Kids

• Tyler Redmond, Grade 10
• Short Story
• 2013

When we begin in this world we know nothing, understand nothing. But as we grow older, we begin to see things that others don’t; feel what other’s cannot and hear things that would freak even the oldest person out of their cigarette smelling, vein pulsing skin.
It starts off in Kindergarten, where we play with the other children on the playground and we hear mum and dad arguing over who forgot to pay the water bill, while noticing the Vogue magazine on the table and wishing we’d look like those girls. When we can feel our cheeks hurting from old ladies fingers pinching our skin and when we walk down the street our Barbie shoes light up like Christmas lights.
When we start Primary school and leave our mum at the entrance we begin to fret and hope the other kids like us. We walk up the stairs and into a soon to be Hell as a little boy with a blue jacket bumps into us and sends us flying across the yellow linoleum floor; he runs off and laughs with his friends, and we choke back baby tears. Finally school is over and our dad is waiting at the entrance this time, a big smile on his face and on ours; until we see the blonde woman behind him grab his hand and kneel down to congratulate us on our first day of school. She says her name is Becky and we begin to cry.
Now we’re in High school, our wrists have been bleeding for years and our mum has had an affair with her boss. We lose it in the back of a blue Toyota and our teeth are yellowing from all the tobacco. We've lost our friends and continue to get bad grades, the teachers begin to worry but aren't that concerned. We’re up late watching re-runs of Friends and crying for hours thinking how we got this way. Our dad disappeared a few years back and we haven’t been the same since.
The next year we’re dead, our body was found in the bathtub, our wrists slit and pills on the counter. Our mum cries every night, no longer sleeping with her boss or strangers, our class mates don’t really care and the teachers hold an assembly to mourn our loss. We were all born to die, it was only a matter of when.