Scarred**ON HOLD**

Chapter Four

Jennifer’s POV:

As soon as Tanner had left, and the water was climbing in temperature I stripped off the clothes I’d been in for the past day or two.  I didn’t bother to put them into the hamper, simply trashed them.  There was no use in keeping them, they had been torn to near shreds, and a considerable amount of blood had been splatted onto them in blotches.

I felt the pain begin to set in, beginning at the top of my head and trickling down my spine, extending to every last inch of my body.  Quickly jumping into the shower, I had hoped that the heat and steam would clear my mind and allow me to take in all of the information and events that had happened in the past forty-eight hours.

Much to my surprise, by the time I shut the water off and stepped out of the shower, I was practically sobbing.  Tears flowing down my cheeks, choking on air, I tried desperately to pull myself together.  I held my breath for ten long seconds, then slowly let it out in an attempt to slow my galloping heart rate.

Once I was sure I wasn’t going to have a panic attack, I unlocked the bathroom door and made my way over to my dresser.  Pulling out my usual attire here in troop 216’s safe house; a black crew neck tee shirt, dark red, near maroon color army-style pants, and black combat boots.  It took me all of two minutes to yank on my uniform-like attire and walk back into the open bathroom.  I was careful of my open wounds now, and put some ointment on ones that I thought had the chance to become infected.  Then swiftly tied back my unnaturally colored red-silver hair into a high pony tail out of my face.  With one last glance in the mirror, I deemed myself presentable and exited the room, taking the stairs two at a time into the main room.

The conversations, the nonchalant chatter, the serious debates, everything stopped.  You could have heard each individual heart beat, each breath if you had listened close enough.  Twenty or so pairs of eyes were trained solely on me.  I reached the last step cautiously now,  these were people I had known since we were little kids, four or five years old.  Yet they now looked at me as if I were a foreign object, something to question, something you were unable to trust, and this hit me harder than anything else could have at this moment.  Setting my jaw I walked to the middle of the room, and they all parted as if I was also some new, higher authority.

“So, good news travels fast here I guess.”  I said sarcastically, not receiving the response I expected, or wanted.  Silence.  There had been too much of that lately.  I stood there awkwardly for a moment, not sure of myself, or what to do now.  They were all looking to me for answers, just as I was looking to them for my own answers now as well.  Before I could open my mouth and say something even stupider, I felt a slender hand go across my back and rest on my right shoulder.

“Alright, now that we all know who Jennifer really is, we know what to do.  We’ve been training for this, right everyone?” Delilah was beside me, talking to the mass before us now, instructing us all what our next steps were.  “There will be a sign up sheet.  Yes, you all have to sign up, but it doesn’t matter the order.  Each week one of you will work with her, teaching her what you can do, what she should be able to do by the end of the seven day period.  Am I making myself clear?”

There were silent nods now, as they all cleared the room to sign up for there “teaching week”  Delilah was not one to be reckoned with.  She had such soft physical, girly features to her, with long blonde hair, a smaller stature, and her odd fascination with the human world and their so-called celebrities.  Yet when she set out to do something, she was blazing a trail on a war path, and could put up quite a good fight on the battlefield, without ‘breaking a nail’ as she put it.

I slid to the ground now, “thank you Del,” I said, placing my head precariously in my hands.  I was pulled to my feet then and she stared at me, astonishment, and something of anger behind her eyes.