My life is the worst.
Firstly, I have to be in the most horrible orphanage the world has to offer.
When you hear that you might think – oh, its old and disgusting and basically a medieval dungeon right? You might think I’m sure it’s not that bad… or you might be wondering how I ended up in an orphanage in the first place.
That’s what the kids at school say when I tell them. That, or they ignore me or throw sandwiches at my head.
 My orphanage is not old – it’s brand new and modern, with pristine white corridors and neat bunk beds and cleaners who must’ve been hired especially because everything is always completely spotless. If I leave fingerprints on a doorhandle, they’ll be gone by the time I go back through the door again. I’ve done experiments.
The whole place smells like cleaning products. It’s not homey, or cosy, or particularly welcoming. If you visited, you definitely wouldn’t expect kids to be living there. You might think it a hospital or an office building or a sort of laboratory if it weren’t for the big sign out front which says:  BRENTLY STREET ORPHANGE in big capital letters.
The security system is ace – flashy touchpads, electronic locks, bullet proof glass in the windows. It’s a prison for parentless kids. It’s a new government thing, they decided they would trap some orphans in a fiberglass box and make us take extra curriculum activities so that we won’t end up working in chicken shops and instead we would grow up to be useful members of society.
I didn’t plan on being a useful member of society.
Sure, they feed us, water us, give us a place to sleep and wash, but still, most of the time the food is horrid and bland, the beds are like rocks, and the showers in our dorm don’t use hot water.
Plus, they won’t replace my prosthetic leg even though I keep telling them it’s past it.
The carers don’t like me – maybe because I was born without my left leg, which is why the schoolkids don’t like me – maybe because I insist they label me as They and won’t take no for an answer – maybe because all the cute little kids like me better than them, which I’m not completely chuffed about either – maybe because my mum, when she was alive, was the local weirdo. Everyone says she was insane, and the rumour is that I’ve inherited her insane genes.
I don’t know what their problem is, but I do know that the feeling is mutual.

Every morning I wake up surrounded by starchy sheets with the chatter of the younger more optimistic kids ringing in my ears. Every meal we sit at the rows of white-washed desks waiting for a plate of synthesised food to appear from the chute in the wall. Every bedtime the other kids beg me to tell them a story, but every time I refuse, and send them to bed sad. When I first came into the orphanage I told stories, but not anymore. Sometimes I love how they never give up, sometimes I hate how they nag, but I never give in. There are no more stories left to tell.
The other kids are either the best or the worst thing about the orphanage. They play and laugh and somehow find their own fun and try to drag me into it.
I’m the eldest in the program, at my 14 years. Most of the kids are younger than ten or eleven, the smallest are no more than five. I’m not sure why that is, but it just is.
This morning is no different. Starchy, scratchy, uncomfortable bed. Several of the younger kids arguing over a way-too-early morning game of floor is lava. Sun glaring in through the slithers of glass near the roof.
I glare at the annoyingly spotless white ceiling wishing I could go back to sleep. I had been dreaming about my mum.
Yes, I know, my mum, who’s dead, how sad. Now shut up about it because whatever vision you’re imagining, it was nothing like that. In my dream, my mum was sitting alone on the edge of the curb in front of the orphanage. Her face was filled with the worry lines I remember from the time my father was dying.  My mother stretched her jean-clad legs out onto the road. She brushed her long dark swaying hair from her face, hair that resembled mine in everything but length, and hummed a tune.
In the dream I walked over to my mother. Both legs functional, no creaking extra limb carrying half my weight. I sat down next to her, putting both my legs out onto the street. My left leg was clean, no cut above my knee, just smooth golden skin all the way down to my socks.
“Be careful,” I told mum.
“I am,” she replied with a laugh. “You are the one who must be careful.”
An ambulance raced up the road, sirens blaring, lights flashing, calling: ‘Emergency! Get out of the way!’
We didn’t listen to the sirens. The vehicle rushed past, right over our outstretched legs, slicing them from the waist down, leaving mangled flesh and bloodied fabric and long sharp skewer bones.
My mother laughed as the sound of the ambulance faded.

That was my dream. Lovely, I know.
I had still been pondering it when the sun woke me up.
I’m not used to unusual dreams. I’ve had the occasional nightmare, sure, but when I dream, I always forget the details. This dream was strangely vivid.
There’s yelling from the kids. One, a feisty little seven-year-old girl with a shock of dark messy curls, is yelling insults at a slightly neater, older boy, who’s gesturing all around the place.
