Thirst by Ilia Bera

don’t write about my job,” Hanna’s father insisted.
     
    “But I don’t have a choice,” Hanna said.
     
    “Write about something else. Write about your favorite poet.”
     
    “But that isn’t the assignment, dad.”
     
    “Or you can make up a story. It could be fun.”
     
    “But dad—that’s not the assignment. I don’t want to fail. They will fail me again.”
     
    “Your teachers will understand, Hanna.”
     
    “Your job isn’t anything to be ashamed of. You told me yourself—someone has to do it.”
     
    “I lied,” Francis said, starting to get frustrated.
     
    “What do you mean, you lied?”
     
    “No one has to do it—If everyone said ‘no’, they couldn’t force it on someone. No one has to do anything in life.”
     
    “But they’re bad people who deserve it—Right? That’s why you do it...”
     
    “Some are bad—Some could be innocent. None of them deserve it.”
     
    “So why do you do it? Why not do something else?” Hanna asked.
     
    “You’ll understand when you’re an adult.”
     
    “But that doesn’t help me now—for the assignment,” Hanna persisted.
     
    “Fuck the assignment! The assignment isn’t fucking important,” Francis snapped. “It’s just an assignment—it’s stupid and it doesn’t matter,” Francis yelled. “There are more important things in life than some fucking assignment.”
     
    Hanna was silent as she stared down at her feet. It was not the first time she had heard her father scream in her face. “But I’ll fail…” Hanna began to cry.
     
    “Then you’ll fail. So be it.”
     
    “But that’s not fair,” Hanna said.
     
    “Life isn’t fair,” Francis said as he walked up to his bedroom and slammed the door.
     
    Francis was far from what you would call a patient, tempered person. He was a great father, and everything he did, he did for Hanna—including his less than ideal job. Between the emotional abuse from the townspeople, the guilt from his work and coping with Olga’s permanent absence—things were not easy, and it was surprising that his outbursts were as isolated as they were.
     
    Hanna was young and still very ignorant. She loved her father, but she did not understand why he was angry with her. The reality was he was not angry with her. In his moment of weakness, he had just taken his anger out on her. She was in the wrong place at the wrong time, yet again.
     
    Crack! Splat!
     
    As she sat down to try to muster up an assignment, eggs began to strike the side of the house.
     
    Tired of the emotional abuse from the town, Hanna was also feeling angry. Just like her father, she needed an outlet for her frustrations.
     
    She found one.
     
    What she did not realize was—her moment of weakness would have dire consequences that would follow her around for her entire lifetime.
     

 
    CHAPTER SIXTY-FOUR
    THE ASSIGNMENT
     
    The next day, Hanna’s teacher thought it would be a fun idea to have all of the students present their assignments to the whole class. Each student took turns standing at the front of the class, reading out the paper they had written the night before. Each presentation only took a couple of minutes.
     
    Students boasted their perfect mothers and their amazing fathers. Every paper included bits about how many people their parents helped and how philanthropic they were.
     
    Then, it was Hanna’s turn.
     
    Hanna walked up to the front of the class with her reluctantly written paper in hand. Everyone snickered as she stared nervously at the class in silence.
     
    “Read your paper please, Hanna,” the teacher said with glaring eyes.
     
    Hanna’s hands trembled as she looked back down at her sheet.
     
    “Freak!” someone in the class coughed, eliciting laughter from the rest of the snickering students.
     
    “My dad…” Hanna started out slowly.
     
    There was a long silence in the class.
     
    “Hanna please—just read the assignment. Everyone has to do it,” the teacher