Small Town Love

Chapter 5

Some cry with tears; 

Others with thoughts.

Octavio Paz

This time, there were no wolves howling at night. It was quiet outside, strangely so. The only thing Daphne could hear were the ocean waves lapping at the shore, the wind flowing through the trees and shaking the leaves.

She slept curled up on the side, her hands clenched into the soft blankets, nervousness forming in the pit of her stomach.

The next day would be her first day at her new school. Daphne would attend that school all through the rest of her junior and her senior year and to be honest, she was terrified.

She had always liked school, had like learning, but she had never liked any of her fellow students. They picked on her, first because she was smaller and lighter and because they could hurt her without her really being able to do anything against it and then later because she was the odd one that didn't have any friends. She was the weird one, the girl that had gotten detention for falling asleep in class because she had been awake until 3 am scrubbing the floor in the small shop around the corner and had then come home only to find her mother passed out on the floor in her own vomit.

Nobody had ever seen the bruises, the black eyes, the ribs that had been tender for weeks. Nobody had ever cared about the cough that hadn't gotten any better for nearly three months until Daphne had gotten her hands on old antibiotics.

She blended into the background, only coming out from there to be hurt and then hiding away again.

Daphne was the easy target and that she would continue to be that for the rest of her life.

Her new phone woke her the next morning and she got dressed slowly, her back still protesting. It wasn't healing, wasn't getting better and Daphne knew that she should do something against it but she didn't know what.

She kept it as clean and dry as she could, which was difficult enough but she couldn't reach her back and the cuts reopened constantly. She wore cotton shirts under her clothing to not ruin it and hoped that with time it would heal over.

It had always in the past.

She packed her new backpack, put on her new earrings and the necklace, put her new small sketchbook on top of the rest of her things and then went downstairs.

Caroline was already making breakfast and badgered her into eating a bowl of porridge. Matthew was already at work and Oliver showed up halfway through Daphne's breakfast and shovelled too much food in not enough time in his mouth.

Then, they got dressed for school, Daphne putting on her boots and her parka over the grey jumper that she wore. The sky outside was grey that morning and Caroline fluttered around the living room, seemingly even more nervous than Daphne was.

"Oh, we forgot to get you a hat!" Her aunt suddenly exclaimed. "And a Scarf. And gloves." Before Daphne could protest, her aunt was searching through the closet in the hallway for something for Daphne to wear.

It would have been fine. Daphne had survived Winter in New York without a scarf and a hat. Even when she had oftentimes yearned for that.

"Oh god, mum, we'll only be outside for five minutes!" Ollie huffed with a long-suffering sigh.

"It's cold outside, Ollie," Caroline said. There was more said between the two of them in one short look that only took seconds but Ollie shut up and Caroline produced a bright red beanie from the closet, pulling it over Daphne's ponytail until it covered her ears.