“Gunk face!” The girl, Rey, is yelling. “You… you ugly death-breathed slime hog! This is my game! Don’t ruin it! You can’t play anymore! Because you ruin it with your stupid donkey-brained rules!”
The boy bristled. “I’m just saying, it would be more fun if–”
“Dylan, we like it better if you don’t make rules.” Another little boy interrupted, in an attempt to keep both children calm. He’s one of the better-behaved younger orphans. His official name is Benjamin, but everyone calls him Beanie.
“But you don’t understand–” Dylan starts again.
“Shut it, Snot-hugger.”
I had to admit, Rey was super creative with the insults. But really, I don’t like arguing this early in the morning. I don’t try to stop them. I don’t want to get caught up in petty things like that. But I do not want to be here when one of them blows up, so I hurriedly get up, attach my old sticker-covered prosthetic leg, and start getting ready for school. Once I’m dressed I pull my special dusty pink raincoat from where its hanging on my bedframe – the coat I wear everywhere – no matter how hot it is, or how dirty I might get it, or how much kids laugh at it.
My stuff is kept in a backpack at the foot of my bed. Everything is prepared as if I might escape this place any second, so that I can grab it and run if a tunnel pops out of the ground. I already have plans. I’ll find somewhere else to stay, or I’ll be homeless, and get a well-paying job, just until I have enough money to leave the country. Then I’m off. To where, I don’t know. Maybe to my mother’s home country, maybe to Europe, or maybe to somewhere else. Either way, the sooner I’m free from this place, the better.
For now, my bag sits stationary. Inviting me to sling it over my shoulder. Daunting me with my own dream.
I can’t help wondering if it will be difficult to travel the world with only a half-working leg.
I take my black school shoulder bag from its hook next to the door. The orphanage provides them and all the things inside – my stationary, textbooks and laptop along with a plastic lunchbox packed with healthy snacks. Then, I tap, only slightly forcefully, on the glass sliding door until the security guard shows up. Luckily, it’s not one of the horrible grunty ones, most of whom have already marked me off as trouble and won’t talk to me except to yell at me to stay in my place and not to even think about it. It, in this situation, I think means ‘escaping’ to which I always reply, ‘too late!’
Besides, I wouldn’t be thinking about escaping if this place wasn’t set out like a prison. People who know they are trapped want to escape. Simple logic.
The guard today’s name is Jaz. Her name badge says Jasmine, but when I first met her, she told me it was Jaz or nothing. Now, of course, I call her Nothing.
Jaz is nice. A lot nicer than the others. While the others think I must have Loki’s silver tongue and if they so much as say Hi I’ll persuade them to let me out. I know this is true because I heard one of them saying so. I guess they think Jaz is under my spell.
She didn’t unlock the door, but we could talk through the glass.
“Hello, Trouble.” Jaz said in her rough treebark voice.
“Hey, Nothing. How’s it going?” I replied, leaning on the wall. 
“Oh, you know what it’s like.” She smiled gruffly.
I nodded, even though I wasn’t sure I did know what it’s like. “The kids are bothering me again,” I gestured at them yelling and fighting behind me. “Can you finally tell me why I’m bunched in with them instead of with others my age?”
The guard shrugged. “They have their reasons, I’m sure.”
“So you don’t actually know?”
“Never said that.”
“So you do know, and you won’t tell me.” I raised an eyebrow.
“Never said that either. Why don’t you run back and stick your head under a pillow or something instead of talking to the security people?”
“School.” I said, quite convincingly.
“School doesn’t start yet.” She responded.
“But I’m going early. To, uh, go to the library? And I need you to let me out.”
“The school bus isn’t here yet. You’ll have to walk.” I see her looking pointedly at my conked leg, which admittedly will be hard to walk with, but I ignore it.
“Don’t worry,” I said, “I know the best way there. The scenic route if you will.”
She licked her lips, her brow furrowed, and I worried she wasn’t going to let me go, but soon enough there’s the ding-click of the door unlocking, and the glass slides across. “Go on then, kid.” She said, tucking her security key card back in her pocket.
“You’re not going to ask?” I grinned.
“I don’t think I want to know.” She replied. She points me through the corridor. “Now hurry up and go before I change my mind.”
“Thanks, Nothing!” I gave her a cocky grin, swung my black bag over my shoulder, and walked down the white hall, waving a hand at the security guard. She didn’t wave back. She just shook her head like she just couldn’t believe she had let a crazy teenage orphan out of their safe padded cage.
