I was just a normal girl in the normal state of Kansas. Right where the rolling plains didn’t roll anymore, and the green grass was more like the color of straw. No matter how far you looked, you just saw the straight, flat plains staring back at you. Like I said, I was a normal girl in the normal state of Kansas. My hair was not too long, but not too short either. It was just normal length hair. My hair wasn’t dark brown, but not very light. Just normal brown hair, like milk chocolate. My hair wasn’t super curly, or straight. It was wavy all over like a wrinkled up blanket. My eyes were not bright blue, but they weren’t a deep blue either, they were just normal blue eyes, like an expensive denim jacket. My nose wasn’t too long, but not t0o stubby either. Just a normally formed nose like a right triangle with a curve at the edge. My eyes weren’t too far apart, but not to close either. My eye separation was like any other eye separation, a few inches from my nose. I ate peanut butter sandwiches. I sat on fences, dangling my feet. I painted pictures. I sang songs. I played in lakes and by the streams. I’m a normal girl from normal Kansas.

Despite what everyone thinks, even in Kansas, people have friends. And I had plenty of friends. Living on a farm, like everyone else at my school, I had personal passageways to go to their houses. It was mostly just jumping over the fence to get to the next house, but we made it seem like a spy movie. I know we are way too old to be acting like kids, but being in Kansas state as 16-year-olds, you are very different from the rest of the world. True, there are different people, there are those types of people who think they’re too cool to hang out with us, but honestly, we never cared. They acted as if everything was so boring. We were people in the state of Kansas, as boring as it gets, we needed some fun in our life, we didn’t need those bored kids to bore us out anymore.

It was just a normal day at school. I sat in my normal seat. The second row, the fifth seat from the left. It was a nice cozy area. It was a normal set up classroom, A normal chalkboard in the front and normal-sized windows to our left. There was a normal-sized bookcase in the back corner. There was a normal blank wall, with paint chipping away like a week old sunburn. A few normal drawings hung from the wall from the years before. The wall was the color of cardboard. Our desks were the color silver duct tape. Our chairs were the color of the light color of teal. I sat down, just as all the normal-looking kids filed in, groggy and uninterested, like any other school day. The same normal people sat next to me. The school day went on, like any normal school day. Math, science, English, history, farming, and running. We ate or normal lunch and played our normal games. We talked about normal things. We ended the day with a normal run and made our way to our normal homes. 

I came to my normal home later that day, and the first thing I saw was my normal mom frantically packing all our items in a small suitcase. She looked scared and very much in need of help. My mom looked nothing like me. Her hair was the color of corn and looked like it was just off the cover of the latest fashion magazine. Of course, here in Kansas, the newest edition of Vogue was from 2005. Her eyes were green and looked like corn husks. So, in a way, she could have been a real life corn cob. My dad was by the normal counter, his hands on his forehead, leaning forward, his elbows resting on the normal countertop, looking through papers and stuffing them in a small briefcase. He was built like a body-builder. He had thick black hair that looked like spaghetti, his eyes were brown. Brown like dirt. I walked in, my face filled with worry. I went to my dad, and shook his shoulders asking him what happened, he didn’t respond and just shook me off. I went to my mom, whose reaction was the same. I started to yell and scream, stomping my foot like a little girl, they still didn’t answer me. Then my mom looked at me.

“Pack the guns, Jessie,” she said and turned back down to pack. I mounted the guns off the wall and placed them carefully on our normal-looking rug. That’s when it happened. Two golden streaks came in through the window and hit my mom in her back. I turned to my dad and saw the same thing happen to him. His blood quickly spread across his back. It looked like a sped-up version of the overview of the path a tornado took. They both quickly fell to the ground and I looked in shock. Immediately after they fell, both my parent’s eyes glossed over, puddles of blood accumulated near them. My parents were murdered.

