** (graphic depictions of abuse)

I felt a finger trailing down my back. At first, I thought Lucas just thought my back was hot, but then it hit me, he saw my scar... one of my scars.

Old memories I had buried a long time ago began to resurface. The emotion drained out of me as I remembered how I got that scar... and it was not something I wanted to tell Lucas. Even though it was obvious our relationship had changed, that doesn't alter the fact that I don't know him. I don't know anything about his life or who he is.

It's not uncommon for people to lose a parent, lots of people experience it. Some when their parents are old, some when their parents are sick, and others because of unfortunate accidents.

I was part of the latter.

When I was seven my entire family was involved in an extremely bad car crash.

Me and my older brother, Ace, were in the back seat. We had just gone out to dinner for my seventh birthday and were driving back around 8 pm. The road was entirely empty as it was dangerous to drive on at night. There was a large cliff on our right and the fence to protect cars from going off the rails was small.

There were no streetlights on the highway so the only thing illuminating our path was the headlights of our car. I was playing with my toy dinosaur, my brother and I were acting it out, making dinosaur noises and banging the toys against each other.

I heard loud screeching noises. I didn't look up to see what was going on until I saw that Ace had stopped playing and was looking ahead, eyes wide and filled with fear. A car heading towards us was swerving all the way across the narrow road at a speed my young mind couldn't comprehend.

As I looked up I saw the man's face, brightened from our headlights pouring into the windshield of his car, he took a swig of his beer then threw it out the window.

With a loud screech, his car swerved right into the left side of ours, pushing us through the short railings and off of the cliff's ledge.

I still remember my mother's scream...

That was the last time I ever saw her.

After my mother's death, my father started drinking. As stereotypical as it may seem, that was reality. And that's how he coped.

At first, it was just alcohol. My father could be found sitting on the couch in the living room with a bottle in his hand and cans scattered around the floor and table at any and all times of the day.

Unable to deal with the loss of his wife and with no intentions to seek help, in his constant drunken state, that man slowly turned his blame from the driver that caused the accident to me.

If the guilt seven-year-old me felt wasn't enough, I then also had an unpredictable drunkard who blamed me, and that blame and hatred were reflected in aggression.

At first, it wasn't too bad. Just an occasional slap or hard shove. Ace tried to intervene as often as he could, but he was only three years older than me, there's only so much a 10-year-old can do. It's not like our strength could rival that of a grown man.

It didn't start getting bad until the drugs started coming in. Nearly every day a man would park outside our house. I would watch from the window of my room that overlooked the street. He would pull out his phone and send a quick message and simply wait in his beat-up car. A couple of minutes later my dad would come out and would hand the man a large wad of cash and in turn, he would be handed a small baggie of something, despite being seven I knew they were drugs. We did have a DARE program at my elementary school after all.

My father stopped paying the bills and providing food for me and Ace so he could blow it all off on coke and booze. But worst of all, his violence towards me only continued to escalate.

I was a smart kid, I knew what the drinking and drugs did, I knew how they played off of each other and made the effects worse. But I also knew there was nothing I could do to stop him from getting high and taking his anger out on me.

He always avoided my face, he was conscious enough to know that bruises on visible skin would raise questions.

I can't even begin to describe the horrendous things he did to hurt me. He'd throw me on the ground and kick me senseless, sometimes to the point where he would break ribs. Other times he would take my arm and slam it on the granite counter, splitting my bone. There were even cigarette burns plastered all over my body, spanning from my hips up to my neck. They had faded quite a bit over time.

Some days were worse than others. Sometimes Ace could get him to stop, other times he would try but just ended up getting hurt as well.

If I didn't have my brother with me back then, I don't think I ever would have made it. My dad would probably have killed me before my age got to double digits.

I loved my brother so much, despite being only a couple years older than me, he was more of a father to me than my own dad.

--

Two years after the incident I was able to smile for the first time.

This girl at school shared her lunch with me. I never had any money to buy lunch, I probably was only able to eat a couple of times a week, but even then it was always nothing more than scraps. I mean, it's not like my house was a place where food was available. The place was a wreck, there was no power or running water and the once light walls had been stained a dark musky hue due to all the smoke. At first, Ace and I managed to get leftovers from a diner a couple of blocks over. But good things never last, no matter how small that good thing is.

