Right, this story carries all kinds of warning flags. I’m not joking. If you have even the faintest trace of triggers don’t read this story. Otherwise it's rather sweet.
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The town where I grew up was not exactly a multicultural metropolis like New York. On the other hand, it was not a redneck backwater either. While most of us were white we had our share of other ethnicities as well. Mostly native Americans and blacks. Still, none of those blacks were as black as the new student in my high school class. She was really ebony black, not the various hues of brownish black of the “native” blacks. Native in the sense that they, and their forefathers had been in this country for at least fourscore and seven years. Rasa on the other hand was pure African. Pitch black, tall, muscular and moved like a large feline. No wonder she soon was tagged with the name “The Black Panther”.

She was exotic and intrigued us all. Me perhaps more than most. She was a breath form the wide world. Perhaps not the sophisticated world of New York, Paris or Milano but something more primordial but no less exciting. She never told us from where she was but she had a distinct African accent. I knew nothing about African accents so I couldn’t place it.

Too bad she kept us all at a distance. I wanted to get to know her better. I was not the only one but the kept everyone at a distance so it wasn’t because I was the school wimp. At least not only that. She never interacted with any other students either. She had no extracurricular activities. She came to school, she was an attentive student and then she left for home,

Rasa Tabula was an enigma. She excelled in mathematics and hard sciences while struggling in social sciences and humanities. Rasa was always very good at doing anything she committed to. At first, she and our math teacher had a very strained relationship. He kept calling her “Captain” Tabula with a strange stress on the captain. So what if she could handle a boat or a ship? Admittedly she was a bit young for that, she was only 16, but since there were no major water surface within hundreds of miles, that hardly mattered. Then one day he mentioned an ICC ruling. As the resident Englishman I thought I was the only one in town interested in cricket but I could not place the ruling Mr Watson referred to and apparently disagreed with since the attenuating circumstances did not warrant that verdict. Anyway, Rasa completely agreed with Mr Watson, apparently to his great surprise. It must have been that common interest that made Mr Watson change his attitude to Rasa. He even suggested that she’d tutor me. I was surprised. Not that I didn’t need it. I did. What surprised me was that Rasa accepted. For some reason both Mr Watson and Rasa later claimed to know nothing about the game of cricket.

That’s how I was the only student in school that got close to Rasa. I can’t say I learnt to understand her but we did get a bit closer. I even dared to ask her how she’d become so good at math.

“I had nothing else to do in prison. And mathematics is clean. Not dirty like law, business, social sciences and politics.”

OK, that was a conversation stopper. No need to be sarcastic if she didn’t want to answer me. Despite that I grew to like her. I still can’t explain why. Perhaps the “Black Panther” triggered my protective instincts. Yeah, I’m joking. Still there were subtle signs that things troubled her.

Sometimes I caught her softly sobbing. More and more often as a matter of fact. Once I put my arm around her to comfort her. The next moment I was on the floor, my arm aching and a nasty knife I didn’t even suspect she was carrying at my throat.

“Don’t ever touch me without my permission!”

I had no problem to promise that. That incident and the way she kept dressing in a way to hide her body and its curves made me suspect that she’d been a victim of a rape. As I later learnt I was both right and horribly, gut-wrenching wrong.

That was not the last time she lashed out at me like that. Another time she lashed out when I saw she was in pain and I suggested that she take a painkiller. Once more on the floor I could hear,

“I’ll never touch that stuff again.”

She was always sorry afterwards and even more helpful and kept insisting how good I was for her. Nonetheless, for some reason, I felt a connection with her. It could have been that I felt sorry for her. It could also have been some sort of perverse curiosity. Or it could have been something else altogether like that she kept saying how good I was for her and the only reason she lashed out at me was that I was the only person around whom she didn’t feel she’d have to keep herself in complete control of. Strange sort of compliment. Maybe I did some good?

Even stranger was that I managed to keep that secret from my parents. I also kept her as my tutor, I took the bumps, I started to help her with her weak subjects. I also started to take karate classes. I desperately wanted to be able to defend myself if necessary. Rasa and I had classes at the same time at the community center. She took ballet. She loved the structure and discipline. Of course Rasa was very good, she always was when she committed to something.

Every now and then Rasa would say the strangest things.
“Rasa, how come you’re never happy? Why do you never smile?
“I used to be happy. When I was a small boy, I was happy.”

Boy? I knew better than to probe more when I saw the look on Rasa’s face.

That that was necessary was brought home to me one December day in school. Rasa caught a bully messing up a small kid. She got furious. The way she beat up the bully was spectacular. I had to intervene.

“Rasa, don’t kill him!”

I never really thought that she’d actually kill him until I saw how she reacted. She grew stiff and cold. In a cold dispassionate and very calm voice she said
“You know, you never forget the face of the first person you kill, no matter the circumstances. Then they all become a blur.”

That scared me witless. Not what she said but the way she said it. The bully must have been as scared since he had an involuntary bowel movement. After that day he never bothered another student again and made sure never to come within twenty feet of Rasa.

The mystery around Rasa and her seemingly violent past only got deeper a week later when an accident necessitated a change of clothes when she was at my home. She shed her cold wet shirt in the kitchen without thinking about the people around her. I was boy enough to focus exclusively on her small but delicious breasts. My uncle, who is a doctor and had worked for Médicins sans Frontières, focused on something else. My mother found Rasa some clothes of my father’s. Mine would have looked ridiculous on her. Later, when Rasa had left my uncle noted
“That girl is either a zombie or a ghost. Judging from her scars, apart from being carved up thoroughly, she has been shot more than once with high power, military grade weapons. No one should have survived that.”

