Prologue
She was twelve years old, and known by her peers as nothing more than a reclusive geek. This was a fairly apt label; at that age her bruises were often shielded by baggy sweaters and the emotional trauma veiled in a hunger for knowledge.
Sara Sidle was the poster child for the teenage paradigm of 'no one understands me', quite simply because no one did.
Although Sara had a basic, socialised understanding that violence is wrong, she had never really thought anything of how her family interacted with one another. From an early age she had borne witness to the shouting matches between her parents with the occasional cameo from her older brother, and they always seemed to end in blows. Her father seemed to emanate rage from the pores in his skin, and the first time he ever laid a hand on her the yelling and screaming was forced to a halt. Both her mother and father stood still and stared at their young daughter, sprawled on the floor with her arm bent at a funny angle, colour drained from her ashen face.
At the hospital, nurses cooed over their four-year-old patient, her broken ulna fobbed off as a clumsy pair of juvenile feet and an unnoticed. They didn't think twice that the cause could have been anything more sinister; because no one likes to admit that not all dads treat their little girls as princesses.
After that, it was as if a dam had broken. Sara was no longer immune to her father's temper, and her first day of kindergarten saw her accompanied by an angry contusion to her upper arm that was hastily covered with a long-sleeved dress.
By sixth grade Sara was well aware that the concept of a perfect family environment was nothing more than a fairytale. Everywhere she looked she saw evidence of broken homes, and with no friends to compare with it didn't seem pertinent to create trouble over her own.
Over the years she steadily built up an extensive medical record that ranged from hairline rib fractures to a broken jaw, excuses made and played for every single one of them. Sara would sit and smile and comment on how clumsy she was, reasoning internally that this wasn't abnormal- everybody did it. Everybody lies to cover up the cracks in the foundation.
Things came to a head shortly before her thirteenth birthday, when her mother finally snapped and stabbed her father to death with a kitchen knife. The first stroke missed his organs and instead penetrated into his chest cavity, while the second severed his aorta. By the fourth stab, he was dead. The fifth, sixth and seventh were just for good measure.
Sara, dowsed in paternal blood, sat clutching a rag doll in the corner of the kitchen. She was shaking uncontrollably, eyes fixated on the body before her. Her mother was frighteningly unresponsive even as the police officers came to take her away, knife dropped at her feet and the shadow of a smile ghoulishly lingering across her crimson-spattered cheeks.
A smell of blood and death hung heavily in the air that permeated Sara's nostrils for the weeks to come.
A woman from social services arrived to take Sara into care, taking her by the hand and leading her away from the scene of the crime. Her clothes had been taken as evidence and Sara had been given a fleece jacket by one of the investigators that did nothing to ease her shivering body. They'd taken her doll, too.
The girl clutched at the social worker's hand, taking one last look at her tainted childhood home.
A/N: Title is a work-in-progress. Reviews would be much appreciated (: Thank you for reading.