AN: Starting a new story is so exciting! It's like a brand new start to another writing project that will make me a better author. I hope that the people who followed my previous works like this as well, and that new followers also enjoy it. Please let me know what you think by leaving a review, I reply personally to all that are not anonymous.

TRIGGER WARNING: SELF-HARM, DEPRESSION, AND MENTIONS OF RAPE.

Max POV

I'm a lost cause, have been ever since the incident. I sighed, dragging the blade across my thigh for the third time that night. I couldn't risk cutting my wrist in the summer, though it still appealed to me. I had settled on a chunk of leg an inch south of my hipbone instead, watching rouge stream out of three clean, horizontal lines.

I didn't want to cut. I tried not to, but the urge was always there. I was beyond fucked up for a sixteen-year-old girl.

The cutting had started a few months ago, right after the police had found me wandering the streets, bashed and bruised and looking like hell. The paramedics told my family that I had seized after seeing the flashing lights of the standard NYPD vehicle, but really I knew that I no longer had to hold on, and just let go. I didn't even care if they could save me. I was too far gone.

I woke up two days later in a white room reeking of antiseptics with my mother crying into my arm. The crying only escalated when she realized I was awake, and the only word that could escape her lips was "sorry". I was frozen emotionally, and couldn't bring myself to react. The doctors said that was normal, and that I had developed PTSD. I was just relieved that I didn't have to formulate an excuse for myself.

I started talking three days later, revealing vague details about the incident. They told me I was gone for six months, long enough for the search to be called off. They presumed that I was dead, as most kidnap victims were killed within the first twenty-four hours. I shuddered at the category that they had classified my crime under. Kidnapping seemed too cheery of a title.

I told them about the man that took me, and some of the horrible things that he did to me. I didn't look at my mother the entire time that I spoke to the officer in front of me, but the only thing that my ears seemed to catch was the sound of her sobs. It was all my fault that she was in so much pain.

Another day went by and my siblings were finally able to fly in and visit me. Angela, though we call her Angel, just about tackled me on my hospital bed, not letting me go even after my mother requested her to do so. She never disobeyed my mom, but she made this the exception. She sniffled and said that I had missed her seventh birthday party, but that she was so happy that I was back that she could explode.

Zephyr, known to everybody that has been within one hundred feet of his digestive explosions as Gazzy, joined Angel in the bear hug, telling me that he'd kill the man responsible for causing me pain. He promised me that he would blow up his house, but I replied saying how that was completely unnecessary. Especially considering that Gazzy was only nine.

Ella, the last of the Martinez children, had the most dramatic meltdown, ruining all the makeup that had been carefully applied to her face.

"Max!" she cried, pushing her younger siblings aside. "Max! Max! Oh, Max! I never stopped looking for you! We had a search party scan the state twice a week. Oh, if only we'd known that you'd been," she sniffled, wiping her face with her sleeve, "taken all the way to New York, we would've..." she started bawling again. I rubbed her back gently, the same way that I did when someone was bitchy to her at school or a boy broke her heart. She was only one year younger than me, and we were practically inseparable growing up. Now, I felt like a complete stranger in front of the people I was supposed to share a blood bond with.

"Stop, we're supposed to be the ones comforting you." Ella choked out, pushing my hair off my face and managing a weak smile.

Our sob fest was interrupted by my doctor, thankfully.

"Some test results just came in." Dr. Cardin stated. I shuddered. I vaguely remembered the tests that they had performed on me, even the ones that took place during my supposed coma. I thought I had dreamed all of it, but apparently not.

The rape kit tested positive, of course, but no more than a drop of semen was found outside my private area. I sighed and explained to them that he had used protection, but they assured me that they had already come to that conclusion, considering the awful damage done to the surrounding area. Thankfully, however, I tested negative for all STI's and pregnancy, so they told me after I healed it would be like nothing ever happened.

Physically, that is.

They never told me how scarred I'd be emotionally. No, not even my therapist could've predicted that. I eventually stopped going to her, after a few weeks, because I had apparently made all the progress that I could make. I wore a fake smile and pretended to be fine, but the more I did so, the more it ate at me inside. Even after long sob sessions with Ella at two in the morning, nothing could make the burning sensation go away. I would feel hot, and feel like I was going to hurl. Everything would hurt. The only thing that could momentarily take away that pain was the blade, and it became my scapegoat.

That was the only thing about me Ella didn't know, at least for the most part.

