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They called her Bad Amber. It’s because there were four other girls named Amber in grades on either side of her. They wanted nothing to do with her.
Bad Amber punched a teacher in the balls when she was eight. She didn’t mean to tag him there but she just stuck her fist out and that’s where it ended up. She didn’t like the way he was talking to her.
Bad Amber looked forward to school because it was a break from the hell of the rest of her life. Losing herself in the acquisition of knowledge was a salve for her frenetic mind. She could lose herself in learning.
Her parents abused her. Her untamed mop stuck out like a straw-coloured dare. Her clothes were dirty and she bathed only when she was told to, which was rarely.
Bad Amber saw the world through a mind almost devoid of ego. She saw the world through filters of math, architecture, art, history, and chemistry. She named the base ingredients of the paint on the houses as she passed them. She could calculate how the struts on the front porch of that one house would hold the weight of eighteen heavy people but no more than that. She looked at the asphalt in the street and recalled the name of the inventor and his life story.
Her mind was a raging torrent of anything she’d taken from the libraries in town.
She wasn’t a victim of teasing or outright bullying. She was too weird for that. She was merely shunned.
Bad Amber turned thirteen in a November marked by bloody thighs and the worst beating of her life in the basement of one of her parent’s parties.
She went to the emergency room by herself and gave the doctor advice on his stitchwork as he sewed her up.
She stole a really thick coat from the cloakroom and hitch-hiked out of town to the big city.
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Bad Amber punched a teacher in the balls when she was eight. She didn’t mean to tag him there but she just stuck her fist out and that’s where it ended up. She didn’t like the way he was talking to her.
Bad Amber looked forward to school because it was a break from the hell of the rest of her life. Losing herself in the acquisition of knowledge was a salve for her frenetic mind. She could lose herself in learning.
Her parents abused her. Her untamed mop stuck out like a straw-coloured dare. Her clothes were dirty and she bathed only when she was told to, which was rarely.
Bad Amber saw the world through a mind almost devoid of ego. She saw the world through filters of math, architecture, art, history, and chemistry. She named the base ingredients of the paint on the houses as she passed them. She could calculate how the struts on the front porch of that one house would hold the weight of eighteen heavy people but no more than that. She looked at the asphalt in the street and recalled the name of the inventor and his life story.
Her mind was a raging torrent of anything she’d taken from the libraries in town.
She wasn’t a victim of teasing or outright bullying. She was too weird for that. She was merely shunned.
Bad Amber turned thirteen in a November marked by bloody thighs and the worst beating of her life in the basement of one of her parent’s parties.
She went to the emergency room by herself and gave the doctor advice on his stitchwork as he sewed her up.
She stole a really thick coat from the cloakroom and hitch-hiked out of town to the big city.
tags
