Battle Scars

Seven years have passed since I started witness protection. Seven years since I’ve able to recognize the girl I used to be. Through the years I’ve gone from blonde, to brunette, to red, and back to blonde. I cannot even look in the mirror and remember what my hair was. My mom tells me I used to have the whitest blonde hair she’d ever seen. It reflected well with my pale, almost clear blue eyes. They are my most distinguishing feature, so of course I have to hide them. “Colored contacts are your friend,” they tell me. As if saying that makes it any easier to hide another piece of who I am.

I didn’t want to start over. I didn’t want to give up my life, but just like everything else in this world, I didn’t have a say. I didn’t have a choice. My father robbed me of that, robbed me of everything I ever had, which was little to begin with. He chose a life of pill pushing, cocaine snorting, and violence as far as the eye could see. He told us that he chose it to better our lives. To further our futures, but he never did a damn thing that wasn’t for himself. He is wanted in just about every state for narcotic distribution, and because of him I now get to bounce from state to state.

Everywhere I go it is new everything. New school, new personality, new friends. I plaster a smile on my face to show my mom I’ll be okay. I act like I’ll be the most popular girl in school, and sometimes I can be, but it’s hard. I don’t get to keep in contact with any of them if I leave. Quite honestly everyone from my last couple of relocations probably think I’m dead. We left quite literally in the middle of the night. Taken out of bed, told its time to move, and by the time I’ve even woken up my hair is different, and I have a new name. In a way I did die. That person never existed. None of the girls’ they knew did. The only girl that ever did exist, the girl I was before this all happened, hasn’t existed for years.

I’ve been getting prepped for days for my next location. The agent has been drilling information in my head for hours on end. Question after question is being jammed down my throat. Where are you from? What’s your name? Why did you move? How old are you? What does your family do for a living? Where’s your dad? After a while my head starts spinning. I’m so sick of pretending to be other people. Memorizing other peoples’ lives instead of being able to live mine. I hate it. I hate my father for making me go through this. I hate myself for letting him control me. I hate that I jump every time I see a shadow when I walk down the street thinking it’s him. I hate that I’m constantly afraid, and I hate that there’s nothing I can do to stop it.

My name is Hailey Marshall and I’m a seventeen-year-old transfer student from Montecito, California. My mother and I moved because of her new job. She works for a small startup business as their financial consultant. We’re staying with her brother while she saves up money to buy us our own house. My dad? My mom and I lost him a long time ago. At least one detail in this relocation is true. I haven’t had a real father for almost a decade.

“Ally! Wake up! You need to get moving!”

I crack my eyes open, nearly blinded by the sunlight streaming through my barren room. My mother’s voice bounces off the walls of the empty house. I smile to myself as I hear her silently curse as she drops one of our moving boxes. Throughout all of this she’s stayed completely composed. I know the moves are probably harder on her than on me, but she puts on a brave face, knowing it’s the only way to keep us both safe. I look in the small mirror hanging in my room and I’m met by the sadness in my pale blue eyes. I touch the fragile, semi-cracked mirror. It was my mothers’. The only thing she brought with her from our first home. It’s been broken bit by bit every move, but I can’t force myself to throw it away. It’s all I have left of my old life. My mother doesn’t see it as broken, she sees it was wounded. Battle scars she would call them. Hurt, broken, but not destroyed.

“Battle scars,” I whisper to myself as I pop my green colored contacts in my eyes and tousle my jet-black hair.

I give one last look at the girl staring back at me and make my way down to my mother.

“Morning Ally, how did you sleep?” my mother asks, her back turned to me as she unpacks the kitchen.

“Are we supposed to break cover mother? My name is Hailey Marshall. I’ve never heard of this Ally girl,” I say sarcastically, eyebrow raised.

My mother whips her long black braid around and faces me, a small smile hinting in her cheeks.

“Well I’ve heard of her. Most of us think she’s a sarcastic little brat, but I’m forced to love her anyways,”.

“Well she must get it from her mother,” I say matter-of-factly.

I grab my backpack, mumble goodbye, and stumble out the door, mentally preparing myself for the hell that awaits me. High school.

I’ve been to several high schools during my relocations and I’ve learned that they’re all the same thing, just different names, different mascots, and different school colors. Everything else is the same. The cliques, the drama, the rumors, it all exists no matter where you go or how hard you try and stay out of it. One thing at every high school is a guarantee, they’re always intrigued by the new kid. Lucky me.

