Sarah Scott Journalist

Reflection

A reflection is meant to mirror our exact image. Every single flaw and imperfection should be shown to us. You truly know you have lost your way when you don’t recognise the person staring back at you.

The girl in the mirror now has scrunched shoulders and a slightly hunched back. Her eyes have dark circles under them because she has had no sleep. Her lip is cut and still slightly swollen. Most of her skin is bruised and her back doesn’t even have any skin left. Her naked body looks weak and fragile, like it could shatter into a million pieces. Do I really look like this? My mind doesn’t feel weak and fragile but the girl in the mirror is showing that my body is. At this rate I won’t be able to walk through the forest like Alex is planning. I won’t even be able to get back to my house when the pod has stopped for supplies either.

I got up early today despite getting barely any sleep last night. My cell covered in mine and Luke’s blood featured a lot in my nightmares. Throughout the pod, screams were heard from other people reliving their terrors which kept me awake. At least when I was awake my nightmares couldn’t take over. I would be wailing too but I think I’m still in shock more than anything.

The pod will be stopping in twenty minutes, so I start to get dressed. My eyes are constantly fixed on the girl in the mirror. She gets dressed letting her messy hair fall to her shoulders. As I meet eye to eye with her I think at one point she could have been pretty. Her blotchy face takes away attention from her battered body.

I change back into what I had just slept in – Alex’s oversized t-shirt and grey shorts. I didn’t see it last night but wearing these shorts reveals my scar from the car crash. I put my white cardigan on over the t-shirt to hide how big it actually is. This may not be ideal but we will be getting clean clothes soon so it doesn’t matter right now, anything is better than my school dress.

Alex organised the supplies to be picked up in the early hours of the morning so less people will notice and make a fuss. I open my door but don’t close it behind me because I don’t want to make a sound or bring any kind of attention to myself. The loading room is at the very back of the pod so I should be alright to slip out the front and still go un-noticed. The pod will be stopping for an hour, so I will have to watch the time but if I keep a good jogging pace, I will be back in plenty of time.

I feel the pressure on my head change as the pod’s breaks start to work. I walk to the side door of this section and wait till the pod comes to a halt. I see in the distance Alex jumping off to shake hands with a man waiting at the supplies unit storage door. When I’m sure he’s not looking I take my chance and slip out behind a tree to plan my path to getting back to our home. The path will take forty minutes so I will take a shortcut through the orchard. That’s the quickest way I think.

As soon as I have my route in my head, I start jogging. Surprisingly I am able to jog. It’s not comfortable but I take the pain and use it to make me stronger. I dive through trees and bushes, and it feels like I have never been away from this place. I start to run. It makes me feel so free like nothing in the past three days has even happened. I run until my lungs scream for air.

I shouldn’t be pushing myself this much. The burning pain in my lungs just reminds me of being drowned by The Core’s torturer. I have to stop and rest on a tree or I may pass out. I look up and see a glimpse of pink peeking out the top of a tree . . . the orchard. I’ve reached it! I made it!

I’m here which means that my house is only a five-minute walk away. My house, filled with my father and my sister Tallulah, is only five minutes away. I can make it! I can!

I walk to the orchard gently letting my lungs breath for a minute. I take in a deep breath of the sweet blossom-filled air. Most people find it sickly, but I love it. I close my eyes and keep this pictured in my mind. This could easily be the last time I see this place. I walk down the slope to the lake and splash my sweaty face with water. It cools me down making me feel like I didn’t just run a over mile.

I climb over the fence that leads to the path back home. In case the rumours about patrols are true, I put the hood of my cardigan over my head to hide my face. If I took a left turn I would walk to school. I carry on straight forward and head home. If I can even call it home now. I pass many dirty streets before I reach the street with our house on it. Seeing as it is so early in the morning the rest of my family will be in bed.

A few people are out on the streets preparing to go to whatever jobs they’ve managed to get themselves into. I pass many houses with only the occasional person staring. They can’t see my face so they probably don’t recognise me. Word tends to spread quickly around this area so most people will have heard of the kidnapping; if they even care. Disaster and suffering happens every day here.