I was small, malnourished, and sickly pale. But this one girl gave me her whole lunch, and of course who wouldn't be happy about that. It had been my first real meal in two years. I don't know why she ever approached me. Whether it was out of pity, if it was a dare, or if she was simply curious about the emptiness in my eyes. Either way, I was thankful for what I could get.

Her name was Sarah, she had strawberry blonde hair and freckles across her nose. She was also a lot bigger than my then sickly stature, with green-blue eyes that for some reason reminded me of a cat. She had been giving me her lunch for a week, sitting with me before and after school, talking to me in class. For a while, I thought maybe things were starting to look up. If I knew what I know now back then, I would have laughed in my face.

One day after school Sarah invited me over to her house to swim. I told her I didn't have a swimsuit so she let me borrow a pair of her brother's swim trunks.

I had just changed in their bathroom and came out still wearing my shirt, I didn't want her to see all the marks covering my body, at least the ones on my leg could be feigned as something I got while playing around. Even back then I knew people couldn't find out about what my dad was doing to me, he had made that very clear.

When Sarah saw me slowly exit the bathroom, fiddling with my shirt, she told me I had to take it off because her parents would get mad at her if the only clothes I had brought got wet. Her parents wanted her to be a proper host.

I was really reluctant to take my shirt off because if I did she would see the bruises, cuts, and burns. But she had been the first person in years to try to talk to me. I didn't want to start from the beginning and endure countless more years of isolation and loneliness. Sure we had only been friends for about a week, but a week with a friend seems like a hundred years compared to the two I spent isolated and ostracized.

I slowly took my shirt off, and to say that she was horrified by what she saw would be an understatement. I could see her wide eyes and her mouth moving, but I couldn't process what she was saying. I was scared she would call me disgusting or that she didn't want to be friends with me anymore. I was insecure about my small and battered body, and rightfully so. It's not as if I had spent the last two years enduring abuse just from my father. No of course not, that would be too easy.. Sense my sarcasm?

Young kids are surprisingly intelligent and observative. At first, no one noticed the increasing amount of dirt on my body, it was the slow weight loss and increasing fragility of my body that made people make fun of me.

Hence why now I care about my body and want nothing less than perfection. Kids that get bullied have the biggest glow ups, prove me wrong.

She grabbed my wrist and dragged me over to her parents and showed them all the small scars and cigarette burns covering the span of my torso. To say the least, the looks on their faces showed how truly disturbed they were. I didn't think it was too bad at the time, honestly. Probably because I was already so used to the marks covering my skin.

They made me tell them what had happened, even though I was hesitant and tried to make up random excuses. But in the end, I still ended up giving them my address.

Her parents let us carry on with our fun and the body I hated so much had quickly been forgotten.

It was so much fun, the most fun I'd had since the day my mom was killed.

But the second my father saw my smile I faltered. As I walked through the creaky door my father stood up. He slowly started walking towards me, clutching his beer bottle. I could smell the alcohol radiating off of his entire self, looking to my left and right I saw the empty baggies and pill bottles scattered on the couch and floor. Not only was he drunk, but he was also high, a combination I, unfortunately, knew the dangers of.

I backed up until there was nowhere left for me to go. He had thrown the beer bottle at the wall right next to my head, scraping my ear. I remember lifting my hand up to feel a wet sensation where the bottle had hit me. When I pulled my hand away I saw the blood.

I became wide-eyed and looked up to see my father staring at me with disgust in his eyes. I remember the exact words he said to me, screaming in Korean, "Boy! What the hell you lookin' at! Huh! You got somethin' to say to me?! Well, Come'on! Say it! It's your fucking fault Ha-Eun died! If you hadn't been born this never would have happened! YOU KILLED HER!"

I looked at him with nothing but fear in my eyes. Every time I spoke it automatically resulted in a beating. I stuttered, trying to find words that didn't want to come out. Maybe he was right, It was my fault. If I had never been alive in the first place my mom never would have even been in the car that night.

If it wasn't for me they both could still be alive...

He grabbed my shoulders and threw me on the ground. I cried, trying my best to crawl away, but he grabbed me. He picked up the top of his broken beer bottle and slammed the thick, jagged edge into my skin. I screamed in agony and he dragged it down from my left shoulder and across my back, cutting me in half.

I couldn't struggle anymore. It hurt so much my head was ringing. I saw dots everywhere as the room in front of me began to fade into darkness.

I could no longer speak, the words wouldn't come.