I shook my mom and then my dad. They weren’t dead. They couldn’t be gone, could they? Thoughts raced through my mind. Dead? DEAD? We were a family, they couldn’t leave me, it wasn’t fair. I pulled out the golden-colored bullets that were in my parents, almost hoping that it would reawaken them to life. Seeing that nothing was going to work I cried, and then turned to the only thing that made me forget my mishaps, running. I grabbed the bullets in my hand and ran. I ran past our little farm and the other little farms. I ran for what felt like hours. My parents were dead. Like dead as in never coming back. I was never going to have my mom see me graduate high school or college. My dad was never going to dance with me at my wedding and carry my children on his shoulder like he had done so many times with me. My parents wouldn’t be there when I moved into my first house, or when I gave birth. They weren’t going to tell me it was okay when I experienced my first heartbreak or when I finally was going to walk down that aisle. My dad wasn’t going to walk me down the aisle. My mom wasn’t going to be crying in the corner as I left. But, I was never going to have to leave, because they had left me first. And this was forever. That’s when it finally happened. I burst into tears in that small room I was going to have to live in from now on. I was never going to celebrate Christmas the same. I was never going to be able to ask my parents for help. I was never going to be able to see my parents sitting at the counter listening keenly at the radio, while I sat there and laughed. No one was going to make me a peanut butter sandwich.

I had gone farther than I ever had before. I ran as feeling washed over me. Remorse. Sadness. Grief. These feelings welled up inside of me as tears streamed down my face as I ran. I just ran and ran and ran. Running from the pain. Running from the truth. I ran until the sunset in the little place I used to call home. My heart was in my throat, pounding. My arms and legs were weak and felt like they were going to fall off. I felt like I was going to trip or throw-up or both. My heart was heavy, my head was spinning. My nose was stuffy. My eyes welled up with tears. No one loved me. No one cared for me. No one wanted me. No one felt sympathy for me. No one was going to be there for me. 

 Before I knew it, I was on the ground, in the middle of the street. I couldn’t feel my legs. I looked at my legs before I was unconscious. The last thing I saw was blood on my legs and three golden bullet casings.

I woke up with a window on my left. The bed was white. The sheets were white. The pillow was white. The walls were white. The monitor next to me was white with red beeping lights. A green zig-zagging line moved against a black monitor. A woman in a plain white collared shirt. She had a white skirt and a white hat on top of a neatly rested bun. She looked at me with a remorseful look on her face. She came over to me with her brown clipboard and pencil. She looked at the monitor and took down a few numbers. She looked at me with a bittersweet smile. 

“Get some rest honey, you need it,” she said. And as if she had put a spell on me, I slept, like the way you sleep after you come home from a busy day.

That’s what happened. At least, that’s what I told happened to the police. 

After the hospital, I was immediately released to the police. The police questioned me. I was staying at a nearby orphanage, just in case the killer was targeting me. But, I spent most of my time in the police station. Looking for possible contacts to take me in, trying to solve the mystery of my parent’s murder. They also answered a few of my questions. But they were pretty simple. Like where was I, how did I get here, and why was I here. I was still in Kansas, just a little north, I was brought to the hospital after a car hit me. Everything seemed like a distant dream to me and I wasn’t ready to accept reality.

It was late at night. I had just finished talking to the latest detective, who was trying to dissect my story. I had been released and was supposed to meet a police car upfront to escort me to the orphanage. As I was walking past the dark rooms of the police station, I overheard a voice, a male voice. It was coming from the only lightroom in the police station. I sneakily made my way over and leaned against a wall, grasping onto their words.

“Sir, what she says doesn’t add up. She said the bullets went through the window, but the glass wasn’t shattered. And, the father was shot in the side, not on the back.” a man desperately tried to get across.

“Detective, the girl went through a lot of trauma, Her fact may not be right, but it’s all we got. She is our only witness,” said a man with a more assertive voice.

“The only witness for the crime, yes, but there were other witnesses as well. A girl named Jane said that she was mad at her parents that day. And the gun her mother told her to take down. Well that was missing three bullets, and three bullets were shot and…” the detective tried to say.

“Well, detective, I will make sure to look into it, for now. Get some rest will you?” he replied just as he started to walk out of the office. I bolted toward the door, making my exit into the police car and out and away.