My house is in sight. I walk round to the back of the house and open the back door. The lock hasn’t worked on this door since Tallulah broke it when she was four.

Tallulah’s bedroom door is slightly open. I can hear her deep breathing. I pop my head round the door and see her curled up all tangled in her sheets. Her bed is placed in line with the door. She has a weird thing about facing the door.

I walk into her room and lower my hood. The last thing I want is for her to open her eyes and see someone with a hood covering their face. I get the sheets from the floor that she has kicked off and place them back over her. She stirs a bit but doesn’t wake up. I sit on the end of her bed with my back facing the door. I just watch Tallulah sleep. She’s so peaceful and oblivious to the reality of the world around her. I used to be like that once.

I suddenly feel a tight grip around my right arm, squeezing my dart wound. I’m being pulled out of the room from a force behind me. I sharply turn my head around to see who the tight grip belongs to. My father is blankly staring at me. Alex has the same look.

“What the hell are you doing here?” he spits out like he’s just tasted something sour. “Do you have any idea what this could do to her?” He gestures his head towards Tallulah’s room. I’m shocked at my father’s reaction to seeing me. Alex said he helped organise all this. I thought he would be happy to see me.

“I . . . I came to say goodbye,” I say. “Do you not even care about what we’ve been through? Can you really be that heartless?”

“You need to leave Alleyah!” he says raising his voice “NOW.” I gasp, still in shock at what a monster he’s being. My own father seems to hate me. “Alleyah, if you don’t leave now I will make you,” he threatens.

“Dad, please. I need to say goodbye to her at least. I may never see you again,” I say with my voice breaking off at the end.

“I did warn you!” he says grabbing my hair. He pulls me towards the front door, and I have to stop myself from screaming out. Before he opens the door, he throws my body down against it. I groan as my back tells my brain to stop putting pressure on my wounds. My vision goes black around the edges as my head hits the doors hinges.

He grabs my left arm and pulls my body up. He opens the door and throws me down on the ground again. This time I hit the dusty floor with a crash. “DAD, STOP IT, PLEASE! STOP IT!” I scream at the top of my lungs.

“WHY DO YOU HAVE TO BE DIFFERENT? WHY DO YOU HAVE TO BE SO MESSED UP? YOU DON’T THINK ABOUT ANYONE ELSE BUT YOURSELF! JUST LEAVE US ALONE. WE DON’T NEED YOU!” He shouts back at me. He pulls back his arm back and strikes out at my face. The warmth runs through my cheek and spreads to the rest of my face and works its way up to my eyes which are now filled with water. Tears are streaming down my face igniting my skin.

I pull myself up off the ground and start to back up so that if he tries to touch me again, I will have chance to move. He is breathing very heavily like a bull about to charge. I am standing here like a stunned deer, waiting for his next strike. He pulls his arm back ready for his next hit.

His arm is about to make contact with my face again when somebody blocks its path . . . Luke. He takes his fist and lets it collides with my father’s stomach making him fall to his knees. Luke rushes over to me and supports me with his body. He is still limping after the dart got stuck in his knee.

“Are you okay?” he asks.

“No, I’m not,” I say. My face is wet from the tears but I feel heat behind my eyes like there’s more to come. We start walking and he props me up against a tree. I think he needs a rest more than me. I look over to my house where my father is there clutching his winded stomach. More tears run down my face and before I know it, I’m crying. Luke embraces me in his arms and lets me cry into his shoulder.

“Did he hurt you?” he says “Your cheek is bleeding.” I ignore his question. He did hurt me. Physically my head hurts and my muscles are exhausted and apparently, I’m bleeding, but he hurt me more emotionally. My loving father, who my mother trusted with her life, is a psychopath. My little sister is left all alone with him. Why did Alex tell me things were okay with our father? Why didn’t he tell me our own father wanted nothing to do with us? If I think about this in too much detail I know what will happen. I will be left with a lot of unanswerable questions.