But she knew me too well. She figured I wouldn’t actually cause any trouble. Or get into it.
How wrong she was.
I sneak out of the entrance room, past the secretary, who’s playing video games on his phone, and skip down the concreate street in the opposite direction to school. It’s just little detour. No one will miss me.
Just one teeny tiny detour. That’s what I thought. Several blocks down in the wrong direction, I’ll easily be able to get to school in time. No problems.
If only it had been that easy.

The cemetery is next to the beach, and the salt pollutes the smell of dampness and filled-in dirt.
Tall Norfolk pines line the roads, thriving in the sandy earth, and leaving branches along the paths. Seabird calls sound above the roar of nearby traffic, and the silence of being alone and alive in a place inhabited by the dead.
We used to live on the shorefront. We had a unit in a two-story white brick building. We shared walls with four other people: the old lady with her dog who no one ever visited, a busy family full of loud rowdy teenagers who all owned bumped up second-hand cars, and that baby and his dad, and a young couple I’d barely ever seen.
Then there was me and mum and dad.
Now, as I look down at them, side by side, their gravestones sticking out of the earth with their names etched neatly in the rock, their bodies buried and disintegrating, leaving me here above ground to imagine them falling away into nothing again.
I sit on the ground, rather awkwardly, because of my leg, and lean my head on my mother’s gravestone.
I can see the ocean through a gap in the trees and buildings. The view really is spectacular. Morning sunlight glitters on flakes of waves, reflecting from fishing boats to white water foam to seagulls circling in the sky, lightning up the world in an array of pastel colour.
I imagine – no, remember, – the feeling of water on my skin, smooth as silk, bending and twisting through wave after wave, the weird weight of it as it kept me afloat. The darkness beneath me just out of reach. The water and the strength of my own muscles the only thing keeping me from sinking.
Sinking to my doom.
I swallow and gasp and trace the letters of my mum’s name.
Waves chop on the blue shimmering blanket of water. Seagulls squawked and dipped in the clouds. Leaves turn in the whipping ocean wind.
The world is quiet, but not so quiet you’d notice the absence of noise. I pulled grass from the ground and ripped it apart and scattered it around like biodegradable green confetti.
After a few more seconds sitting and trying not to think, I got up shakily, and headed down to the beach.
This way is the quickest to my school from the cemetery, without having to limp across busy roads or bustling crowds.
Plus, it’s got a nice view.
The view I always used to wake up to outside my window.
Not that I enjoyed getting nostalgia.
The beach was empty, the sun was just dawning over the horizon, the waves were smooth and salt-smelling, lapping against the beach with a soothing roaring sound. The sand shifted beneath my feet, both real flesh and fibreglass, daring to knock me unsteady.
Then, a voice. One I recognize immediately as a boy from school called Dee,
Dee and his fellow jocks had been at me ever since we met. They are by far the most annoying students in school. Wait, scratch that. They’re second most annoying, after Juliette, the popular girl, who thought Dee was her Romeo and was always being snobbish at people and telling me I have a horrible fashion sense.
Dee and his gang were walking on the other side of the dunes, along the railing that separated the concreate from the beach. They couldn’t see me, and I couldn’t see them, but I could hear them loud and clear.
“They’ll be here. I thought I told you I’d seen them here before.”
“You mean Cereal comes here every day?” Dee’s right-hand man – or rather, boy, was saying.
Cereal. Because the stupid kids once tipped a bowl of the stuff on my head. “To do what?”
“My bet is Cereal’s looking for a magic genie in the sand. I mean, you can see why someone like them would want three wishes.” He put on a high voice that didn’t sound anything like me, “‘I wish people thought I was cool, and that my parents would come back for me, and that my little pink riding hood would stop smelling like fish!’”
The others started laughing.
“They’re probably just going to school, you know…” One voice mumbled.
“Oh shut it, Fredrick.”
They walked down a path onto the sand, just before the concrete sloped dramatically upwards over a short rocky cliff face dotted with caves and ravines, turning the corner to find me standing there facing them, arms crossed over my chest, my pink hood up to cover as much of my face as possible. Dee didn’t seem surprised I was there, but the other jocks glanced beautiful looks of horror at the sight of me.
 The others seem the slightest bit scared of me. Though I don’t fully understand why, I enjoy it.
