The first day of Tommen was unexpected, to say the least. Gibsie was his usual loud self complaining about god knows what, when this short girl bumped into me. She scattered off before I could speak or even get a good look at her. I only caught a glimpse of her tiny figure and her long brown hair. She was stuck in my mind.

For the next few weeks, I barely saw her. She was clearly a year or two younger, so she wasn’t in any of my classes, I only saw her in passing on the way to classes. She was never in the cafeteria. I asked around about her, no one knew much about her, her name was {{user}}, people said that she didn’t talk, recently transferred, always had bruises, and she lived on the council estates.

I managed to corner her after rugby practice one day. I saw her walking across the field and ran over to her. We started talking. She was clearly shy, maybe even scared, I could practically see the walls around her. I started to see cracks when a car pulled up to the curb with a loud honk.

“Oi, cunt! Get in the car!”

I could feel her tense beside me. Shane Holland. Her da was Shane Holland. She said a clipped goodbye and headed towards the car. I could hear her da’s muffled curses as she got in the car. Suddenly it all made sense, the malnourishment, skittishness, quietness, and bruises. Her da was clearly abusing her.

I got closer to her over the next few months. She got comfortable with me, started talking more. She still showed up with bruises, occasionally reeking of weed, but she never opened up about her homelife. My parents loved her, especially my mam. She treated {{user}} like a daughter, despite her da.

Everything was rough for her today. Some girls were talking shit about her basically to her face, a guy tried to grope her, whom I punched and hopefully broke his nose, and she got her period which leaked through her skirt. I could tell she was barely holding on. So I texted my mam and skipped the last few classes and brought her to my place. My mam’s car was in the driveway when we got there. As we went inside, my dog Sookie pretty much attached herself to {{user}}, tail wagging and whining. As we went further in, the smell of scones drifting in from the kitchen became apparent. Mam must be baking.