Ai Latier (12) D3M

I never hesitated to get between my friends and a bully. That was a lie, really. I hesitated almost every time. But I always made the right decision, and that was what really mattered. As Siiri came toward Tana, I stepped in front of my friend, my small body not really acting as much of a shield. I was an active kid, but I was also twelve. There was only so much I could really do to defend my friend. Still, stepping between Siiri and Tana was all it took. It was all it ever took for me to defend someone. I thought I was just barely scary enough that the bullies decided it wasn't worth their time. Tana said it was because Beetee was my dad.

"You didn't have to do that," Tana wheezed, out of breath from running from the older girl. "I can handle myself." She was grateful, I knew. Beetee said she had a mask of strength to pretend she had no weaknesses. He said she was so rough because she was really gentle on the inside. Beetee said a long of things that I didn't really understand, but we agreed that Tana meant "thank you" when she said "You didn't have to do that." It took me months to learn, but it was true.

"I didn't have to," I responded, a grin already spreading across my face. We both knew what the second sentence would be. "I just really wanted to get punched today." Tana said I seemed to have a death wish. I didn't think that at all. I just protected my friends when they needed it. Maybe having Beetee as a dad really did make a difference, but that just meant it was even more important that I defended my friends. If the bullies couldn't hit me because of my dad, I was the perfect meat shield.

"So, what did you do?" I asked, knowing there was a good chance that Tana had done something really, really stupid. Siiri was a bigger girl than Tana, and she was an awful bully. That didn't mean I went around trying to make her mad at me. I'd only get on her bad side to protect a friend.

"She was shoving Lexi around, calling her names and pulling her hair. So I told her that I saw her mom buying blonde hair dye for her. She touches up her roots, you know." I didn't know. There were a lot of things I didn't know, things that kids from Three were expected to just figure out. I wasn't too worried about that. I had my whole life to know fancy things. I just knew the basics, like defending my friends and being a good person.

"We don't insult bullies," I said halfheartedly, trying to fill my role as our moral compass. "Bullies are just people who are hurting."

It was a dumb sentence, but Beetee said it made sense.

Yarrow Venus (17) D3F

Every day I played the violin. Usually for hours at a time, noticing how Mom always smiled when she heard me playing. I liked calling her Miss Ti, or even Misses Venus, but she said I should call her Mom. I would do whatever made her the happiest, keeping my head down and smiling when she smiled at me. I'd call her Mom, even though she wasn't my real mom, because she kept a roof over my head and I wanted her to like me.

My violin instructor liked me. She said I was one of her best students. I was the only one who regularly practiced more than two hours a week. I was outstanding, she said, in that I often practiced over ten. It was a simple thing for me. I did a simple activity, one I didn't mind doing at all, and it made Mom and Dad like me more. They'd say I was such a good child, that I was a gift in their lives and they didn't know what they'd done to get such a good little girl. They'd say I was always so quiet, that I never bothered them during important meetings, and I was an absolute violin virtuoso.

I never liked the violin. I had nothing against the instrument. It made a nice sound. It was easy to practice. Mom said it was a perfectly good instrument to learn, a good way for a girl to occupy her time and better herself before entering the world. I didn't really care one way or the other. Given the option, I think I would have picked the electric guitar. It was more fun as an instrument. It made the coolest noises, not just the nice ones. It was loud, like I always wished I could be. It screamed its emotions instead of hiding them. Mom didn't like the electric guitar. She liked the violin, and I never so much as whispered that I didn't care about it. I folded that part of myself away along with all of the others, making sure Mom never had a reason not to like me.

Life taught me one lesson more than any other. Life taught me that people will always come and go and abandon you. My birth parents were gone. I would never know what had happened to them, but I did know they were dead. All the other kids at the orphanage came and went, getting adopted by loving new parents and immediately forgetting about the kid who had been there for them the entire time. Other kids were never true, lasting friends, and I learned that no one would ever be the sort of friend worth caring about. Mom and Dad would leave me too, I was sure, if I ever gave them the excuse.

I practiced the violin for four hours a day to make sure they never found one.