2016 – She sat impatiently on the edge of the metal grey fold up chair attempting to catch a loose strand of strawberry-blonde hair that caught the passing breeze. It was a typical hot Florida summer afternoon and the lack of shadows across the field left the bridge of her nose dewy with a layer of sweat. One more glance at her cell phone showed the time had only passed by a few minutes. She nibbled nervously on her lower lip, a habit formed since childhood. It was graduation day – the accumulation of 30 years of life that came down to this very day. She breathed in a slow methodical way attempting to relax her anxiety and locked her eyes upon some unknown distance, drowning out the commencement speaker.

1997 – Nessie and her little brother opened their eyes and focused in on the spiderwebs that were haphazardly displayed on the ceiling of their special little tree house. She listened intently on the screaming coming from inside the pink little house that stood like a foreboding omen on the corner of a dead end street. Her little brother, Charlie, turned onto his side and grabbed her hand tightly. She rolled over too and their eyes met. His boyish brown eyes were filled with tears and fear, his gap-toothed smile was missing. “It’s ok Charlie,” she said to comfort her little brother, “I’m here and we’re together.” She wiped away his tears and made fun of the freckles that speckled his face. Charlie was five years old, his best friend was his sister (and the black puppy that they found helpless in the woods). Nessie was the oldest of the siblings, 12 to be exact, and Charlie had never dreamed of a hero that didn’t have green eyes and messy strawberry-blonde hair.

They were laying in the tree house amusing themselves with whispered games of tongue twisters when the sound of the front door to the pink house being swung open reached them. Charlie and Nessie both shuddered and held tight their intertwined hands. “WHERE THE FUCK ARE YOU LITTLE FUCKING CUNT?!” Her stepdad viciously shoved his way into the tree house as Charlie cowered into a corner and wrenched apart the siblings hands. To her eyes, Randall looked murderous, but by twelve years old, this was nothing new to Nessie. “YOU THINK YOU CAN FUCKING HIDE FROM ME?! YOU’LL NEVER BE ANYWHERE THAT I CAN’T FIND YOU, YOU UNDERSTAND!?” He grasped her tiny arm into his rough red hands and dragged her out of the temporary sanctuary, slamming her face into a loose board in the process. Rushing up the stairs to the house, unable to catch her feet under her body, her heart fluttered in her chest wondering what she would experience this time, wondering if her mother was alive, wondering if this was her last moment with her little brother. Randall shoved into the house drunkenly, red-faced, breaking whatever dared ventured into his path of destruction.

She caught a glimpse of her mother near one end of the tattered couch, limped over and sobbing silently, her head in her hands. Randall shoved Nessie into a wall in the kitchen and screamed, “You see this? THIS is what I do because of YOU. YOU MAKE ME LIKE THIS.” She bit her lower lip hard to prevent the tears from falling and looked off into the distance, her stepdad’s breath wreaked of alcohol and his face was so close to hers that she was being spit on with every angry word. “LOOK AT ME when I am talking to you!” “Yes, sir” she said as she locked eyes with a nightmare. He tried to run his red sausage fingers through her knotted long hair but the only feeling she experienced was pain as his fingers became tangled in the mess and worse when he tried to yank away. Randall stood up and grabbed a beer from the fridge and walked out of the house to entertain himself with another drunken night at the expense of the neighbor’s wife, who seemed always without her husband around.

After silence stretched a short span, Nessie ran over to her mother who had blood trickling down from her mouth and above her eye, where a gash had been opened. She managed to help her mother into the bedroom where she proceeded to crawl into a small closet. Nessie crawled in beside her with a towel to help clean her wounds and there they both cried together. The closet was her mother’s safe place. Her mother was petite at 5’1 with blue eyes and dyed platinum blonde hair that had not been washed in days. Nessie more days than not, felt that she took care of her mother far more than her mother took care of her. “You are my guardian angel” her mother would always respond between sobs. And to Nessie, that was a cape to compliment all heroes.