Hiding In The Dark...

• Kaila Clarke, Grade 10, Great Lakes College
• Short Story
• 2012

Excellence Award in the 'Legendary 2012' competition

I wonder what people see when they look at me... I guess I'll never know inless I ask.
I've not been the luckiest when it comes to making friends. People seem to avoid coming near me. they avoid even looking at me.
I understand why people avoid certain girls or boys that like gossip and such... But why me, what have I done to make people scared of me?
I'm disabled... Is that why?
I'm thirteen, with no legs, burn marks and just the horrific memory of dark and painful years. But the most haunting memory of why all this started makes each passing day harder then the last. Do people know that I should have died at the young age of four due to that house fire that took my family away from me? No.
And yet all people ever do is judge...
I started year seven this year and all the people in my year look at me like some sort of freak...
Every day I come home crying, with no official house to have as a home, no family to greet me at the door with smiles... And no mother to hold me and tell me that one day the pain will go away... I just have me, myself and I. The people I have had to count on my entire life... Will it start to get easier? Will I eventually make just one friend? Or will I have to live the rest of my life, hiding in the dark, burying my head in defeat and wishing that my life will just end?
I just want to be normal.
Is that too much to ask?