I tried, Ace, I'm sorry I couldn't last. It's all my fault. I'm so sorry.

I had woken up to someone shaking my shoulders. I couldn't hear anything and all I saw was a giant blur. It was so cold and I couldn't move, I couldn't even turn my head.

I couldn't breathe.

I started to panic and then I began to cough up blood. I was swimming in a pool of it, my clothes completely drenched, my face smeared as well.

I heard the sirens pulling up, the shuffling footsteps of people rushing through my door. They lifted me up onto the stretcher and I screamed in pain.

I saw the crowd around my house as the people stared at me. I heard their whispers. "Looks like he finally lost it."

"I can't believe he did that to his own child."

"I hope he's okay."

"I knew this would happen one day."

The whispers were everywhere. If you knew this would happen why didn't you stop it? You knew about what he did to me. I know every single one of you could hear it. You could have saved of us! So why?

And with that, I closed my eyes. The pain was too much, the noise was too much, everything was just too much.

When I woke up I was lying on my stomach, connected to a bunch of tubes. I had tried to turn my head a little to get a better understanding of where I was but the small movement sent a jolt of pain down my entire spine and I grunted roughly.

I heard someone next to me jump up. It was Sarah.

"Hey! You're up! I'm so sorry I couldn't help you sooner. The second you left my house my parents decided to go to yours to confront your dad but the door was wide open a-and they found you there, on the ground... with the blood..." Sarah trailed off as tears began to fall from her eyes.

In a way this girl was like my guardian angel, she saved me. I probably would have died if it weren't for her.

Sadly that was that last time I had seen her. I moved away from town and was placed in the foster system, which really sucked. I was in a wheelchair, unable to walk for around 11 months, nearly paralyzed from the neck down. There was severe damage to my spinal cord and nerves which just made foster parents want to get rid of me even sooner. It must have been really hard to take care of me. I was disabled, depressed, and broken, inside and out.

I was always mature from my age, which I am sure can be attributed to my deadbeat father. I've hated myself since I was seven, and I've had to provide for myself since I was seven, all while dealing with more trauma then you even think.

Because of all this, I think my outlook on the world was realistic, too realistic. I didn't have those fantasies like the other kids about finding true love, becoming a prince, wanting to be an astronaut, or someone famous. More than anything I knew how cruel and disgusting the world was and wanted nothing to do with it.

My first year in the foster system wasn't too bad. I was only in two homes, the first one had a young couple, but they weren't prepared to take care of me and all the issues that came as a package deal. Then I was placed in a home with an old married couple. They were very nice to me and helped me through a lot, but they were too old and I had to switch homes again.

After a year in the system, I had made a lot of improvement with my physical therapy and could walk with crutches. But once I didn't need the crutches anymore the pity was gone. I moved houses every couple of months with the occasional house that only lasted a week.

After everything I had been through, the abuse, the depression, the guilt, the lack of any form of affection or love, I began to cause trouble. I started fighting in school. I was continuously kicked out of foster home after foster home, and after a couple years of that, I decided it would just be easier to live on my own, settle down somewhere and actually not be the new kid for once. When I was 14, a freshman in high school, I found work doing various odd jobs here and there, I rented out a little studio apartment for myself, somehow got social services to let me get emancipated, and have been on my own since.

And that's part of the story that has led me to where I am today.

-----------

I snapped out of memory lane. I turned around to face Lucas, my jaw clenched. The tension was clearly visible in my face, my eyes glaring at him. My hands in tight fists at my sides, trying my best not to kill the closest thing to me, which at the moment was Lucas. He didn't do anything wrong, there was to reason for him to be the person I let all my problems out on.

He took the hint and withdrew his hand, not asking any questions.

I looked at him straight into his bright green eyes that held a concerned yet questioning glance, without saying a word I shoved my way past him, walking out of the room after throwing on a black shirt. I let the door close behind me. I rubbed my hands over my face and through my hair.

Anger and hate filled me. This was the worst time to think about and remember all the shit I had been through.

I turned around and punched the wall. Letting out a loud grunt I continued to punch the wall. I hit it over and over and over again until there was a giant crater where my fist had connected. My hand was bloody and bruised. But it didn't hurt, something as small as this is nothing compared to what I've experienced before, to the pain I have felt.

I needed to stay focused, to remember my goal. I have to win this, It's the only way I will ever be able to find him.

My life has been a living hell, and I'm out for revenge.