Perfectly Scarred

The Luck Will Run Out

Unfortunately, you cannot choose your family. It can take a lifetime to build up trust, family and friendship- it can take a second to make an enemy.

The Person I think I should be: Roseanne Park, daughter of Anne and Alexander, sister of Jisoo, and granddaughter of Ram. I should have recently finished my finals exams, been preparing for college, where I'd study Mathematics.

Today is my eighteenth birthday.

Today I should be celebrating with my family and closest friends. Dahee promised me to lend me a yacht for my big day as a personal gift. A gushing chocolate fountain on board for people to dip their marshmallows and strawberries. I imagine my friend Mina with a chocolate mustache and serious expression, rolling her eyes.

Dad and Grandpa should be trying to show off in front of my friends on the dance floor, with their body-popping.

I see my model mom standing out on deck in a loose floral summer dress, her long brown hair blowing in the freeze like there's a perfectly positioned wind machine. She'd be calm on the surface but all the time her mind racing, what needs to be better, who appears left out in the conversation.

I see Jisoo, her eye on it all, always on the corner, analyzing everything with a content, quiet smile, always watching and understanding everything better than anyone else. The keen observer that she is.

Then, I see myself. Overdosing on marshmallows and chocolate, eating every food on the table, running around with my friends, finishing bottles of wine, having the time of my life with the people who matter to me most.

Everything feels different now. I left perfection a long time ago.

I open my eyes and I'm back in Granddad's house. There's a store-bought cold apple tart in a foil tin sitting before me with a single candle in it.

There's a person I think I should be, though
I can't even dream about it properly without reality's interruption, and there's the person I really am now.

This girl, on the run but frozen still, staring at the cold apple tart. Neither granddad nor I are pretending things can continue like this. Granddad's real; there's no smoke and mirrors with him. He's looking at me sadly. He knows not to avoid the subject. Things are too serious for now.

We talk of a daily plan, and that plan changes daily. I have escaped my home, escaped my Whistleblower Carina, a guard of the Society, whose job is to monitor my every move and assure that I'm complying with Failure rules; and I'm now off the radar.
But the longer I stay here, the higher the chance I will eventually be found.

My mom told me to run two weeks ago, an urgent whispered command in my ear that still gives me goose bumps when I recall it.

Now that I'm off the radar, I'm officially a deviant.

I know I should be hiding somewhere else, somewhere safer, somewhere away from my family, but on this land, my granddad had the upper hand

At least, that was the theory. I don't think either of us thought the Whistleblowers would be so relentless in their search for me.

Since I have arrived in the farm, there have been countless searches. So far they've failed to uncover my hiding place, by they come again and again, and I know my luck will eventually run out.

Each time, the Whistleblowers come so close to my hiding place I can barely breathe. I hear their footsteps, sometimes their breaths, as I'm crammed, jammed, into spaces, above and below, sometimes in places so obvious the don't even look, sometimes so dangerous they wouldn't dare to look.