I remember my mother panicking alongside me, my father on the phone with 911. I remember the sound of the ambulance siren, my vision a never-ending black, my body filled with the stabbing agony that incapacitated me. Trapped in my prison of unrelenting tortures, I drifted in and out of consciousness. No matter what the doctors did, what medicines they pumped into me, the pain didn’t go away. I couldn't move past it; sometimes I couldn't stop screaming. Eventually, I slipped into a coma.
The first thing I saw when I woke up was my mother's face, filled with worry. My father looked sick with fear. Even at five, I knew something was wrong. I had been in the coma for months, and no one knew what had happened. The only signs of anything having changed were a change in my eye color, from green to a colorless silver, and a small mark that appeared right below my right ear. It was the size of a penny, the skin vivid red and raised like a brand; in the middle, a small unintelligible figure stood out in vivid black. I ran my finger over it for days. It didn't hurt, but it was ugly. The doctors assumed that I had been bitten by some sort of bug and had an allergic reaction, but deep down I knew that wasn't right. Besides, something like that wouldn’t have affected my eye color.
I wasn't the only one to doubt the doctors; my father doubted them, too.
I went home the next day; my mother covered me in blankets and provided enough ice cream and cartoons to last me a month. She got time off work and took care of me like she had never done before. I almost believed the mark didn’t really matter - until the fighting started. It was weird to hear them yell. I had never known my parents to fight before; they had always loved each other so much. My father had become obsessed with the idea of the mark, convinced that the mark I now had on my neck was something different, that it meant something. He rambled and yelled about it. He spent hours at the library, days on the Internet. The grinding noise of the modem dialing-in wound on our nerves; some nights I couldn't sleep. The fearful face he had the day I woke up never left him. He wasn't the same man. But I still loved him. I would crawl up on his lap, my five-year-old self, and plead for everything to be okay, promise him that I didn't hurt. I thought he believed me - until the day he disappeared.
I heard them screaming, for the last time, from the security of my bed, my blankets pulled high over me. I cried as they screamed at each other, gasped at the crashing that rocked the doors in the house. That night I cried myself to sleep. When I woke up, my father had gone, all because of me.
My mother didn't talk about it for months. Her heart had broken; I think my heart broke, too. Even at five, something inside me had changed; I knew I was different. Part of me knew that my father was right and that the mark did mean something. But it was also the reason he left, the reason my mother and I were alone.
At five, I hid that part of me away.
One
My long board clicked rhythmically down the sidewalk as I moved, the warm wind of early summer tugging against my dark hoodie, pulling at the long strands of black hair that had fallen out of my hood. I didn't like traveling in front of the houses in this part of the neighborhood. I normally took the back alley, but today, some road crews were working on pot-holes and I had to make my trip in front of the giant mansions that littered the hills of the east side of the city.
The rich ladies, with their upturned noses, liked to look out their windows at me as if I were somehow infecting their perfect little world with a contagious disease. They looked at me like I was poor (which I was), a menace (which I wasn’t), and like there was something wrong with me (which I wasn’t even sure of). Normally I would laugh at their response to me, but I didn't like them taking so much notice. Chances were, they would complain to my mother's boss, and she would get in trouble, again. It wasn't my fault the road crews decided to work on the alley, but it's not like “His Grace” would care.
My mother had worked as Edmund LaRue’s cook for almost ten years now, having taken the job after my father took off. Mr. LaRue, or King Edmund, as I called him, was an arrogant, greedy, self-righteous man who kept to himself. He probably had more secrets than rooms in his house - if that were even possible. But, as much as I despised him, he paid my mother well and so I couldn’t complain.
I jumped off my long board as I approached his house. If he heard the clicking of it against the sidewalk, he might throw another fit; that is, of course, if Mrs. Nose-Against-The-Window hadn’t already put in a call. I looked up the long driveway as I stepped in front of the gate. Only the gray Rolls-Royce lay parked against the side of the house, causing my heart to fall - no bright yellow Lotus. Ryland wasn’t home yet. I hopped back on my long board to roll down the side of the house; my somewhat good mood dashed by the absence of my best friend. Who cared if King Edmund got mad at me for making a racket?
