Page 59 of Collateral Damage

You’re my wonderwall. ~

Right now, nothing else in the world matters but this very moment. This normality. This happiness she’s trying to give me through acts of reluctantkindnessjust to make me smile. To show me she has a soft side that’s buried underneath all the rubble and dirt. The girl who longed for a simple life. A life better than this one.

She has no idea how ethereal she looks right now, tiger light slicing through her olive skin. Her fingers are singing a song I don't know but I don't care because it sounds phenomenal. To still be able to play this well when I know she hasn’t touched that guitar for years is astonishing. Her eyes are closed and I'm glad because water is trickling down my cold cheeks breaking down all my feelings.Happiness, sadness, guilt, contentment, it’s all rolled into one big mess as I sit here, staring at the woman who stole my life from me and gave me a new one. I’ve accepted that my life as it was, a life I'm clinging to, never will be.

This? This is now. This is real. I've come to grow quite fond of this new little world I'm trapped in, where we play stupid little CD’s, dance till the sun goes down and she plays me guitar to brighten up my face.

She is all I have left.

“Did you even know that song?” She laughs with amusement as my focus is completely in my thoughts, staring through her without realising, shaking myself out of it as the room goes quiet again.

“I didn’t. What’s it about?” She rests the guitar in her lap, the curve mounting her leg as she takes out her papers to roll a cigarette.

“The person you constantly find yourself thinking about.” She says she’s not the romantic type but if I’m not mistaken. Did she just play me aLovesong?

“It’s beautiful.” She won’t stop staring at me and I'm so flustered I'm about ready to have a cold shower. Everything shedoes surprises me when it shouldn't. She murders bad men for a living.

I've just never met anyone like her. She's a damaged engine that needs the right parts to bring her back to life.

??

We've spent the entire day going through some of her old things. Little heirlooms.I think she needed this as much as I did. I found one of her old high-school sweatshirts amongst some things she kept when she played for their soccer team.

CHICAGO

13

MOORE

She gave me it to wear. It smells of nostalgia. She told me lots of funny stories to try and cover up the pain she also endured during school. I know because we have that in common. She doesn’t have to tell me; I can see it in her eyes.

Low music accompanied us as we went through many CDs, giving the house some much needed life. And I've never seen her so,

Normal?

Lounging around the bungalow with just a white tank top on and black joggers, free from her second face that I'm still trying to get accustomed to and a few thick silver chains she never takes off. She looks like your typical teenager,if you ignore her age. Like a giant in a hobbit house as she walks around and her size still makes me nervous. I didn't even know it was possible for a woman to have such a bulky build. She could literally pass as a man and I don't know who should be more afraid of her.

Me or them.

There is something so humbling about a woman of her strength removing sickness from this world. Sickness that lies in power, cowards hiding behind screens and paper. The government. People like my father. I've had weeks to get my head around herworkand the more I think about it, the more I understand. She was let down by a system meant to protect her and as vengeance she's taken it upon herself to become their enemy,it makes perfect sense.

She opens the garage door, making her way outside to do something as I'm snuggled up on the couch and I almost leap out of my skin when a four-legged friend runs inside the garage door, meowing with aggressive neediness but Shep doesn’t seem at all phased, glaring at it from his bed.

“Oh my god! Hey kitty!” Where on earth did it come from? Hayden follows it back in and she doesn't look at all phased either.

“She must have known I had company.” She doesn’t take long to crawl towards me, rubbing herself up against my leg.

“Is she yours?”She never mentioned she had a cat?

“She's a stray. She comes and goes. Sometimes for months at a time.” That explains why I've never seen her before. It also explains the cat food I found under the sink considering she has adog.

“Does she have a name?” I run my fingers through her tough coat. She's a beautiful grey tabby with the eyes of a Disney princess.

“Whiskas.”Again with the originality.

“Really…Whiskas?” My judgement is oozing out of me.

“What?!... It looked like the box.” She's so simple it pains me. Sometimes I wonder if she was a man born into the wrong body.

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