Determination

Hailey closed her locker, placing one of her arms through a strap of her book bag. Without looking at the people around her she made her way out of the school building, going unnoticed by her fellow students.

It wasn’t unusual for her to have no one notice her; in fact, if someone did she’d be shocked. Most of her days were spent alone, for she had no one in this world. Her mother—or at least, so her birth certificate claimed—hadn’t been one to stay in a place for long, moving to a new man and a new town every few months. The longest Hailey could ever remember being in one place was back when she was thirteen, and Elizabeth had found what she believed was a keeper. For almost a year Hailey and her mother lived with the man, until he beat Elizabeth within an inch of her life.

Since then, the stays in towns grew shorter, and the string of men longer. Now, it was just Hailey in a rather larger house while her mother traveled the world. It had been like this for about four months, and only one of these had Hailey been in school so far.

Her only actual family member had left, and Hailey had never been good with people. So every day she walked the halls alone, and every night she went back to an empty house, with only her secrets for company. The secrets that Hailey planned to carry to her grave. The secrets that haunted her every single second of every single day.

***

In the quiet of her house that night, Hailey curled into a ball. She wasn't crying, but that was something else that wasn’t new.

Hailey didn’t cry, not ever. According to Elizabeth, even as a baby she hadn’t cried. Not once. So no matter how torn up she was, she did not cry. In a book she had read years ago, by a man using the name Lemony Snicket, it had talked about how a good cry could make you feel better, even though nothing had changed. But sadly, Hailey didn’t have that. She had something, but that was one of her secrets. And her secrets were things she was determined to keep.