I shudder, still feeling my father’s tight grip on my hair. My father has walked back inside the house – a place I can no longer call home. How did my mother love such a monster?

If we don’t start moving soon, we won’t make it back to the pod in time.

My tears have now stopped, I just feel numb inside now. “Thank you,” I whisper to Luke, my voice still unsteady. “You’ve saved me yet again.”

“I know, it’s becoming a habit,” he says. He smiles at me. I now see the same boy I once saw at school. He doesn’t look as tired as he did yesterday. His smile is beautiful and when he smiles his eyes light up with life. “We need to be getting back soon,” he adds “Will you be alright to go on.”

“Yeah, I’ll be fine” I say “I just have to ask one thing”

“And what’s that?”

“How did you know where I was? Did you follow me? The thing that I don’t understand is that yesterday you couldn’t look me in the eye, but today you’re all ready to save my life again. Even with that knee you still followed me. I just don’t get you,” I say.

He stares at his feet for a minute as if planning what he’s going to say in his head. “You want to know the truth?” he asks, it’s a rhetorical question but I still nod. “Looking at you was too painful. Whenever I saw you it reminded me of our cell and everything that happened. I know it might sound selfish and I know that you had it worse than me, but I didn’t want to be reminded of any of it. When I saw you that day in the storage room everything came back to me: your screams, watching you drown and how I couldn’t stop any of that happening.”

There is silence for a minute as I take all this in. I don’t blame him but it still hurts that he feels like that. Surely he knows that I would do anything to forget what happened. How can he say he couldn’t do anything, he stopped me from being scolded with a red hot stick. He took a beating for me. I was too blinded by my pain to even acknowledge what he was going through. He didn’t scream as much as I did, he had injections instead of beatings.

“It’s okay. Weirdly I understand,” I say. I feel heat behind my eyes like I could cry at any second. I barely know him, why am I letting him make me feel like this?

“Thanks for saving me again,” I say, that’s all I am able to get out before my voice breaks off and tears stream down my face. I turn around so that he doesn’t see this has affected me. I thought that he could be the one to help me get through this. I thought that we could help each other.

 I start walking fast in the direction of the pod. If we don’t leave now, we’ll never make it back in time.

“Alleyah, stop! You didn’t let me finish,” he shouts to me. He’s quite far behind but is trying his best to limp over. “I changed my mind Alleyah, that’s why I followed you. I need you. When I’m with you, things feel right,” he says. I feel butterflies in my stomach. I don’t know why but he makes me nervous, a good nervous I think. “I was stupid for ever having that thought. I followed you because I thought you were running away to go back home and I couldn’t let you do that and I’m glad I did.”

“It’s fine Luke. What happened is something that you don’t get over so don’t put yourself through that.”

 “Alleyah, I’m telling you that it was wrong of me to think that! Look we can’t do this now we need to get you back,” he says.

“Me? What about you?” I ask.

“I’m never going to make it there in time with my knee like this, so you need to run as fast as you can so at least you get back.”

“No! I’m not leaving you. Not after all this.” I look back to my house picturing my sister so oblivious to all of this.

“You don’t have a choice. If you stay with me then you’ll miss the pod but if you start running now then you’ll make it in time.”

“I’m not leaving you! If you stay here then you’ll be found and taken back to be experimented on. You might even die!” I say.

“That’s not your problem,” he says. I see him looking at me with his eyes so full of life. A different person to the boy I saw yesterday.

“Well you’re going to have to think of a way to get us both there. It’s either both of us or none of us. You hear me?” I say. He nods and smiles, his beautiful smile.

“That cardigan suits you by the way,” he says. He stares at my body. I can feel my heart racing. He then meets eye to eye with the scar on my leg. He looks confused like he’s trying to remember what The Core did to me to give me such an impressive scar. “When did you get that?” he says. I can feel my pulse in my fingertips.

“A car accident,” I say. “Alex was driving. We crashed into the side of a building.” He looks shocked like I’ve just told him I come from a different planet. “What? What is it? What’s the matter?” I ask.