That night, I knew I had to think hard for what happened. If I didn’t, I would be a suspicious and unreliable witness. I had to think, and I had to think very, very hard.

That morning, I rushed to the police station, a new story in mind, I had remembered, almost everything.

I grabbed a detective and pulled them into a corner. I told them the whole story, how I remembered it.

“I was skipping my way home. My head high and a wide grin on my face. I turned right onto my farm and ran up the path that led to my brown wooden door with a curvy 12 on it. I took out a key my mom had given me. I unlocked the door quietly. I wanted to surprise my parents. I slowly locked the door. A brass knob with a gold shiny surface. I made my way to the rug. Bags scattered the floor. My parents were laughing on our mothy couch. 

“Hey, Jessie, can you get the guns down and put them on the rug. Your father said that there was a shooting range in Texas that he wants to go to,” she laughed and she turned back to my dad with happiness in her eyes. I took down the guns when I heard the door pushed down. All I heard was a thud. Then a person hit me on the back of my head. Just before I fell, I heard three bullets shot at my parents,” I said with tears in my eyes. I had remembered a memory I didn’t want to relive.

“Ma’am, thank you for your information. May I ask, why is this story different than your last one?” she asked.

“I guess I just had a different memory because I was so scared and I perceived it differently. But last night another memory resurfaced, and I think this one was real and true,” I said. I was thanked and I left. I had saved my skin.

That day, I stayed at the police station as calls were made. That night, before I left, I went past the door with light being emitted out of it.

“Sir! You have to listen to me! The hospital report doesn’t have anything about a bump on her head! And, the door wasn’t forced open! And, the fingerprints came back! Her fingerprints were on the gun’s trigger! Her story is not right!” he exclaimed.

“Listen, detective, I know her facts may not be exactly correct, but it’s the best we got as I said, she’s our only witness,” the man who seemed like the captain of the police station. 

“But, my evidence, it proves that…” he started to say.

“No detective, I can’t have anyone thinking that our prime witness is unreliable, especially her, if she thought that she might run away and then guess what? No story and we need a story to prove the murder. So, not a word, you understand?” I imagined him with a stern face staring right at the detective. In my little hiding spot, I could see the shadows of the two men dancing across the wall behind me. The captain was a short, pudgy man like a bean bag constraint to a very small space. The detective was a medium height man. I had talked to him a few times in the room. He was like an electrical wire hanging from signal towers. Bending in the direction of the wind. Right now, the wind was blowing directly towards his chest. His back curved making him look like a question mark. They danced across the wall like two pigeons fighting for a piece of bread crumbs. 

In my head, their words echoed. The detective was hot on my trail, but everyone else, they didn’t care, they thought I was innocent, which I was. I had to get the detective to believe me. Then, my perfect image wouldn’t be ruined. I had to think, think of a way to convince him that I was innocent. 

That night, at the orphanage, and inspector lady came. She looked at all of our conditions. The little kids were very excited. I turned to the boy I was standing next to. He was 17 and tall. He had dark hair and a mysterious looking grin on his face. His clothes were torn and tattered and his face looked like he had just come back from cleaning stables. He smelled like gasoline mixed with shampoo and his eyes were always were wild and amused. He was far from a normal guy you would see in Kansas. When the lady came and we all had to line up, I saw a hint of joy in his eyes before his eyes sunk. They weren’t wild or amused, just sad, like a little kid without their teddy bear. But instead of whining and crying, he stood there lost, like I had when I saw my parents' deaths. I knew that I had to give him a helping hand through whatever he was going through when he saw the lady inspecting our beds.

“Howdy! What seems to be the problem?” I asked. He looked at me like I was crazy, and at this point, with my parent’s dead, maybe I was. But I knew that I could help him, and I intended to try.

“Meaning, why the long face? It’s not like she has anything to take from you.” I asked in a dull tone. 

“You don’t know who this woman is?” he asked.

“Uhh, no? Should I?” I was confused and a bit scared at this point.

“That’s Mrs. Whisker. She decides if you can go to a home or not!” his eyes opened wide like he had just seen the ending of a plot twist full movie. 

“Meaning?” I asked.

