There was once a girl. She lived in a farming town at the edge of a desert. Her childhood bore little resemblance to the sort of person she wanted to be, in the sort of way she wanted to behave. Time after time, she lost the friends she had and found they were seldom replaced. The girl assumed they moved far away since the weather was often too hot in the town on the edge of this desert.
There must have been more to it than the weather. The girl had done something wrong every time. She did not know why, to her it all appeared coincidental.
It was rare her actions amounted to what she had intended. She abandoned friends whenever they chose her to trust in the simplest of matters.
Her parents were busy working long hours, and often had to look the other way in order to make ends meet.
After awhile, she stopped making friends. Or friends had stopped showing up, there had been a blur to reason as time gave way to more
recent memories. She knew it must have been one of the two. All of this had made sense at the time, but later she could never remember
if any of it mattered.
A few weeks into her second year at school, she had been playing with a friend until the friend went missing. In his haste to question his daughter, punish her if he needed to, her father tripped up the flight of stairs in their house. The impact snapped a bone to leave his ankle dislocated, discolored and limp.
"Get your mother!" He yelled to his daughter as he cried.
Her parents’ room was only a couple stretches from where he fell. The girl’s mother ran out of their room to the commotion on the stairway. She had ignored her daughter, tending only to her husband. It was not the girl's fault, tapping her fingers at her side nearby while her parents yelled back and forth about solutions. Not any fault she had realized, anyway. The friend was never found.
There must have been more to it than the weather. The girl had done something wrong every time. She did not know why, to her it all appeared coincidental.
It was rare her actions amounted to what she had intended. She abandoned friends whenever they chose her to trust in the simplest of matters.
Her parents were busy working long hours, and often had to look the other way in order to make ends meet.
After awhile, she stopped making friends. Or friends had stopped showing up, there had been a blur to reason as time gave way to more
recent memories. She knew it must have been one of the two. All of this had made sense at the time, but later she could never remember
if any of it mattered.
A few weeks into her second year at school, she had been playing with a friend until the friend went missing. In his haste to question his daughter, punish her if he needed to, her father tripped up the flight of stairs in their house. The impact snapped a bone to leave his ankle dislocated, discolored and limp.
"Get your mother!" He yelled to his daughter as he cried.
Her parents’ room was only a couple stretches from where he fell. The girl’s mother ran out of their room to the commotion on the stairway. She had ignored her daughter, tending only to her husband. It was not the girl's fault, tapping her fingers at her side nearby while her parents yelled back and forth about solutions. Not any fault she had realized, anyway. The friend was never found.
There was something always tugging at the girl, making her feel as though there was something she must have done to cause the accident. She could never remember one way or another. Her parents left her alone as she grew older.
No one came to the girl’s house, and nobody seemed to take notice over the next decade of busy work from school. She always passed her classes. As she entered high school, any rumors around her were gone and she was able to make some new friends. She found movies and music she liked. There were road trips, dates and concerts with friends. Her name was Anna.