“Nothing. I just . . . I didn’t have your family pinned down as the type that owns a car that’s all,” he says suspiciously, although I don’t know why.

“We’re not,” I say. “We don’t even own a __” I stop. Our family doesn’t own a car nor do we know anyone that does. We can’t afford a car and we wouldn’t use one even if we did. Whose car was Alex driving? The only people that actually own cars are patrol workers apparently and anyone rich enough to buy one, which is not us. Very few people own motorbikes but they are more commonly seen then cars.

“So, whose car were you driving?” Luke asks.

“I don’t know,” I say. “I . . . I can’t remember anything about the crash.” My feet start moving aimlessly. I start to wonder to a different tree. Snap out of this! Get back to the pod and Alex will have an obvious explanation for all of this. I think to myself.

“Forget that for now! We need to get back to the pod,” I say. “I know a way we can both get back with time to spare but you’re not going to like it.”

“Go on,” he says.

“There’s a man who owns a motorbike a few streets away. He keeps it in a storage barn; if we can get there then we can make it.”

He sighs. He knows this is our only option (to steal a man’s pride and joy that he probably worked for years just to be able to afford it).

We run past many houses till we reach the barn. Luke struggles to keep up because of his knee but he hides his pain well. There is nobody around to catch us. The front door of the barn is always locked so I will have to climb through the window. I look up – the window is higher than I remember.

We stand in silence as I try to plan out a route. Luke makes the obvious decision and lifts me up. I wasn’t going to ask him to do that as he can barely hold up his own weight let alone both of us.

His strong hands wrap around my legs just below my knees and he lifts me up with ease. I try not to think that my butt is in his face right now. I push open the window and jump through landing on my feet. I then go and unlock the door from the inside.

After a minute we stumble on our next hurdle. There is no card around to start the bike. Luke tells me there is a way to get it started without the ignition key. He looks ashamed to admit that he knows it.

I don’t ask questions about how he knows which wires need connecting together, he just does it and I watch. After a few minutes he finally gets the engine roaring.

“Can you ride a bike with your knee?” I ask.

“I can try,” he says but I’m not convinced. He jumps on first and gestures me to follow. I put my hand on his shoulder and use his body to pull myself on. He tells me to hold onto him so I don’t fall off as we will be going quite fast. I slide my hands around his waist and pull my body closer to his. He looks uncomfortable with this for a second but he swallows hard and looks straight ahead. He revs the engine and we start to move out of the barn door.

When we start to move, I feel his body tense which makes my hold on even tighter. I’ve never been on a motorbike before but it doesn’t seem too difficult to drive. One handle for speed and the other for brakes.

Luke sticks to the open paths. We go so fast that trees and house blur into one. I feel so alive. I can feel the adrenaline pumping round my body waking every part of me. I have butterflies in my stomach. Life should be filled with adrenaline pumped moments like this. Right here, right now, just feels right. Things like this make me believe I can be happy again one day.

The orchard passes by in a blur becoming part of the disappearing distance. I won’t see that place again. I will never be coming back here. The warehouse is in sight with the pod discreetly tucked away behind it. Another eight hundred metres and we’re there. Luke starts to swerve through so many trees that I become dizzy and I start to lose my grip.

My hand slips off Luke’s body making me touch the cold metal of the bike.

“Hold on,” Luke shouts. He takes his left hand off the brake handle and grabs my hand. He places it back on his waist and holds it there for a few seconds to make sure I have my grip back.

As the pod comes into sight our speed slows down eventually coming to a stop. There are still some people loading the last things onto the pod. I see Alex look over confused and angry. He storms over and demands an explanation. His eyebrows meet in the middle. I use Luke’s body to help myself off the bike so I can talk to him. 

“Alleyah, what the hell?” he shouts.

“It’s a long story. You have a lot of explaining to do,” I say.