She knew about the things that happened to me with my attacker. She knew about the rapes, the beatings, the days I would be forced to go without eating. My once healthy 120 lb, athletic 5'6'' frame shrunk to a scarily thin 88 lb skin-and-bones skeleton. I'd been slowly putting weight back on for three months now, but it was hard to maintain. I was still undesirably thin, and I had a body of a child. None of my old clothes fit me like they had before, and I could no longer fill any of my shirts or dresses. Shopping used to be fun, but it was now a chore.

Ella was the only person that I had fully opened up to. She knew that I wasn't alright, and she really tried to help me pass the days. She stayed loyal to me and didn't out me to our mom, though it might have seemed like she should've when I told her that I wish He had killed me, but she had faith that I would recover.

There were only two things in the entire world that I kept from her: my cutting habits, and his name.

I winced even thinking about it. I had only heard it once during the half year that He had me captive in his basement, but I could never shake it out of my head. I never will.

Dylan.

It was the name that he introduced himself as. When I saw him for the first time, before he had taken me from that party, I swooned at the sight of him. He was my new definition of gorgeous. All of the girls there that night had clung to him, but for whatever reason, he decided to keep me in his company, shooing off the rest of the ten-cent hookers ready to jump him. All night long I had just stared into his perfectly blue eyes, running my fingers through his blond hair as our lips tangoed. He wanted to go farther, but I told him that I was a virgin and didn't have one night stands with people I just met. He insisted on driving me home at the very least, and I quickly agreed, texting the upper classman that had driven me in the first place that I had found another ride. I assumed she was getting drunk anyway.

He led me to his car, which he told me was just down the street because he couldn't get good parking, and I probably should've seen that as the first red flag. But no, I was too caught up ogling at his toned arms, wondering how much he could bench. We were almost nearing the end of the street, and it had gotten considerably darker. He stopped and turned around to face me, and I thought he was going to kiss me again, but instead he flashed me a crooked smile that sent every panic neuron off in my body. I knew at that moment that I had made a mistake.

I turned to run, but he was one step ahead of me. I managed to let out one death-curling scream before he hit me over the head, knocking me out completely.

A few hours later I woke up tied and bruised in the backseat of his car, passing through the New Mexico border. We only stopped twice, aside from drive-thru's for the duration of our three-day car trip to New York, and in that time I only got to stand up once. I was given two bottles of water and at one point, a sandwich, but the worst part, aside from the famish, dehydration, pain, and fear, was knowing that it was because of my choices that I was there. And not only was I paying for it, but everyone that cared for me as well.

It was all my fault.

The growing pool of blood on the cold tiles of my bathroom floor shook me of my trip down memory lane. I sighed and started to bandage up the new wounds, tracing the other fifty or so. The cutting started as a weekly thing, but it was never enough. It became daily quickly.

I wiped the blood off the floor and slid my sweatpants back up, preparing myself to leave the confinement of the bathroom walls. I stashed the blade back into the box of tampons, though my period had been absent since I was taken, and put my brave mask back on.

Time to face another day, Max.

Fang POV

I sighed as I packed up my bedroom for the fourth time in three years. Jeb's lab had gotten moved again, and we had the unfortunate burden of moving with it. Nudge was the most dramatic about the big move, claiming she'd never make new friends and couldn't leave her life here, but somehow she adjusted every time we did so. She was the most social out of the three of us.

Jeb had adopted all of us when we were very young. I was the first to be adopted, when I was three, and Jeb had found out that his neighbor, who happened to be my mother, was a crackhead and was neglecting her only son. Child Protective Services soon stepped in, and Jeb became a foster parent to avoid me getting sent away to a home somewhere. I suspected that the two of them had an affair, but I never pushed my theory. I was just thankful that Jeb had taken me in.

He formally adopted me after eight months, and one month later, adopted a blond-haired blue-eyed blind child named Jeff. But believe me, you'd never know he was blind unless he told you. He never used his lack of sight as a handicap, and I had always been incredibly marveled by his ability to be so normal. He wasn't born blind, but he had contracted meningitis at the age of two, and the disease had claimed his vision. His parents were so torn up over the ordeal that they couldn't live with him anymore, because they couldn't deal with or afford a "retarded" child, so they gave him up for adoption. Jeb took him in as soon as Jeff was brought to his attention, and ever since has raised him as his son.