I keep my head down as I move from class to class, so far, I’ve been fortunate enough that no one’s really tried to speak to me. I’m sure on some level I should be offended, but I’m just grateful that I haven’t had to give my speech about who I am to anyone yet. I glance at the clock. 1:45. Study hall. Last class of the day. I can get through this. Just keep to yourself.

I shuffle inside my classroom, barely glancing up to find my chair. I bury my head in the arms of my sweatshirt the second I find my desk. You’d think by now it would get easier, but it never does. I think about how my life would be if I’d never started the program. Never moved from my home. From Chicago. Quite honestly, I’d probably be dead by now, but at least I’d have died being true to who I was rather than lying. I don’t know if that’s supposed to be comforting, but for me it almost is. I get so lost in the memories of my past that I don’t notice the man hovering over me.

“Name?” he asks.

“W-what?” I stutter as I’m brought back to reality.

“Rollcall. What’s the name?”.

“Ally,” I blurt.

My eyes go wide, and my stomach drops as I realize the mistake I’ve just made.

“Hailey, I mean. Hailey Marshall. My mistake,” I say sheepishly, hoping he ignores the edge in my voice.

“Thank you very much,” he says.

I avoid looking at him, keeping my eyes glued to my desk as I beg the time to move forward quickly. I need to get out of here. I messed up. God how could I be so stupid. How could I slip up? I’ve done this a thousand times. I’ve memorized a thousand stories. Memorized each and every tiny detail of half a dozen girls’ lives. What have I done? The hour feels like days as minute after minute ticks by. I never look up, even as the bell rings to dismiss us. I grab my bag and move to shuffle out the door. I have one foot out the door when I hear a voice call out.

“Hailey could you stay back a minute?”

My stomach drops to my feet as I stop dead in my tracks.

“Yes sir?”

“Why so formal Hailey? Or should I call you Ally? What name do you go by now? You’ve had so many”.

I feel my bottom lip tremble as I force my head to look up. I should have recognized the voice when he asked for my name. The voice that slurred my name every night before he proceeded to hit me over and over. The voice that always apologized the next day promising it would never happen again. The voice that told me he loved me. A tear escapes my eye as I look at him.

“Why so sad Ally? Aren’t you happy to see your dad?”

“How? How did you find me? You aren’t supposed—” I breathed.

“Aren’t supposed to what? Know where my own family is?” he barked.

I forced myself to look at him. I hid from him for so many years. I let him take so much from my mom and I. I let him control my life. I let my fear control me. Not anymore. This time, he wasn’t going to win. I wouldn’t let him, or his actions force me around. I wasn’t running this time; he was going to face what he did to me.

“Don’t you dare act like you didn’t bring this on yourself,” I bit back. “You did this to yourself and you damn well know it,”.

He crossed to me in one swift moment, pushing me against the teacher’s desk, and before I knew it he had his hands wrapped around my neck so tightly I thought I would pass out.

“Never speak to me like that again,” he growled in my ear.

“Go to hell,” I gasped.

His hands tightened around my neck as I spoke. Black spots gleamed in my eyes, his face slowly becoming blurrier and blurrier. Ringing that started dim, now blared in my ears. I closed my eyes knowing fully that he wouldn’t let go. He never wanted to when he lived with us, but my mom screamed and hit him until he finally released, but now I had no one. It was just me once again. All on my own, as I’ve been for the last seven years, but one thing was for sure, I was the one person I could count on.

I pushed my hand back looking for anything I could get my hands on, until finally I felt something metallic and cool. Scissors. I looked at him, a fire in his eyes I knew all too well. I saw it flash every time he drank, with every pill he took, with every little thing that set his temper off. He would never stop. The man he used to be was gone. The father I had before the drug addiction was dead, and this one now wanted me dead. I felt a tear drop down my face onto his hands, still wrapped around my neck.

“I’m sorry,” I whisper.

With one fluid motion I jam the scissors forward into his stomach. I hear him cry out and curse, but the second he releases me I run. I sprint has fast as I can out of the room, never daring to look back. The tears flood down my face, and my lungs burn as I run. I don’t know if I killed him, and I don’t want to right now. All I know is that I faced my monster, and I conquered it. I was free.