My name is Anya Jinx, and no Jinx is not my last name, it's my middle name although most people treat it as though it is. People always told me that everything happens for a reason but if that's true than why is it that whatever I do seems to end up wrong...almost like I'm cursed; the first incident was five days before I was due to be born, something went wrong and my mother died in childbirth. Once when I was little about six I tried to push a friend while they were swinging, to help them gain altitude but instead when I did they fell the the ground and landed on their face causing an injury bad enough that the girl had to go to the hospital; I tried to tell the adults near me that it was an accident but they didn't believe me. Another time when I was older around ten I was watching an equestrian event, my dad was riding the horse and they preformed a extremely hard maneuver, when they did the crowd went wild but when I stood up to clap a plastic bag I had been sitting on floated away, an old man tried to grab it but he fell forward, over the railing and into the arena practically on top of the horse causing the animal to panic. The horse bucked and reared smashing the old man's skull and when it's hoof struck the killing blow the horse reared but it's back legs gave out causing it to fall backwards; killing my father and breaking the horses back. Soon after my father's funeral I was sent to an orphanage where the head master secretly sold some of the able bodied children into extensive labor.
I still remember the cold eyes of the other orphans staring at me analyzing my every move almost like a pack of hungry wolves, and in part it was true they all worked together to take down the weakest ones all the while they were hungry, the only thing that didn't fit was that they weren't wolves they were kids, like me...only different. But despite all that there were happy times there as well, for example I met a boy who became as close to an older brother as I've ever had; his name was Max though I called him Maxie and he called me Any which is pronounced ah-knee; not a-knee. We had a routine which was a lot more then any of the younger kids could say, every day he would go and help do the grunt work around the orphanage while I simply made the meals, but whenever we had a break we would meet together and talk. But one day Maxie told me in a whisper that he had overheard the head master had decided to sell him to a cruel man the next day named Le Grand Mal - which the man called himself, it meant The Great Evil in French - who would work the boys until they dropped from dehydration or hunger. I remember trying not to cry all through the night. I remember getting up and going to Max's room where he too could not sleep. In the darkness of Max's quarters only lit by the moon Maxie turned to me and said.
"Any, don't worry about me okay?" I only nodded in reply unshed tears gleaming in my eyes. "If I get out of there I will come back for you, we'll both get out of this one way or another. Deal?" He asked, and though I looked him in the eye evenly enough my voice cracked when I spoke.
"Deal." And at that moment I truly believed we would be able to both escape together. Little did I know that I would never see Maxie again.