13 Letters

Alianara (Ally) McCarthon was a great person. And she couldn’t even speak. Story in Her perspective. When she came to the school, she was bullied. Her brothers stole from her teacher’s yard and she was caught there returning the items. Her two brothers had mental issues. Her older sister dealt with them, until she had to go to college. She moved out and 2 months later Ally and her two little brothers got taken away. Their parents forgot to feed them too many nights in a row, and so they resorted to stealing. A nice person let them eat, then called social services after asking their names. Ally was bullied because the teacher’s daughter, the teacher's pet, was in their class that year. The teacher told her daughter about Ally and her family. Everyone knew. Ally did have friends, but they all used her for things. She had been placed in a very good rich house, she and her brothers were separated. Ally was used left and right, someone would calm and console her, then use her for whatever it was. They did this until whatever they wanted ran out or they no longer needed or wanted. This happened 11 times. Once she was dumped in a lake, buckled into an old golf cart. People hurt her and hurt her, she never even met her foster parents, they worked so much, she knew their servants and their expectations. She had done nothing wrong her entire life. All she did was fix problems she was tossed in to. She became friends with herself. By the end of middle school, she had collected thirteen letters she wrote to each person or group of people who had betrayed or hurt her. One to her parents, for not caring enough. One to her current parents, for the same but the opposite. You get the jist. She found herself in the most beautiful and dangerous place in her little town. The Point of Nonexistence. People call it that, it isn’t what it seems. A sheer cliff with specks of trees that grow thicker into a forest behind this peak. It is forbidden. It is dangerous. She was there. The cliff was a sheer face of sharp rock into the river, where the rock spiked out like the bottom of a waterfall. Just this wasn’t water. There are train tracks on the other side of the river. There the forest continued. She was there, thirteen letters in her coat pocket. She sat on the very edge. She slipped down, just from the steepness, not her push. When the police found her, they found the letters. She was famous in newspapers, ghost stories, all for going through what she did and ending it. That was how she spoke. That was how she lived. She didn’t need words, she used the letters to tell her tale.

I am Alianara. Alianara McCarthon. But I can’t tell anyone that. I have to sign or write it. I can’t speak. My parents are-well, they were kind people. When this town was smaller, when business and economy wasn’t such a problem, the McCarthons were beloved in this town. Our parents told us the stories. There are six of us. Mom (Amy), Dad (Bill), my older sister Clarisse and my two little brothers. Alexander and Dave. My two biggest problems in life. They are both hugely mentally challenged, but they are a small part of my story. The hugest thing they ever contributed to was kick-starting my traumatizing life.

I searched around for my brothers. Clarisse was out, and our parents were useless. They worked sometimes, they walked around sometimes, they helped us never. Clarisse had to save up her own money for college. And our food sometimes, which is why only now she can actually go off and live at college, only worrying about finals and learning everything she wants to. I shook their medication gummied. I looked around our small, rusty little shack of a house. The gummies were medications for them. They need it. Every day. Clarisse convinced them that they’re gummies. I turned out of the living room to see the front door. Open. Wide. They were gone. I dropped the container and ran out, shutting the door behind me. I was determined to find them before they ruined something. I ran down the hill, past the park and the entryway to the posh neighbourhood. I went to the backs of houses my brothers liked to jump over the back fences off the little hill behind them and steal stuff. I heard scrambling from Mrs. Cardishon’s yard.