Unwanted

Intro

Sarah tip-toes up the stairs, careful not to step on the wrong spots. This is routine for her. It's like a puzzle, or a booby trap she has to perform and perfect every single day.

She already has enough bruises, she doesn't need any more.

Once she gets all way up the stairs she goes quietly to her room, hiding the retrieved apple in her closet. She takes a small chunk and feeds it to Clover, her pet cat. The cat Jacky doesn't know she has. Jacky is her mom. But Jacky doesn't allow her to call her 'mom'.

She says it disgusts her, and makes her ashamed of not using a condom. So Sarah calls her Jacky. That is when, they do talk. Which isn't often. Jacky spends her time sleeping with men and going to bars. Sarah stays home, sneaking food because her mom doesn't let her eat. She tells her to eat out the trash, but Sarah doesn't want to do that.

So here Sarah is, sneaking an apple. She shares her small amount of weekly food with Clover, who was also abandoned and mistrested as a child. She connects with him among the other stray cats for that reason. She doesn't know yet that that's illegal, she just thinks it's normal for people to not now who you are.

Her mom had kept her a secret for seven years. Seven years. She only sort of took care of her for five. Then Sarah was on her own. Nobody to care for her except Clover. And he did it well.

She did everything herself. She had a secret cup made from scratch she would take the bathroom tap water with, she had a ibuprofen bottle she took from the trash for when she got a headache or a tummyache and she had the little amounts of food she'd sneak at night, it wasn't much but she lived. Barely.

She only had one pair of pants. She would steal the men's shirts from the laundry basket if they forgot it. It was like a dress on her, so it worked. She had six of those shirts, most with lewd illustrations on them. Jacky always chooses the deuchy ones.

But Sarah didn't mind. She had grown to be very polite and smart from watching mistery and crime shows. Jacky liked them alot and left them on at night when the men came over. So Sarah would watch it with Clover. Anytime she heard Jacky coming she would hide under the counter for hours, the drawer Jacky never used.

She found out what was wrong and what was right from watching those shows. Anytime the bad guy did a bad thing, he would get hurt. And then cry. And then die.

Sarah figured that if she did something Jacky didn't like, she would get hurt. Then if she cried, she would die. So she never did anything that Jacky didn't like. Unless she needed to, in which case she was a pro at playing the other role of the story. She knew when to go out, she even found secret spots to make the sneaking quicker. She never got caught.

She learned how to take care of herself from being quiet and observing the world around her, which, being trapped in a house all her life, wasn't that large. She learned things from Jacky, and the shows on TV. She found out how to get Clover safely in and safely out of the house. Jacky killed the last friend she had. She also hit Sarah, in the face. It left a mark but Sarah didn't cry.

She was smart.

Smart girls don't cry.

And Sarah?

She

...

Was smart.