Ch. 2: an unexpected friend

TWO

an unexpected friend

         Grace awoke with a start and gazed about the dark bedroom in confusion.  It took her a few moments to orient herself, to gather her wits about her and realize that she was at home safe in bed, and in that time the specifics of her dream withdrew, as always, into the more shadowy recesses of her mind.

         Dimly she recalled the pasty white face shrouded in a hood, its eyes moist and oily, completely black, its thin lips set in a haunting smirk of dark purpose. She saw it moving toward her amid walls that shimmered like gold, its long, thin fingers as ghostly white as its face, their tips more like claws than nails, reaching toward her and then… nothing.

         This was a dream that had replayed itself many times over the years.  Sometimes she was able to remember a bit more of it, sometimes a bit less, but it never failed to disturb her no matter the amount she recalled.  Who was he, this man with the black eyes?  And why did he stalk her dreams?  She had read stories in which dreams were actually a kind of window on the future, a way to peer into next week or next year, and she oftentimes wondered if such could be the case with this dream.  She hoped not.  He was wicked, that man, that thing, wicked beyond anything she had ever known or even heard, though she could not have explained what made her so certain of it.  She knew only that she had no desire ever to meet him, this figure that hovered in the darkness of her mind and left the stink of his fear upon her waking life.

         And she knew this as well – that she was truly and utterly afraid of him, so much so that even the thought of his smooth, chalk-white face left her sweating and clutching her blanket close to her for hours with no sleep.

         And, though it increased her terror tenfold to admit it, she knew he was real.

*          *          *          *          *

         “Watch it, freak,” said a pug-faced girl as Grace bumped into her from behind.

         “Sorry.”  She lowered her head.  It had been an accident, bumping into the girl, but she knew it was her fault nevertheless.  She had been paying very little attention to where she was going, concentrating instead on the same thing she’d been concentrating on for the past two weeks – the unexpected problem that had arisen in that time.

          The older girl looked her up and down, her eyes seeming to linger a good deal longer on her hair than anything else.  She made a mocking, snorting type of sound then and went on her way.

         And that, you see, was the problem, for a great many of the students – those in her class, those in higher grades, even a few in the lower ones – had all been acting toward her in a similar manner.  Some called her things like “freak,” as Miss Pugface had done, while others snickered behind her back (as a number of kindergarten students were doing that very instant from a huddle near the water fountain).

         This bothered Grace a great deal, and in the two weeks since school had started she had come to dread each new day, which was a terrible tragedy for one who had so looked forward to school.

         “…a witch…”  Grace spun around, having caught the whispered bit of conversation, and saw a boy named Troy pointing toward her as he and his group passed.  None of them turned away when she looked at them, but stared back with cruel curiosity in their eyes.  She breathed a heavy sigh and fought against the tears that were suddenly threatening to spill from her eyes.

         I won’t cry! She told herself, but it was hard.  Only last year Troy had been a good friend.  He’d had a lisp and Grace had stood by him when everyone else had laughed and joked at his expense.  He had been very self-conscious of his problem and was very hurt by their treatment, but now that his lisp had gone so apparently had his memory of her compassion.  She looked away.  Why would he call her such a terrible thing?

         The answer to this question, though young Grace had yet to make the connection for herself, was that she had made a mistake over the summer.  It was an innocent enough mistake, owing to her kind and trusting nature more than anything else, but it remained a mistake.  Thinking a girl named Jennifer to be a loyal friend Grace had told her about her past.  She’d been warned against this by her grandparents, warned of how cruel children could be and how they could giddily use her past as a weapon against her… but Jennifer, whom she had played with for most of the summer, had seemed so understanding, so trustworthy.

         She had told her everything, of her parent’s disappearance, of the little creature that followed her around, of the incredible things which sometimes happened around her.  In addition to what she had said, Jennifer had also witnessed Grace fall from a tree one afternoon and land, hovering briefly, several inches above the ground.

         It was, apparently, too much for the young blabbermouth to hold in.  Jennifer told Pamela who told her older brother William who told the sixth grade baseball team, each of whom told several friends, many of which then told their parents, a good number of whom in turn filled their children in on a few nasty and completely false rumors relating to Grace’s history, which made its way back into the halls of the school and within a very short period of time it was a rare child who had not heard one awful tale or another concerning poor Grace.          

