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000. The Perfect Plan ▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃
MARA PASSED exactly twenty-one trees on her way to the police station. Five cherry-red cars drove by, and the temperature was slightly above average. Now, usually, the young girl didn't notice mere details such as those, but everything needed to be perfect. All had to be waterproof. Because if you went against a judge, you had to prepare for the worst.
Mara had a recording on her phone, the fresh bruises on her body as evidence, and she collected every single shard of the vases he had ever thrown at her. She anticipated this moment for months, looking forward to her future free of the malicious monster whose only connections to her were the blood pumping through her veins and the damning row of letters following her first name.
Frank Parish chose to leave his spot in Mara's tender heart; he did it fully consciously and therefore left a hole no one would ever fill. For the young child, a father wasn't someone she loved but a nightmare she feared.
"My name is Amara Parish," Mara repeated silently. She took a deep breath. "And my father is physically abusing me." Her friends didn't know what those words meant. They were pretty big for someone her age, yet for Mara, they were words she'd regularly heard tossed around the dinner table. Perhaps that made it even worse, the fact that her father sentenced people harshly for things he did daily.
Besides, Anastasia and Clark would not be able to imagine what they entailed, even if Mara put them simply. Both children had parents who truly cared for them, the ones that cut the edges of their bread slices and left little notes of love in their lunch boxes. The idea of them leaving bruises of disgust instead was too abstract for them to understand.
Mara knew she should feel happy about the fact, thankful that her friends didn't have to endure the same horrors her, and she was, but somewhere deep down, Mara also resented them. And the universe. Just practically everything.
Mara sat on the black, barely padded seats in the middle of the reception room, bouncing her knees up and down. There was a throbbing pain searing through her left shoulder, a consequence of her father slamming her against the wall in front of her bedroom the day before. She clenched her teeth, stopping herself from touching the purple spot. Only then, it occurred to her that she was allowed to massage it, care for it. The truth would be out either way.
A rush of exhilaration made her forget about every ache, planting hope in her newly found peace. Mara would soon live like her friends, have someone that cut the edges of her jelly sandwiches. A small smile found her lips and she observed the people around her.
There were all kinds of people. An old man reading the newspaper, a teenager typing on his phone, a curly-haired woman working on her laptop. At least half of the visitors had already stolen a glance at Mara earlier, the anxious little girl who kept eying every corner of the room.