“She adopts kids. She gives kids homes to live!” His hands waved over his head like a crazy man.

“Uhh, so why are you sad?” I questioned.

“Well, I’ve been here for 10 years, and she hasn’t adopted me and I don’t think she ever will,” he looked over his left shoulder. A small tear rolled down his eye. I had been here for a month, and I spent most of my time at the police station. But I knew I hated this place and I couldn’t even imagine what 10 years would do to a person. This place was even more boring than Kansas.

"Hey, listen, next year, you're an adult. You get to leave this place and explore the world. And if you can't stand it. Just run away. I did it and look how I ended up. I'm a blossoming beautiful child," I laughed. I was so mixed up being in a new place, away from my home, my friends, my little farm, away from school, away from my comfort zone, away from the truth.

A small smile lingered on the corners of his mouth. He looked at me.

"I'm Luca," he put his hand out to shake my hand. I shook his hand back. I knew this was the start of my first friendship in my new city.

The woman finished inspecting our beds and came over to our jumbled up mess which we called a line. 

“I have seen all I need to see and as a tradition, I shall choose one boy and one girl,” she said. Her voice was high-pitched and had a thick British accent. In a way she sounded like Professor McGonagall, “I believe in giving people a chance at a new life, a new opportunity at life. Every child deserves to fulfill their dreams and yada yada yada,” she didn’t say, “yada, yada, yada,” but she kept rambling on and on about how she was going to change someone’s life. I sat down and started to doze off when I suddenly felt a quick kick. Looking up, I saw that Luca had kicked me and was signaling me to stand up. I did, just as a police car pulled up to the orphanage. One of the workers there opened the door and the police walked in. 

“Sorry to interrupt, but we must take Miss Jessie to the police station,” the captain of the police department said. I saw Luca’s face light up when he saw the policemen. I knew exactly what I had to do.

“Hey Luca, wanna come?” I asked.

“Uhh, sure, actually it’s fine, it’s fine, you go, I’ll catch up later,” he said in a not very confident tone.

“Awww come on you baby,” I dragged him out of the room. I saw the face of the woman inspector and the policemen. But, I didn’t care, like so many times before. I have stopped caring. My parents were dead. Why should I care about anyone else?

We sat in the police car and drove to the station. It was like any ride to the police station. An eerie quietness. Except for Luca. He looked like a kid who had gotten his first lego set. Composed yet curious. Excited yet held-back. I laughed, this was going to be a fun trip. 

The police station was the same old. I went into a bunch of rooms, got asked questions. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary until I saw a chart. It was a chart in a room. This room was full of different symbols. In the corner, a sign said, “Dangerous gangs” and below that sign was a single symbol. The top of an eagle, like the American seal, with a bear’s head. There was also a lotus blooming from the center of the eagle body. But that’s not what caught my attention fully. Next to it was a chart, called, “Jessie’s case.” There were 3 different columns. One labeled, “Facts.” It listed all the facts of the case that was confirmed. The next column read, “Her words.” This had different parts of the story I told. And the last column was labeled, “Right or Wrong?” This just had if the words I said matched the facts. There were 20 rows, and the only one marked with a checkmark where the gun was placed.

I knew that I was found and they were going to arrest me, so I ran. I grabbed Luca and ran. I ran like I did from my house. I ran and ran and ran. 

“Where are we going?” Luca questioned before stopping suddenly.

“Luca, I--” I started to say.

“Hey, you go ahead, tell me the story later, I’ll catch up with you later ok,” he said it more like a statement than a question. He looked up at an imaginary sign. I looked around. We were at a dingy store at the end of an alleyway I must have made a turn at. I was about to tell Luca to come out so we could go back to the orphanage, but Luca walked towards the store.

“Where are you going?” I asked.

“Just go, Jessie, just go!” he yelled.

“Where are you going?” I asked, raising my voice.

“Listen to me, there’s not much time, you have to go!” his voice was deadly serious.

“No!”

“Just go!”

“No!”

“Yes!”

“No!”

“Yes!”

“No!”

“Yes!”

“No!”

