Countdown.
There are ten things that you never learn about the daughter of a single mother, about the traumatized child on your block.
Ten. She loves ballet. She practiced and worked every single day just to stand on her tip toes, and to do pretty twirls in pink skirts, and makeup that was way too dark for her face, making her look like a movie whore.
Nine. She loves butterflies. By the time she's old enough to read, she reads every single book about butterflies, learing about the different families, and the meanings behind them. If only all her problems could fly away like the butterflies fly from the cold.
Eight. She love Alice in Wonderland. Lord is it their favorite movie. She wanted to be Alice for Halloween, they wanted to own a pink and purple cat, she wanted to just vanish from the world they lived in.
Seven. They have no desire for boys...which was odd enough to the adults who always sexualized a young child no older than nine. You'll fall in love, want kids, have sex, do drugs, drink, smoke, screw, down another bottle, and another. Never enough. Work, drink, smoke, screw, work again, drink...
Six. They stopped going with the pronoun "she" when they turned nine. They stopped liking pink, and princesses when they turned ten, you didn't care enough.
Five. He laughs at people in movies. He laughs when the girls in horror movies trip and fall over their own two feet, scrambling to get up to escape their masked killer. It makes him feel better about himself seeing his grandmother drop dead in front of him, at the ripe age of five.
Four. He's scared of people. He hates the kids at his school. He has no friends, and the first friend he gets becomes a problem. He is violated again, and again but oh. It was his fault. The kid didn't mean it. He was leading the man on, presenting himself as a young feminine girl.
Three. He can't hear his own thoughts. He can't hear what his own brain says, what he thinks about everything. His mind is so blurred out by other people, that he's lost his way. He can't think. He's burnt out and like a wooden house on a hot summer day he begins to smoke.
Two. There's no way that they're okay. He can lie to everyone around him, and say that "Oh I'm fine" but they truly aren't, and its not going to get any better. They can see the dark path ahead, just through the mist. They want to end that path where he stands, end life on a good note. On a C major.
One. You won't see the cracks. They've done it well. He's hidden the cracks of his face by the mask of a girl. He's hidden the pain, and the out of tune piano of their heart behind what they can only describe as pain. Pain pain pain pain pain its all they've ever felt. They carry the pain of others on his shoulders, feeling the heavy stone begin to chip away his perfect marble. He's going to crack.