I crashed into the kitchen, the slam of the door disrupting the 70s music that my mother and Mette, the LaRue’s baker, were listening to. Plopping myself onto one of the many bar stools surrounding the long work surfaces, I placed my head on my arms and covered my face as much as I could with my hood.
“Happy Birthday, Joclyn!” my mom said. I only grunted as I attempted to cover my head with my hoodie. “How was school?”
“Fine,” I said into the countertop.
“Fancy that,” Mette said in her rich, Irish accent. “She can almost disappear into the table. Must be a trick learned when one turns sixteen.”
I grumbled nonsense at them again and covered my head with my arms, trying to ignore the laughter of the two women.
“Not funny,” I growled.
“Hello, in there! Joclyn, can you hear me?” my mother lifted the side of my hood as she called into it, I tried not to smile. “Well, I think she’s done it! She has melded into the sweatshirt and become one with it.”“That will make it easier to wash her, that will.”
“Not funny,” I tried not to sound amused, but I don’t think it worked. My mother snorted so loudly it reverberated off the pristine marble countertops.
“I’ll just throw her in the washing machine, then a little bleach, lots of detergent, and the skateboard can go in the dumpster.”
“Hey! It’s a long board, and it’s the only way I get around! Unless you bought me a car. Did you buy me a car?” I shot up like a light, my face breaking out into an eager grin.
“There she is,” Mom laughed, throwing a present at me. “Happy Birthday, honey! Sorry, no car this year.”
“She lives. She lives. Praise the Lord! I thought for a second we would have to call a priest to exorcise her from the sweater,” Mette laughed, her red bun bobbing on top of her large round head. “Happy Birthday, dearie.”
My mom nudged the present at me again, prompting me to open it. Her eyes were sparkling with that eager anticipation she always got about gift-giving. The package was a good size, but lumpy and squishy. Clothes. Clothing had been an issue with my mother and me since that darned mark showed up on my face and chased my dad away. I preferred to hide the mark - and myself. She thought I should show the world how beautiful I was. I guess she might be right; I could be seen as the epitome of the fair-skinned, dark-haired beauty with some form of ethereal features. My mom fawned over my bone structure and perfectly-formed eyebrows that just grew that way. But, when I looked in the mirror, I only saw a skinny girl who wasn’t quite good enough. My mom obviously saw something different; she liked to give me blue shirts to highlight my black hair, or green belts to set off the silver of my eyes, or so she said. All I saw were vivid colors or an obvious lack of fabric that would make me stand out.
For years my mom kept trying to convince herself that my choice of baggy dark-colored clothes was a stage that I would outgrow. I always found a way to hide myself; I kept my black hair long and falling in a sheet around my face, my clothes always dark and at least a size too big. It was all done in a way to help me blend in so people wouldn’t notice me. I felt comfortable inside my safety shield, hoping that no one could see me or figure out what was wrong with me. When the Goth kids showed up at school, it worked to my advantage. My mom, for once, thought I was trying to be cool, but I wasn’t overly emotional or narcissistic like they appeared to be. I just wanted to disappear.
“Go on,” Mom prodded. “Open it.” I sighed before ripping off the paper. It was a deep red shirt, embroidered with some beads and fabric flowers. There was no denying it was pretty. It even looked like one of the things I wished I could wear – if only I felt comfortable doing so.
“Just try it on, Joclyn.” My mom danced around in her white kitchen shoes; how in the world could I say no to that? I dragged my feet all the way to the bathroom, the red shirt sticking out of the arm of the hoodie my hands were hiding in. I put on the shirt; cursing the fact that my mother could tell what size I was, even through my purposely too big clothes. It was snug, but not too tight. I stared at myself in the mirror for a second, looking through the tunnel of dark hair. I looked so different in the shirt, almost pretty. Without thinking, I pulled my hair up into a ponytail, just to see what it would look like, but the mark stood out so vividly; its ugly shape stuck out right behind and below my right ear. I twisted my hair and pulled it around the side, down the side of my neck. The low twist covered it easily, but I still didn’t trust it. Part of me wished I could dress like this, but I could never tell my mother that.