“Well, look who it is! Cereal! Getting sand in your fake limb again? That’s a pity.” Dee talked so fast there was no time to intervene with witty comebacks. “We wondered where you’d got to. No matter how many roads we tried to ambush you on, you just weren’t there. Apparently, you take the scenic route.” He smirked. “Luckily, Jackie saw you sobbing over your poor mothers grave a couple of days ago, and this time we followed you here.”
The offending Jackie shrugged and gave me a lopsided grin. She was the only girl in Dees gang, and the wildest kid out of them all.
“Would you just buzz off already,” I murmured. I already knew there was no point, but I couldn’t stop my mouth from moving.
“So, Cereal, you looking for a genie? I’ll tell you for free that you don’t find magic lanterns on beaches.” Another of Dees goons said, advancing towards me.
“Nooo.” Dee agreed, “You find them in caves. Spooky, eh?” He laughed. I knew exactly what he was talking about. There was a dark hollow tunnel in the rocky cliff overlooking the beach not far along.
I had lived here, after all. I knew every nook and cranny after years of exploring out of boredom.
The goons laughed.
“Go on,” Jackie insisted. “Don’t you wanna got your wishes, Cereal?”
“You know, you really need your grammar checked –”
“I heard when the tide comes in the cave floods. Wouldn’t it be nice if you got drowned inside it.” Dee sent me one of his winning smiles. “You might finally meet your parents.”
I scowled in return. “You wish, Champ.”
“Then what are you waiting for, Aladdin?” Dee stepped up. “Find your wishes, before I wish you gone.”
He shoved me with both hands. I was, unfortunately, small enough to be sent flying by the force of his push. I had no chance against any of them, I had learnt that the hard way.
Although, I did miraculously have the strength to find my feet before I fell over disgracefully in the dust.
“Or are you too chicken?” Dee went on, a horrible smirk on his face, coming towards me again. “Scared of the dark, are we now Cereal? Scared you’ll meet the same sticky end as your poor departed mama?” He pushed me again, to another round of cheers from the others.
“I don’t want a fight–” I breathed out.
He slammed me against the rocky wall. My head felt like it had shattered on impact with the cliff. I could tell it was bleeding. My vision swam, for a second I felt like I was underwater, sinking down, down, down...
“Well, you got one, Cereal.” His voice was faintly muffled. He grabbed me forcefully and hoisted my struggling form into the dark tunnel in the cliff, plonking me feet-first into the ground like I was a sack of oranges.
I gasped for air. I couldn’t see clearly, couldn’t stand. I tried to lean against the wall, but my leg fell under me, sending me tumbling into the gritty sand and rocks. I shifted my weight around to face my bully in the tunnel entrance. Dee was laughing, though his face was growing blurrier, and dark spots where beginning to decorate the surface of my eyes. The cave shook dangerously. Either my concussion was getting worse, or the cave roof above was moving.
Pieces of rubble began to fall. There was a scrambling, and then a thumping from above. Someone, probably Jackie, was jumping on top of the cave. Larger rocks fell, and I realised far too late what was happening. I felt sound pass my lips in panic, and I struggled to get out of the way of the avalanche. The whole entrance caved in with a crash, and a flare of dust and sand.
I was trapped.
Cue panic attack.
Voices sounded from outside. Jackie was yelling in pain. Someone asked if she was alright. Someone made a snarky comment and laughed at his own cleverness. Others yelped in panic and asked if they should call an ambulance. I didn’t think they wanted to help me, though. (‘Hello? We’ve… uh… accidently hit our lovely friend Cereal with the roof of a cave. We need help, stat!’) Presumably Jackie had been injured after collapsing a cave on top of my head. I hoped it was fatal, or at least worthy of a few amputated limbs. Dee’s loud obnoxious laugh was louder that any of those still. It infected itself into my disorientated brain like a worm to an apple.
“You wait!” I yelled through the wall of stone, “You just wait till I get you,”
The jocks just laughed harder, mocking me even more.
How could anyone have the guts to laugh after locking their victim in a cave? Even for Dee, this was a new low.
“So, we’re just going to leave them in there?” One of his goons asked, perhaps a little nervously.
“Yeah! Don’t worry, there’s another way out. Maybe. And if Cereal can’t find his way out–”
“Their. I-it’s their.” Whoever he was, he had just earned the title of Sydney’s Favourite Jock.
“Whatever. If they do die in there, I’m sure the school will just assume it’s an accident. Or something else. They should know what orphan kids like Cereal are like.”
I had just enough time to imagine Dee’s head was somewhere other than on top of his neck before the voices were drowned out by another wave of laughter.