“You’re bleeding,” he says. I put my hand to my face remembering Dad striking out at me. The stinging is coming back since my adrenaline is wearing off. “How dare you leave? What makes you think that you can? Everyone on this pod would kill to go home and see their families. What makes you think you can leave and go and steal someone’s motorbike by the looks of it?” He steps closer in an attempt to intimidate me which makes Luke walk over and stand next to me. I like how protective he is over me.

Alex may be the closest thing I have to a family right now, but he still shares the same blood as my father.

“He had something to do with this. I might have guessed it would be you. What did he do to you?” Alex says to me even though this snide comment was aimed at Luke. What does he mean he ‘might have guessed’ it was Luke? “Look at your face Alleyah, did he do this?”

“NO!” I snap a little too defensively which makes him step back. “He didn’t do anything. He saved me from much worse. Why did you tell me our father helped you? He was the one who did this to my face not Luke.”

“You went to see our father?” he asks.

“I was going to say goodbye to him and Tallulah, but he threw me out. He said he doesn’t care about us anymore and he asked why we had to be different and so messed up,” I say.

“I’m sorry. I thought if I told you he was fine with all this it would make it easier for you,” he says.

“That wasn’t your decision to make, Alex. I’m not a child anymore, I don’t need your protection. All I need is the truth,” I say. “Tell me whose car you were driving the night we crashed.”

The colour fades from his face. He looks as white as my cardigan used to before I was thrown on the ground. He stutters on a few words but doesn’t come out with anything useful to me.

“Cut the crap! Just tell me, I don’t want any more lies!” I say.

Someone from the storage unit calls Alex over asking for help. Alex ignores him.

“Not now,” he says. “I’ll come find you later.” With that he turns around and walks over to the man calling him.

I sigh and look up at Luke. He shakes his head. I start to climb onto the pod. Luke helps me up. He puts his hands round my waist, just like I had done to him on the bike, and lifts me into the pod. I offer my hand to him and he takes it wincing when pressure is out on his knee.

Luke walks me back to my little room. He has been sleeping on the floor with a blanket but he doesn’t say anything about my bed. He’s just not that type of person.

The pod leaves seven minutes later when Alex and his crew have finished clearing things up. So we start the last leg of our journey on the pod and we head for the forest.

Luke and I spend a while talking. This is the only place we can get peace and quiet to talk. When he speaks, it’s like he thinks about every word he says, making sure that it won’t offend anyone. Everything he talks about he has such passion for. Surprisingly he really opens up to me. He says he is struggling with his element. Everyone seems to be getting it really quickly. I try to reassure him that a lot of people are like that; me for starters. I explain about how my element is undecided and that my water element is very weak.

He tells me not to worry. I still do though. I don’t want to be left undecided for the rest of my life. What if my body can’t decide? What happens then?

He tells me he was speaking to the girl in the white dress. He explains that it is a wedding dress because on the day she was taken, it was her wedding day. Her name is Anna and she was given emotional torture with their injections. The blood on her dress is not hers . . . it was her husband’s. He killed the guard that was carrying her away so a different guard shot him. He died in her arms before they could drug her. At least she got to say goodbye.

“That’s awful,” I tell him.

“Yeah, it sucks, watching someone you love die right in front of you,” he says. It’s like he was saying that to himself and not me. He looks like he is wrapped up in his thoughts. I understand, I always get lost in my own thoughts. I decide not to question him on it. Some things are best left unsaid.

I change the topic. I usually like the silent buzz in a room, but this one is awkward filled with damaged thoughts.

“Where are you heading next?” I ask. He snaps back to reality.

“The fire element section of the pod. I’ll head there,” he says. “Since your element is undecided, you can come with me if you like?” His eyes are filled with anticipation and hope.

“Yeah I’d like that,” I say. I give him a smile. The first time I’ve really smiled since I was last in the orchard.

I laugh at the tension there is between us and he does the same. If he’s anything like me, intimacy and all that makes me giggle. When I used to see Alex and his (old) fiancé kiss I used to look away. I just don’t like all that emotional, romantic, kissy stuff. It makes me sound so childish. I suppose I still am a child, forced to grow up too quickly.

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Catch Chapter 6 – Red now.