FFPS part 2

Life was especially simple for orphaned kids, known most commonly as ‘smudge children’. Life consisted of three main parts for us: Education, chores, and survival (eating, drinking, sleeping etc.). Fun came only if there was time. All orphans grew up like that, and they expected nothing more.

Reading this, what do you expect me to be? Some kind of oddball, always fantasizing and getting in trouble for that? Or maybe some moody rebel, always going against what authorities say and wanting to somehow burst free from my shell and run away? If you think that, then you’ve read too many cliché books. I was about as simple as a blank sheet of parchment, occasionally dreaming, yes, but never straying too far as to ‘think about what is important’.

Now you’re most likely thinking along the lines of who I really was. I used to be the classic quiet girl, very few (to be more exact, no) friends, but considered ‘pretty’ and with a ‘lovely personality that will get you far in life, miss’. I never spoke out of turn, never said anything too bad or rash, always very respectful and polite. Looking back now, I was a down-right nobody. People then would look at me, this small, wide-eyed red-head girl and think, “Wow, she’s got such a charming personality! Who raised you, miss?” when all they saw was a youth who never spoke, never showed expression or opinion. A lifeless child.

Well, this wasn’t completely true. I did have a natural talent and attraction for climbing trees, along with reading and watching plays. I’d save up all the cores I’d get for doing extra chores and go to see to see them, watch all the brilliant actors and actresses act through scenes, all the way to the very end when the whole cast would get on the stage and bow. “How was the play?” someone would ask as I, along with dozens of other people, swarm out of the stage. “Fine,” I’d reply. But it was so much more than ‘fine’, and I was aware of that, even then. But I also knew that a person in the town that I grew up in would never stop to hear the full story.

My reputation in school was void; I didn’t have one. Every day when I went to the school house I’d seat myself at the back of the classroom, listening silently to the teacher, never talking to anybody, occasionally writing notes down or creating cartoons on extra sheets of paper when I was done with my work. I was like an oxygen waster; people knew who I was, but they listened to my words, not the person speaking them. People paid little attention to me, nor did they beat me up or tease me. They left me alone, and I thought I was fine with that.

But I was lonely back then. I didn’t know it, but I was. And it was hurting me inside. I remember I used to go to the library every day after I was done with my chores and just grab as many books as I could. Books were my friends. No, correction; the characters in the books were my friends. I could connect to them. Sometimes, when I’d be sitting on some grass in a park, I’d imagine myself talking to one of them, pretending they were real. That was the only real thing to suggest I had any imagination in me at all back then.

In total, I was a seriously broken child. I had no thoughts, no deep feelings or wise opinions. But the worst part was, I had no imagination. No time to be a real kid, have real friends, or do real things.

Until just a short while after my thirteenth birthday.