Jeff is known to us as Iggy, the same way that I am known to my family as Fang. Jeb let us reassign ourselves names to make us feel like new people, and at the time I was obsessed with vampires. The nickname had stuck ever since, but I don't regret it. It's a bitch to explain to girls, however. Iggy was awarded his after his infatuation with volcanoes, and the horrid "I-G-N-E-O-U-S, Igneous, rocks!" song that he would sing nonstop.

Nudge came into our household four years later, and Iggy and I weren't thrilled to have a sister to say the least. Her formal name is Tiffany, but we called her "Nudge" because it was all she'd do day in and day out. She grew on us, nevertheless, and I don't know what I'd do without her. We don't know much about her background, other than that she was abandoned at a church when she was three. She doesn't remember anything about her parents either.

Now, with Nudge eleven, Iggy fifteen, and me sixteen, we were knit closer than a sweater. Jeb was around as much as possible, but his job claimed the majority of his time. We didn't blame him, what with cancer research and all, but it wasn't ideal in the slightest. It put a roof over our heads and clothes on our bodies, so we accepted it and moved on. He was always a good father to us anyways.

Everything I owned was put in a box within three hours, and I decided to be a good person and help Nudge pack. Huge mistake. Nudge was obsessed, and I mean obsessed with fashion, and she was packing her department store quantity of clothing into boxes in rainbow order, mumbling to herself about things getting creases.

I offered to help her with the other stuff in her room, but she just went on a rant about not getting big enough boxes. Steam erupted from her little head when I started to laugh, and she just shooed me away. Fine by me.

The house was packed up in a week, and we were on our way to the other side of the freaking country a day later. California.

Iggy was excited about beach bunnies, and that gave Nudge the impression that there were literal rabbits hopping around on the sand. I had to explain over Iggy's hysterical laughing that he was being a sexist pig and talking about hot girls, and she retorted by saying he wouldn't be seeing any anyway. Iggy pretended to be hurt, but didn't really take her comment to offense. Nudge didn't buy his terrible acting anyways.

She did, however, explain to us in vivid detail for a full hour on the plane why she was thrilled to finally go to California.

"I'm going to learn to surf." She stated, multitasking by flipping through some terrible teen-oriented magazine at a pace that must have her reading twenty-words a second.

"And buy super cute clothes," she continued, not even looking up from pages of dresses and airbrushed celebrities. "And there will be hot boys at the beach and movie stars and Hollywood will only be three hours away so we can go there and shop on Rodeo Drive! Ooh, and we can go to Disneyland! That would be so much fun! Plus," she motor-mouthed, being silenced by the palm of Iggy's hand. He didn't even care when she licked him to get him to back off, and he finally released her mouth when she slumped back into her seat.

"Just keep reading your magazine in silence." Iggy ordered, sliding headphones over his ears. He was currently listening to the second audio book of the Twilight series, claiming that being one with the teenage girl franchise does wonders to his sex life.

I guess it's not working, considering he'd been to second base once, in the basement of some random girl's house during a dare.

Personally, I think he has a thing for Jacob. Nudge certainly does. If you even mumble about being on team Edward around her, all hell will break loose. Taylor Lautner's abs were even the lock screen picture on her phone.

With the other two freaks occupied, I had nothing to do but think for the remaining four hours of the flight. Contrary to common belief, I was not a depressed emo teenager who wallowed in self pity all day, and became very bored very quickly by my own thoughts. I decided to screw it and fall asleep with my head resting on the double-paned window, getting woken up abruptly two hours later by a screaming Iggy.

"Fang! The plane's going down! The left engine gave out!" Iggy shouted, shaking me violently.

"Shit!" I said a little too loud before opening my eyes, seeing that everybody was staring at us and that nobody else was panicking. I slapped Iggy in the arm.

"Not funny, man! My heart rate will never be the same." I scolded him, ignoring his snorts and chuckles. At the time I thought Jeb was being self-sacrificing by opting to sit alone in the back of the plane, as the rows only acquired three seats, but now I see the strategy behind his choice. Being stuck with Iggy and Nudge for five hours in an enclosed space was not, by any means, preferable.

Nudge found Iggy's antics amusing too, telling me that I shriek like a little girl. Seeing that our fellow passengers had gone back to their own business, I once again squeezed my eyes shut, prepared to kill the next person that interrupted my slumber.

They call me Fang for a reason.

AN: I'm looking to try using a beta reader for this story for the first time. If you're interested, please let me know by either a) sending me a PM or b) mentioning it in a review. Thanks!