"I wanna scream, is this a dream? How could this happen, happen to me? This isn't fair, this nightmare. This kind of torture I just can't bear."

-I Want You Here, Plumb

On November the twenty-sixth of the year I turned eight, my mom decided that she wanted to take me shopping in New York City.

As I'm sure you can tell it was kind of a big deal.

My mom had never actually taken me to go shopping before, and the fact that she was taking me to the Big Apple to do so? Well, that made the event even cooler.

Not that it mattered where my mom took me, I loved to spend time with her. She could have taken me to the attic and I would have had a blast.

We settled on a hotel just out of town. It was nice, anh aan entire window wall, and navy curtains. I remembered them so well even now that it was like I had just seen them yesterday. They were so thick, and heavy under my small chubby fingers' touch. I had spent the whole first hour there just playing in those curtains.

If I had known what was going to happen I would've spent them with my mother on the bed instead.

After we had settled in the room, my mom took me out to look for a new house.

She was trying to convince dad to move further north. She thought further north I would make nicer friends, get a better education and be able to meet a more diverse selection of people. Dad wasn't completely for it, but she had convinced him to let her at least go look.

I still remember the smell of her hair that day. It was flowery, she had been using a different type of shampoo that month. She didn't use it after that day.

Her fingers had been so soft and easy for me to cling to.

The real estate lady had been stiff. She smelled like lavender and had batted me away like a fly. Mom hadn't really noticed, she was too interested in the houses, so I went outside and tried to befriend the neighborhood cats.

My favorite house had been one just an hour out of town, and my mom had loved it as well. We were sold on the house, and mom sounded confident that we would get it. After we had finished looking at the houses we travelled to the heart of the city.

The sidewalks were stuffed with people pushing their way from place to place. No one cared about anyone other than themselves. They weaved themselves in and out of the crowd, and spoke loudly on their phones and rushed to and from wherever they were.

My mom was good at navigating the crowds. She took me in and out of all the stores, I could possibly want to go to. The Disney Store, The M&M store, the American Girl Doll store.

She bought me a number of toys, and a few sets of clothes as well. I even got to pick out some Christmas presents for the few friends I had.

The day was perfect. Even when my mom was doing her own thing I didn't mind. I was too busy enjoying the time we were spending together. She sat me outside of her dressing room as she went in to change and I felt the waiting chair swallow me in its bouncy cushions.

Suddenly the weight of all the things we had been doing really hit me, and my eyelids began to droop. I was utterly exhausted, and what would a nap hurt?

It was only a few minutes later when suddenly someone grabbed my small wrist and started to pull me. I assumed, stupidly that it was mom. I should've known it wasn't by the feel of the mans hand. It was rough, and his fingers dug unforgivably into my skin. I didn't make the connection until we were out of the crowd and I could see his red baseball cap.

I screamed when I realized it wasn't my mom dragging me along, but he didn't let me go. He violently pulled me up to a car, one that due to many interviews and court case hearings, I now knew to be a blue Toyota camera, with a ding in the right hand passenger seat door and a scratch just below the left rear light. I was shoved into the trunk of the car, and was bound by my hands and feet with rope. The man put duct tape over my mouth, but I still tried to scream. I gave up when I realized that no one could hear me either way.

Hot tears rolled down my cheeks, and my small body was flung around the trunk as the person drove recklessly through the city.

After the incident, I would be told that there was a small lever on the back of the trunk. If I had pressed it with my head, the trunk would have opened, and if I had been in the city someone would have seen me. I could've been saved just as easy as that.

They should've told me that before I was kidnapped.

I had given up on being saved from this new prison when the trunk opened. Light filled my eyes, blinding me to the point that I couldn't see the owners of the rough pairs of hands that grabbed me by the hair and yanked me out of the trunk.

We were in the woods somewhere in upstate New York. The house was old, from the early 1800s and hadn't been used in years. I was kept in what used to be the basement. The house was made of crumbling bricks and decaying wood. It was a miracle that the roof didn't cave on me while I was in there. At least, that's what everyone reminded me.

I only spent two days there, but it was more than I could bear at such a young age.

I didn't really remember what it had been like there. I didn't remember not being fed, or being thrown around for disobedient or any of the other awful things that everyone had told me had happened.

Still to this day I didn't really remember it.

Yet at the same time, when November 26th came around, every single year I remembered all of it.

I remembered that mans face, I remembered the smell of the mold in the house I was kept in. I remembered everything he had done to me at the exact minute on the dot that he had done it to me back then just as if it were happening to me in real-time.

It was bad enough to experience it the first time at the age of eight. Imagine experiencing it for the next seven years of your life.

I never asked for it to happen to me. I never wanted it. Didn't ever do anything to deserve it. I was just a kid. A kid with barely any friends, a single mom, and a life of opportunities ahead ofme. I received no warning about it and no matter what everyone said nothing could save me from what happened.

They blamed my mom for the incident. They blamed the school system for not teaching me to know better. They blamed the store for not paying more attention. They blamed the city for not being more aware of their surroundings. They blamed me for being foolish, and then finally after my mom fighting for years they blamed the man who committed the crime.

He was arrested, and I spent seven years in New York, learning how to be unnoticed and uncared about by the world around me. I didn't make any friends in New York. I didn't let anyone talk to me, or get close to me. I kept to myself.

And now? Well, now the man who kidnapped me all those years ago is out of prison. He's free. Let out of his long-term prison sentence early due to good behavior.

And he would be after me. I could feel it in my heart. I knew he would come for me and so did my mom.

So we moved. We packed our things, got into the care and drove all the way to Roseville, Virginia. It was small, and not many people had heard of it before. I would be going to a public school called The Gallagher Academy.

My mom was optimistic.

"You'll make all sorts of friends here Cammie! We'll be safe here Cammie!"

I should've been safe in New York too. I shouldn't have been kidnapped. I shouldn't have spent those two days away from my mom and even so, when I was rescued I should have had a dad to come home to. Someone to teach me to protect myself. Someone to lend me their hand and assure me that everything would be okay.

Instead, I was here. With a fragile mom, and a broken personality.

I had no plans to make friends in Roseville. Not after New York. Not after all that had happened.

But then again, the way of the world is more mysterious than I ever could have realized. Never did I know how much moving to Roseville would change the course of my life. Never could I guess how drastically it would affect my worldview.

But I suppose that's just how it goes sometimes.

Author's Note:

One of my all-time dreams has been to revisit my old fanfics and rewrite them so that they match my current (honestly a lot better) writing style. I look back at them and cringe because wowza I used to write really badly. So now I'm doing it! Ya girl turned 500 words into, 1,500 words and it won't end here! I am going to rewrite every chapter of this story and finally finish it! See you guys on the flip-side ;)