Broken

Fate Worse Than Death

Disappearing isn't easy, especially when all eyes are on you, but it can be done. You just have to wait until they're not looking. Then you get to wait to see who's real and who's been lying the entire time.

Side note: Nobody is real these days just assume that everybody who says they care is automatically lying.

If it hadn't been for an older woman, in the middle of an ice cold winter, on the side of the road, I would have been dead before my story even began. She went by the street name, Sparrow, mainly because she was so bony and small.

She told me that you could never go by your real name. So, we fashioned one for me. It was simple and easy to remember. Red. The color of my long dark curls. The color of the blood on my wrists. I struggled for a long time with my depression, always trying to discover who I truly am.

It was difficult at first adjusting to life on the street but in no time I got used to it. You learn the rules fast if you just shut your mouth and watch.

I lived with Sparrow, since I couldn't yet make a camp of my own. She told me that not even most people on the street could be trusted. Although we weren't like citizens, we were still very different from one another. 

A few months passed by and winter was almost over. That was when I made the biggest mistake of my entire life on the street. I trusted a boy. He didn't tell me at all time that he was up to no good. All I really knew about him was that he was tall, dark, and devilishly handsome. He was kind to me. Didn't make me feel like I was an invalid just because I now lived on the street.

As it turned out, he used to be just like me. Rich, always looked at as some sort of role model, always wanting to be who he was while being forced to pretend to be what he wasn't. Like me, he got sick of it, and like me, he ran. Although he ran a lot farther than I did. At the time I was only a few large cities away from home, he was several thousand miles.

Just like the rest of us, he went by a street name. Unlike the rest of us, in private, he called me by my own. It felt odd to have someone say my real name. In all honesty I'd gotten used to not hearing it.

He had a phone, which was a rarity on the street, but signified silently a peeking order. He just so happened to be a little higher up than most and it was exciting that he'd taken an interest in me. We'd listen to music, and he'd hold me in his arms, whispering the lyrics into my ear. It made my heart flutter. 

Those early memories are always the quickest to go but the hardest memories to erase. He was sweet, protective, charming, funny. He'd been everything that I was looking for.

That is until he betrayed me.