It was supposed to be the chance of a lifetime, or at least that was what many other kids her age would say and think. However as she stared into the broken and chipped glass of her bathroom mirror with dull, neon turquoise blue eyes and slowly tied the black satin ribbon around her neck and then checked her appearance.
Noting her near waist length black hair was tied back into a topknot and how she had used another black satin ribbon tied into a butterfly knot to hold it into place. Her completion was pale, almost as white as the led chipped paint on the walls of her rundown little one bedroom and bath apartment. However she was grateful that despite her paleness she couldn't see the scars along her jaw nor around her left eye and upper cheek where half of her face had had to be surgically reconstructed several months ago when she had lost her family in an car accident.
Both of her parents and her two older brothers had been killed on impact when a vehicle built like a tank had plowed right into them going over ninety miles per hour.
Their vehicle had spun wildly out of control before slamming into another and flying up over the top of it. She's felt almost as if she were in the body of a ragdoll as her parent's car had them flipped several times before smashing into the side of a building.
She'd suffered multiple breaks, and contusions, compound fractures. She'd had glass embed itself in her skull, face and one of her eyes. And when the car had finally come to an complete stop, half of it had been torn away from the impact of hitting the building, and she's suffered a nearly broken jaw, and severe head and facial trauma.
She'd tried to remain conscious. To find her family.
But by that point their lifeless bodies had been strewn around the area between where they had first been hit by the first vehicle and where the car had been ripped in half.
She didn't recall much after that with the exception of knowing that she hadn't been physically alive when the ambulance had gotten there and loaded her into the back of the vehicle and begun the trip to the local hospital.
She'd been dead.
Her life had slipped away as if it were sand between her fingers. She'd simply had no strength left in which to hold on. She had already known that her family was gone and that she wouldn't likely see them again...
She'd woken up almost three months ago from a medically induced coma and had been told all of the gory details about her family and herself.
The doctors had stated that she had been clinically dead for over an hour before her heart had started beating again. And while that in itself puzzled them since such things tended not to happen often- if at all, they had then begun the painstakingly slow process of mending her broken bones and taking care of her disfigured face and her eye.
It had taken them almost five months to finish wrapping everything up. After which they had simply placed her in a coma to allow her to heal as much as possible. However after being awake for several days, the doctors had politely checked her out of the hospital- no doubt because she didn't have medical insurance or her bills were so outstanding that her insurance simply wouldn't cover them any longer, and left her to her own vices.
She had gone to her old home and found that it had been sold and a nice couple were living there with their three year old son and their pet golden retriever, Rusty.
She hadn't realized that she had nowhere to go until then. Possibly from the shock of having everything dumped on her all at once.
She had wandered around the neighborhood a little bit, and met up with one of her dad's friends who had taken her in for a little while. But had asked her to leave three months later when his eighteen year old son had started touching her inappropriately as well as other stuff.
The guy had come home form work to find his son with his pants down around his knees, laying on top of her crying form in the process of raping her- and had promptly thrown her out for being a little cock tease.
She had tried to explain to him that she wouldn't do such a thing, but he had slapped her and said that her parents should have beat some shame into her because it was obvious that she didn't have any.
After that she had wandered for several days- but Manhattan was a fairly big place after all, and eventually ended up in the slums with the rundown and condemned buildings, where she had been living for a while now paying someone rent for an apartment with barely functioning electricity, plumbing, no water and absolutely no heat.
Still, it did seem to be the best that she could do at her age. Especially with a weekend job as a waitress in a local dive.
Sighing at her own reflection, she then turned and let her gaze wander around her tiny bathroom and took solace in the fact that she wouldn't be around much longer. In a year- maybe a little less- her heartbeat would finally fade away to nothing and she would never have to return to this place again.
Noting the time on the small clock that she had found in a dumpster a while back, he moved to collect her school bag and apartment key.
She would have to be at school early if she was going to go on the field trip to the Justice Leagues head quarters in outter space.
