JELENA
The memory returns with startling clarity.
I am barely twelve, the moon hangs low above the playground, washing the empty grounds in silver light, swings creak gently in the breeze, though no one sits on them.
My stomach aches bu not from illness instead from hunger.
Alice had accused me of breaking her mother's prized painting and I hadn't even touched it but the punishment comes anyway.
Dinner, the one thing I had looked forward to all day, is taken away before I can have a single bite and I am ordered out of the house until "Mother cools down."
It isn't the first time and it probably won't be the last and most nights, I tell myself I don't care anymore but some nights, I miss my mother so much that pretending becomes impossible.
I curl my knees to my chest on one of the ol
