed down. I was so focused on my frustrations that I wasn't paying attention to where I was going. I was behind a restaurant, where they kept the dumpsters. I was going to leave, but the back door opened and I heard voices.

"Dude, dude, looked what I smuggled from Zhang."

"No way, man. How concentrated is it?"

Unable to mind my own business, I paused and watched two boys around my age exit the restaurant. One of them was clutching a plastic bottle with liquid sloshing inside it.

"This is the good stuff," one of the boys said. "Like, I heard that serial killers used it to dissolve their victims."

Acid? I thought. That can't be legal...

"Where the hell did you get it?" Boy #1 chuckled.

"I already told you," Boy #2 said impatiently. "I swiped it from Zhang, the head chef."

"What does he need hydrochloric acid for?"

"He uses it in the soy sauce, idiot!"

"Oh, yeah..."

The boy holding the acid unscrewed the lid to get a better look at the liquid, and his friend smelled it and pulled a face.

"Oh man, that shit reeks."

Taking advantage on the fact that they hadn't noticed me yet, I stepped forward and said, "What on Earth do you need hydrochloric acid for?"

Both boys visibly jumped, and the one holding the acid broke into a sneer.

"What's it to ya, bitch?"

I arched an eyebrow. "I beg your pardon?"

The boy looked at his friend apprehensively then to me.

"Dude, maybe we--"

"Shut the hell up, Zac," the guy snapped.

"Maybe you should listen to Zac," I said, eager to vent my anger on these guys. "You ought to go back to Zhang and--"

My voice caught in my throat when I saw the bottle get flung towards me, and excruciating burning exploded on my face.

I was unable to find my voice as I clutched my face. I felt my eyes, which were feeling like they were dissolving. I fell to my knees, then to my side, and I heard the boys panicking.

"What the hell did you do?"

"I--"

"Call nine-one-one!"

What happened after that was a blur. An ambulance came, but strangely for the boys as well. I heard they got injured by "blunt force trauma", and their injuries weren't acid-related. As I was being rushed to the hospital, I swear I heard one of the paramedics mutter to their colleague, "It almost looks like they were whipped or something."

"What did the kids say?"

There was an uncertain pause before they answered. "That the girl did it. Something about an orange rope or something."

"There's no way the girl would have been able to do something like that."

"I know, I know. You think it's acid fumes or something?"

"It's gotta be. What else could have happened?

"But how do you explain his injuries?"

"They could have been inflicted prior to the incident. Remind me to talk to the boys' parents later..."
__________________________________

My eyes flew open, and I sat up abruptly as if someone doused ice water on me. I was half-tangled in my blankets, and my heart was pounding so fast in my throat that it physically hurt.

I was also surprised to feel tears on my face. I hastily brushed them away, wincing slightly as my fingertips touched my scars. They tingled unpleasantly, and I lay back in bed with a defeated sigh.

Had I screamed? My throat felt hoarse, but that might have been from my rapid breathing. I held my breath and strained my ears for any noises, but I couldn't hear anything. I was so certain that my nightmare made me scream.

As my breathing and heartbeat steadied, I fell back asleep. The last thing I thought before I lost consciousness was on how much I hated my life.