I remember on my seventh birthday, my last year of freedom before I started school, my single present- because unless you live in the Higher Sectors you only get one present on your birthday- was a knife. It wasn't a big knife, but it was big enough to cause a lot of damage if I were to throw it at a person and actually hit them. The knife was large enough that my tiny hand couldn't fully wrap around it, but it was small enough that it fit into my winter coat pocket. I carried it everywhere, to my private tutoring lessons that my caretaker always made me go to, I never understood why, all of the other kids didn't have to start learning until they turned eight, and to the store when my caretaker would take me, and to the park the two times I went every month. My caretaker didn't like taking me out in public, I never understood why, but I also never questioned it. No one else gave me the odd look that she gave me, it was like she knew something that no one else in Sector Thirteen knew. Sometimes she made me feel like I was the worst person in the world, just for breathing. Sometimes she would punish me just for looking at her, or for getting an extra glass of water at night before I went to bed because I had already finished my first glass. She wasn't always mean to me, but every night, at least once, I was punished for something, and I knew that it wasn't a normal form of punishment, but I never said anything, because speaking out of turn and talking back to a caretaker was a serious offense and it could mean I would get a punishment that was a lot worst than what she gave to me.

I never understood why she did this, at least I didn't until my eighth birthday. My eighth birthday was supposed to signify my freedom, or at least a little bit of it, I was supposed to be able to go to school and learn more than what my tutor was already teaching me, I was supposed to get a job and start learning responsibility. Instead, on the morning of my eighth birthday, after I had fully dressed and bathed and prepared myself to start school, I was beaten. It wasn't like I wasn't used to it, a week wasn't to go by without at least one beating, but this was different. It was more painful, it was like I was being torn apart and then sewn together and then torn apart again, and it didn't stop after a few punches and slaps, it went on to kicks and tosses, it went on to my head slamming into different things and I'm pretty sure something was digging into my back. I couldn't see, she had went for my eyes first, punched them so hard that they were swollen shut, it was so painful and terrifying and it felt like it was never going to end.

It did, though, and when it did something completely different started. First it was the pain, everything was still and calm and then there was this awful pain that tore through my entire body, it made me want to scream and puke and it felt as if my entire body was convulsing. Then the words came, those awful words that would haunt me for the rest of my life. "You are worthless, you aren't worth this. You are unworthy of love, you don't deserve it. You are stupid, and helpless, and you would be better off dead. You should never have been born, you stupid, stupid little girl." Then the door slammed and I knew I was left alone, lying on a floor somewhere in my home, I don't know what room I'm in, and I don't know if someone will come to help, all I know is that the pain from the beating, and the pain from the words were mixing together and, somehow, being dead didn't seem like such a bad idea.