“Fine! Hide ok!” he said.

“Okay… But what are you doing?” I asked.

“I didn’t want you to know it this way but, I--” he started to say before he pushed me into a bush, “Hide!” he yelled before a man with a big burly tattoo came in. The man stood 6 feet tall and looked like a typical motorcycle driver. The tattoo seemed very familiar. It was an eagle with a bear’s head. The eagle had a lotus in the middle of the eagle’s body. I tried to think. Where had I seen this? My thoughts were interrupted by the man talking.

“Show it to me,” the man said in a low voice. Luca pulled up the sleeve of his T-shirt and the same tattoo as the man was on his arm too.

“Did it work?” he asked. His voice was gruff.

“I--I had to leave before I could hear her final words, but I’m sure--” Luca kept stuttering. He looked nervous and scared of this man.

“Silence!” the man yelled, “You know you have to kill that woman! And you have failed to even be in the same room as her! You have 10 days! Kill Mrs. Whisker!” he bellowed before leaving. Luca looked scared, but so was I. Luca turned towards me. He was anxious. I got out of the bushes and just left. I couldn’t believe that my only friend was plotting to kill someone. I put my head down and walked very fast. Luca ran to catch up to me.

“Hey, hey, hey, so down! I know it sounds bad, but th-they’ll kill me if I don’t do this,” he grabbed my shoulder to stop me. I realized he was trying to be part of the dangerous gangs that were around here. He had the same tattoo as the one I saw in the police station. But I was fueled with anger, my blood boiling. My vision turned red and it was like steam was coming out of my ears. My heart was beating fast. Everything became blurry. Everything was so much louder. Heart beating faster and faster. Blood boiling. Skin burning. Can’t hear. Red. 

“MY PARENTS WERE MURDERED! AND YOU WANT TO KILL SOMEONE!” my anger had no limits. I was going to run. Run again, and again, and again. 

“Jessie, you don’t understand! They are going to kill me. I have to kill her, otherwise, they won’t accept me into the gang,” he tried to convince me to come to his side, but I was far from being convinced. I had to warn the woman. The woman who was going to get murdered.

“Listen, I can’t be friends with someone who has murder on their mind. You just want to be adopted so you can murder her, and I can’t let that happen. Hope you liked the police station because you’ll be seeing a lot of it!” I yelled as I ran. I ran like I did the day my parents were murdered. I thought about the police station, but they knew about my secret, and I was now an unreliable witness. I ran to the orphanage, the only place where I knew now was safe. It should have taken me 10 minutes to get back to the orphanage, but night fell, and I became lost. Lost, not like a little child in a store, but more. 

The feeling of betrayal coursed my veins. All feelings of happiness were no more. I felt backed up in a corner, with no place to go. No one to help me, no one to encourage me. The feeling in the pit of my stomach made me want to cry, but I was so much more than just sad. This is so much deeper. With no one around to help me with this feeling, I just sat and wondered what I did wrong. It was like I was facing the world, all by myself. It was just me, myself, and I. Just me talking to myself about what I could have possibly done wrong to have this feeling, to feel like nothing. The nothingness I felt and I couldn’t get out. It was like I was backed up into an alleyway, nobody, but myself is standing in my way. Because I had nobody. Nobody to care enough for me, nobody to love me. There is nobody to watch my back, nobody to talk to, and nobody to make me feel safe. It was just me. 

I cried and cried until my face felt dry and patchy. My face felt starched and stretched. The street lights flickered like a person blinking to get the dust out of their eyes. I made my way down the streets and finally reached the orphanage. I knocked on the door and Luca opened it. His eyes were red and puffy and his nose was stuffy. Instead of letting me pass, he hugged me. He hugged me like all my friends did and the way my mom and dad used to. 

"I told them I wasn't going to do it. In all my years here, no one has ever been nice to me and I need a friend like you. I'm sorry," he sniffled between words. But I was tired of his lies and I knew he was lying. From the way the gun pressed into my hip bone to the way his hand squeezed the back of my neck. But if he could lie, why couldn't I? 

"Ok. Love you too mate," I patted him on the back before hugging him tightly. 

