Disclaimer: I don't own Thirteen.

(Thirteen has always been alone.)

At four, she realizes her mother is an invalid, and cries. She hides in her bed, with the covers pulled up tight, and ponders death. She doesn't come to a conclusion.

One year later, she starts to hate. Her father is a busy man, impatient with work-worn hands and crease lines starting to show around his eyes. He comes home late sometimes, and those are the days when Thirteen wishes she could be somewhere else.

At seven, she discovers what it means to be a patient's daughter. Her friends whisper when the car pulls up to front of the school, and in their reflected faces upon the car windows, she begins to experience alienation.

A week later, she makes a decision. She wears pink, cuts her shorts up to three inches above her knees, and alks out. Her father barely glances up from his newspaper, although Thirteen swears she sees a hint of a movement in her mother's body. She makes three new friends that day, and learns that people are base.

At eight, Thirteen is vicious. Outwardly, she is the picture-perfect little girl,dressed in white, hovering near her mother, and doing well in school. When no one can see her, she looks out her window, and imagines catching flying birds in the sky and throttling them with her hands.

At nine, Thirteen experiences relief. Her mother leaves her, and a blinding hot anvil is lifted from her shoulders. She always wonders later what makes her look out the window to see her mother leaving; in five hours, she will be going to a party with her friends, and smoke a cigarette for the first time.

In the blinding fumes of the loss of her innocence, Thirteen wonders if she will ever miss her mother.

At the age of twenty-eight, Thirteen tests positive for Huntington's and regrets.

A/N: Kinda rushed. Okay, a lot. Kinda just spewed it out.