Royally Flushed

Wilmington Prep

I rolled my eyes.  I liked the idea of someone coming into my life that I could share adventures with, but I didn't want my family to approve, that would just mean one step closer to taking on a throne I never wanted. No, if I was to find a girl to be happy with, it wasn't going to be this new Spencer girl.

I would do everything I could to stay far, far away from her.

**********

~Malia~

The following week and a half consisted of paperwork, physical therapy, more paperwork, lab tests at the hospital, a few court hearings via video message about my legal guardian and some legal mumbo jumbo that I didn't bother understanding.

Most of my wounds had healed, but the bruises were still there and slowly fading, the ribs still fractured but they would heal in due time. The scars would never go away though, and that was the saddest part. Scattered across my body, there were many to choose from but the most chilling was the one where my step-father had held the broken bottle shard to the side of my neck, directly next to my carotid artery. I could pass that one off as an accident, maybe I was in a 'car wreck'.

The one on my cheek from the brass knuckles he'd used? That one was going to be a little harder to explain. Then there was the fact that I'd had three broken ribs and I still walked with a limp...Maybe I could say the car wreck was recent?

I groaned inwardly. If I wasn't going to be enough of a weirdo transferring in the middle of the school year, then there was no doubt I'd be treated like a leper after they saw how banged up I really was. I groaned inwardly, ready to be there already and to throw myself down onto my new, and hopefully comfy, bed.

"Ugh, how long is this plane ride anyway?" I asked Marissa, who I had come to affectionately refer to as Mar. She and I had grown close over those past two weeks, her showing me old pictures of my mom when they were younger and the fact that she loved her as fiercely as I did only strengthened our bond.

The hole in my heart from where I'd lost her started not to throb as much with her presence surrounding me, and if I squinted my eyes just a bit it was almost like I had my mom back.

The stuffy, freezing cold stale air of the cabin in the airplane was eating away at the calm atmosphere around me and I was starting to get restless.

"Just try to sleep, only seven more hours to go," she joked and I groaned, hitting my head against the seat rest.

Obviously I wouldn't be getting any sleep in mid afternoon, so I decided to pick up a tabloid from England in the mesh pocket of the seat in front of me.

Just as I was about to find the cover story about a playboy prince in some fancy boarding school, the stewardess announced that it was okay to turn our electronic devices back on and I almost thanked god out loud.

Putting the boring magazine back, I grabbed my phone and googled the differences in schooling in England and the US.

Everything. Everything was different. I groaned again and then went to my old photos. I scrolled through all of the crappy selfies, all of the screenshots of funny pictures, past the old pictures of me with my mom and settled on looking at the pictures of Daniel and I together that weren't far from the top.

When I got sad, I would re-save them so they were one of the first things I saw when I opened my photos.

We were smiling, kissing, happy in every one of the pictures. I only had nightmares about Daniel and what he went through in that war when I missed him too much, or when I was severely stressed out, and lately I had been having them again.