There was movement next to her, and a face swam into view. The girl couldn’t focus properly. The face wasn’t a familiar one. She realised why it was disembodied, the figure was wearing a white coat that blended exactly with the background. The girl thought about the first thing she could say. On TV, it was “where am I?” or, depending on the extent of the character’s brain damage “who am I?” She knew both of these answers, but hold on; someone was speaking to her first.

“You’ve been in an accident and you’re in the children’s hospital. You were badly hurt, and in a coma. Do you know who you are?”

The girl attempted to swallow and frantically tried to recall if she had been carrying any ID. She decided no, there wasn’t any. Her mother’s name rolled off her tongue, a fresh reminder of why she deserved to be here.

“I am Anna.”

The girl sighed. They were talking about Shanelle’s new phone. She wished that they would get over it already. The girl’s jealousy grew. Here she was in her second-hand clothes, with her old brick mobile, and they were complaining that it was so expensive to go out places. It was absurd. And more than that it wasn’t fair.

If the girl had had a job, money matters wouldn’t have improved. Any spare cash she had would go into the ‘shopping fund’. Sal had to provide food, and the money her father left after drinking was paltry. Paltry, now that was a nice word. The girl let her thoughts drift off and settled into the flow of beautiful words in her mind.

“Cellar door.” She wasn’t sure what the attraction acctually was there, but Donnie Darko made it stick in her mind. The girl reminiced about the movie. That wonderful bunny-rabbit. Sometimes she wished she had one of her own, some tangible reason why she was mad. The quiet voices in her head, which often argued with her, never manifested into anything more sinister. She didn’t need them to tell her that life was crap and not worth living.

“Yeah, and, it like, totally cared me the other day. It was, like, exploding off the table.”

Shannelle shook herself and made buzzing noises. Yeah, sure thought the girl, and I’M the crazy one. She wished there was something better to do, like read or something, but that would be frowned upon. She couldn’t afford to be caught now, so close to her goal. Being a loner was an excellent way to get noticed, better to try and blend in with the crowd. The girl didn’t need these people’s respect, she just needed the cover their ‘friendship’ provided.

The others laughed. “Hey Shannelle, do that again, I think Hadyn missed it.”

Shannelle squealed pircingly, twisting in her seat. “Where is he? I want to see him.”

The girl muttereed, “Probably out in la-la land with the rest of you dumb numbskulls.”

“What did you say? Isn’t he cute? I just want to hug him right now, he’s so adorable…” Shannelle rambled on in thie vien for a while, while the girl made ‘mmming’ noises. These people didn’t realise the value of peace and quiet. The bell rang, putting a merciful end to the stream.

“Catch yous.”

“Yeah, see ya,” replied the girl dutifully. She had music now, with the rest of the metalheads. She doubted there would be a chance to actually practice though.

The words rained down on the girl’s head harmlessly. She had heard them all before, and could probably use them to form a more coherent sentence than that. She chose not to swear however, there was no point in that, like anything else.

Once she had done a deal, cutting as hard and fast as she could, just so that she could swear for a week. She had needed to take out her frustrations somehow, in a way they would notice.

The boy she had verbally attacked didn’t know what had hit him. This presumably mild mannered little girl had lashed out at him, using big words he could hardly even understand. He didn’t even know what he had done wrong. Of course he had forgotten, to everyone else, his barbs at her were the smallest thing. But for the girl, they were taunts and reminders of her father, something she didn’t need at school. She got quite enough of that at home.

The barrage was continuing outside the girl. She wondered when the hitting would start again, or maybe this time he would be too drunk to aim properly. That happened sometimes, and he blamed her for moving out of the way. Told her to ‘take it like a man’, but she wasn’t a man, much as in those early years she had desired to be one to escape. Her father had always wanted a boy, not what he perceived to be a weak, pathetic girl.

The girl snorted involuntarily. The man abusing her, stopped. He didn’t think there was anything funny about what he had to do to keep this wayward child of his in line.

“What’ss sso funny?” he slurred. “Want me to make things better for you? Not happy with the life I give you, clothes off my back and food on the shelves?”

The girl almost laughed aloud. Clothes off his back, yeah right. The couple of T-shirts Sal had been able to get away from him were all in the rag basket. The girl always happily used them for the dirtiest jobs she could find. The pig wouldn’t notice the difference anyway, he didn’t know what clean was. All her clothes, she had stolen money from him when he was passed out on the floor, and begged at school. Everyone else there had though she just wanted something to eat, it was relatively common to scab money for that reason. She didn’t ever eat though, except what Sal could put together.

Sal was a life-saver. She was a wonderful cook, able to make the ends of what was in their cupboards form something vaguely like a meal. He didn’t eat anything much, what little he had was take-away, apparently his ‘delicate constitution’ couldn’t handle anything else. The girl wondered who had told him this, as he always took the time to use air quotation marks. Anyway, everyone knew that junk-food was bad for you, made you fat. What she had learnt in biology was that drinking did exactly the same thing, no wonder her father took up most of the couch.

Drinking was a weak, coward’s way to escape. Her method was so much better, albeit not cleaner, but longer lasting. The hit she got from cutting rivaled any feelings of relief he got from those cold cans of beer. These days, he was going for the heavier stuff, drinking vodka more often. The girl could only hope he drank himself to death before he got in the way of her plans. She would never end up like him, she had promised herself that.