I confronted Rasa with that on New Years Eve. She broke down in tears. She looked at me

“Please hug me.”

Since she invited me, I more than willingly hugged her. We must have looked silly. The Black Panther hugged and consoled by the school wimp.

“I’m a killer. I have killed countless people in the most atrocious ways. I have raped and pillaged and probably committed all sins imaginable. I was a child soldier. I was a very bad child soldier, or good if you could ask the local warlord.”

Looking at her I completely believed her. I also shuddered at what she must have done. Rasa was always very good when she committed to something.

“My recruitment was very straightforward. The warlord’s soldier came to our village and killed all the men and boys over 15. Boys 13-15 were “recruited”. My sign-up fee was my life. As initiation I had to kill a small girl. I knew that if I killed her that would be a clean death. No multiple rapes, no drawn-out lingering death. I have rationalized like that ever since. But most of all I wanted to live. I cut the throat of my little sister.”

At that point I had the choice to flee screaming or hug Rasa tighter. I didn’t do the sensible thing.

“They let me live. What they hadn’t told me that a gang rape was still on. I survived. They trained me to be a ruthless killer. I was repeatedly raped until I became too dangerous. I became very dangerous as fast as I could. The drugs took away my inhibitions. I became the most efficient killing machine in the “army”. That gained me a promotion to captain. That meant I led a company of drugged vicious killers. Oh, I was good. I hated myself but I kept going. What alternative did I have? The government troops were as bad as we. On second thought perhaps not as bad, but bad enough and if they had caught me, I would have died. Not cleanly but after long torture. I still wanted to live.

That kept on until an international force was deployed to put us down. They couldn’t get close to my warlord’s HQ because of the SAMs his “sponsors” had supplied. I secretly contacted them and arranged to stage an uprising to take out the SAMs coordinated with an attack by them. I succeeded.”

I never doubted that. Not Rasa. I felt nauseous but I kept hugging the sobbing and shaking girl.

“I made one mistake. I was still alive, just, afterwards. They spent a preposterous amount on saving my life. Not because they were kind but because they could use me. I knew all about the warlord’s operation. At 15 I was already one of the inner circle. I insisted to come out of the process as a girl. They had promised me a clean slate afterwards and I thought that it’d be easier as a girl. After the wounds I had suffered there was nothing “male” left anyway. They moved me here. I got a new name. A complete new set of records perfectly balanced and elaborated for an African girl of no particular consequence. A complete new life, if only on paper. How Mr Watson could connect me with the old me I have no idea but he’s an honorable man and kept silent once he realized I despised myself even more than he despised me. He was perfectly right that the verdict was a miscarriage of justice. I was sentenced to time served in view of what I had done to take down the warlord.

Who did I try to fool? Them or me? There is no clean slate. I¨m still the same person that did all those horrible things. I still have the memories.”

We sat silent there, in the middle of the living room all alone in the house for hours. She softly sobbing in my arms. My parents didn’t come home until much later. At last I managed to calm down Rasa. Not make her at peace but at least calmed down. There we made our New Year Resolutions.

“Rasa, I resolve that I will make anything I can to make you happy again, to find serenity, to find peace”
“Peter, I resolve that I will never again beat you up.”

A strange New Year resolution but one I was happy to hear. Looking up I saw that we were sitting directly under the mistletoe. I made Rasa aware of that and slowly and very carefully kissed her. A long soft passionate kiss. The moment later we pulled away from each other, embarrassed.

Rasa got better after that. We sort of became girlfriend and boyfriend. I should have run as far as way as fast as I could screaming but I felt this strange attraction to this at bottom wonderful and very vulnerable killing machine. Still, the kiss under the mistletoe was the only one for a very long time. We did what teenage kids in love usually do. We dated. We spent time together. We said sweet nothings to each other. Rasa unwound a bit and started to integrate with the other students. I never saw her smile but at least there were less anguish visible. Not surprisingly she became the top female athlete in school. Her records had no mention of her past as a boy so that was never a problem. She also blossomed as a girl. She threw herself into teenage fashion. For good reasons she favored non-revealing clothing. Still, as usual anything Rasa committed to she excelled at. You can be flirty without showing skin. She did. She teased me. Rasa was such a girl!

To be on the safe side I continued my karate classes despite Rasa’s new year resolution. I had found that I liked karate. And, surprise, it turned out that Rasa is not the only one that can excel at something when committing.

Things got better until June 29 approached. I never found out why June 29 was such a sinister date for Rasa. I never wanted to. I have no doubt that I could easily find the answer in the ICC records. I’m never going to. The bottom line was that Rasa’s bad spells came back and got worse as June 29 approached. Not as bad as to make her break her New Year resolution. Until she did.

The doctors tell me that my arm and leg will heal perfectly. They also tell me that I don’t really need a spleen. The only inconvenience is that having only one kidney will require me to live more carefully in the future.

As a direct consequence of the incident Rasa has left us. As she was departing she told me
“Thank you, Peter! Thank you for everything! Thank you for keeping your New Year resolution!”

That was the only time I saw her smile. The only time I saw her truly serene and at peace. I kissed her for a second, and last, time.

Rasa was right, you know. You never forget the face of the first person you kill, no matter the circumstances.