"Come to the broom closet with me. We'll play a board game," he said as he released me.

"I have to do something first, nature calls!" I said running towards the bathroom. But justice called first.

In the little time I had listened to Mrs. Whisker, she had told me she was staying in the room next to the stairs that lead to the attic. I knocked on the door.

"Come in!" The woman said. I barged in.

"Luca! The boy! He's trying to kill you. You have to run away. He's part of a gang and is try to murder you! You can't adopt him, you have run away!" I yelled. Luca chose that exact moment to barge in. He had his gun pointed at Mrs. Whisker's heart.

"Jessie, I'm sorry you had to see this," he shot her. Mrs. Whisker fell to the ground, blood spread all over her. When I looked at him, my mouth open and eyes wide, he looked in pity.

"And I'm sorry I had to do this," he shot me in the side. A sharp pain hit me in the side. It hurt, I cried. I never felt so much physical pain. I fell to the ground. It was all over. Luca ran and my vision went blurry. In what felt like hours the police came and then everything went black.

I woke up in the hospital, a nurse next to me. She looked at me opened up eyes and tried to rush out of the door. But I told her to stop, she came back steadily. I told her to record what I was going to say next. 

“Ok,” she said, “here we go.”

“I was on one of the new computers we had at school. The first thing I thought of doing was searching up myself. I didn’t find anything about me on it. Then I searched up my parent’s names. That’s when I saw something which shook me to my core. They were part of some gang. They had gone to jail twice before they retired. And what was even more shocking was that I found out that I might even be their daughter. There was an unfinished case where 2 people were found dead and their newborn child was also missing. There was security footage showing what I thought were my parents murdering the other couple and taking their newborn kid. The kid looked like me when I was younger. Putting the two together I realized my parents were murdered by these people I lived with and then they stolen me and moved far away from the place they were and raised me in the middle of nowhere. Where no one would know who they are. They made a fake family name, family history and all that. No one knew who they were in that place.

They raised me. Just like all the other kids and made the family seem perfectly normal, but I knew their secret. Their dirty, dirty little secret. I searched up the name of the gang they were part of and they were found in Texas, their last sighting was close to where my parents were taking me. 

I was scared. Were they going to murder me? So when I got home and saw my fake mom and dad packing. I took down the gun and shot them. I shot my mom twice and my dad once. I looked through the whole house for my birth certificate or an indication that my parents' gang life. The only thing I found was my birth certificate. And that’s when I was met with another surprise. These people’s names were on my birth certificate. Their names were on my birth certificate. They were my real parents! Meaning, I had just killed my parents. Who raised me. Who took care of me. Who loved me. There was also a small note that said something like, ‘Jessie if you find this, you know the truth about us. When you were born, we left the life of the gang. Then, one day you were kidnapped from us, and we went on one last mission. We found the people who kidnapped you and murdered them. Maybe we shouldn’t have, but we did. And we know this was partly because of our past. Our murders and more murders. We never wanted to raise you to like one of us. Irrational. We moved to a secluded area, in the middle of nowhere and raised you. We love you. Mom and Dad.’ 

I cried I had killed my parents. My parents had given up their money-making life for me. They had moved to the most boring place ever just for me. I went downstairs and took out the bullets in my parent’s body and then I ran. Like any teenager with problems, I ran, and ran, and ran. I got hit by a car and the three golden bullets that were in my hand were released and then I came to the hospital and then the police station. Then I met Luca, and he was part of a gang as well. I guess I attract gang members. He shot me and now I’m going to die.” I finished my statement.

“No, no, nononono. We can save you! Just-- hold on. Doctor! Doctor!” she yelled.

“It’s too late. It’s ok, I have lived 16 great years and now, I’m going to leave this Earth. Goodbye to anyone who ever loved or cared for me, know that I died peacefully knowing that my life was complete. I got out of that little town in Kansas and saw the world as it is. And that I thank anyone who brought me to this place here. Thank you,” The last thing I saw was the nurse lady click the button to end the recording. I died knowing my life was complete, and that’s all I needed. To see the outside.