         As she walked the last few yards toward her classroom a tiny little boy with a buzz cut so short he was lucky to still possess his scalp gasped as he saw her.  His eyes grew wide and his mouth hung open.  It was quite clear that he was frozen in place by fear.  Fear of her.

         “It’s okay,” she told him, her heart trembling with sorrow for the boy (he was surely no older than six, she thought).  She reached out a hand to reassure him. 

         “No!” he screeched and tears filled his eyes.  He staggered back a step or two, nearly fell, and then finally managed to turn and run away.

         Grace hated this worse than anything else.  The taunts, the jeers, the laughs and the pointing fingers (not to mention the awful stories and the cruel, filthy names), these hurt her, sure, but have someone look at her with such obvious terror in their eyes…

         She sighed again and this time found she was unable to hold back one or two persistent tears.  Grace, as you may have gathered (and even if you haven’t, I assure you it is the truth), was a harmless girl filled with a love and compassion deeper than most others.  Indeed, I have known no other who cared for others as deeply as Grace did, and thus it was a most grievous injury to her for others to view her as someone to fear, someone to run from.  A knife slid skillfully between her ribs could not possibly have cut so deeply or hurt as much.

         What stories had that boy heard to make him look at her so, to make even the thought of being touched by her something that caused him to scream and bolt?  What terrible, monstrous things had been poured through his naïve, believing little ears?

         She neared the door to her classroom, stared up at it, and for a moment she entertained the idea of running away, of hiding until the end of the day.  She knew what awaited her on the other side, that today would be no different than yesterday, or the days before.  She could hide in the far stall in the girl’s bathroom, the one marked Out of Order.  No one would know.  Then, after the day’s final bell, she could creep out and walk home.

         She stood there a good two minutes, considering her choices, but in the end she knew what she had to do.  It was the only thing she could do.  Yes, she was sad.  Yes, she was mad.  Yes, she was scared.  But none of these things could be allowed to stop her.  Sorrow, anger, fear – Grace had to be greater than them all.  Something inside her demanded it.

         She turned the doorknob, opened the door, and walked into the classroom.

*          *          *          *          *

         Her name was Catherine Cuthbert and she was the prettiest girl in her class.  She was also the meanest.  Not mean like a boy, though, for she never physically harmed anyone – far be it from perfect little Cathy to sully her perfect little hands!  No, Catherine was the classic example of girl-mean, using popularity, slander, and outright lies to attack her prey, and at present her prey was none other than Grace herself.

         Grace sat rigidly in her seat and failed miserably at trying to focus on the dry, monotonous sound of Miss Scraggs voice.  It was a history lesson, she knew this much for sure (though only because the word “History”  was scrawled upon the blackboard), but as she continued to feel Catherine’s hateful, callous eyes boring into her back she wished more than anything that it was she herself who was history.

         Something small and hard bounced off the back of her head.  From behind her came the muted giggles of Catherine and her friends.  Soon another tiny missile hit her.

         If only Miss Scraggs would turn and see them!  she thought to herself.  In truth, she would have loved to have simply raised her hand and reported their wrongdoing, but her character would not allow it.  The teacher seeing it on her own was one thing, but actually snitching out her classmates was something else entirely.

         A folded piece of paper landed suddenly on her desk, a note of some kind.  She didn’t really want to read it, it was surely just another cruel joke, but there is something about a neatly folded sheet of notebook paper, even when the neat folding was done by the hands of an enemy, that fairly well forces one to unfold it, which Grace did.

         Unfortunately, though she had taken no notice of anything at all up to this point, Miss Scraggs chose that very moment to suddenly take an interest in what was going on in her classroom, and her eyes landed instantly on Grace and her note.

         “Ah!” she exclaimed (though the word came out sounding as profoundly bored as everything else which passed her lips and it was only by her slightly raised eyebrows that one could that it had, in fact, been exclaimed at all).  “So you have at last decided to take part in our lesson have you, Miss Sullers?”  She advanced on Grace’s desk and snatched the paper from her hand.  “This is, no doubt, your notes on my lecture?” Her thin, one-sided smirk gave away the otherwise undetectable sarcasm in the remark.

         “Well, I…”

         “Ha!” laughed Miss Scraggs, though most of the class, Grace included, thought it had instead been a particularly nasty retch.  “Drawing pictures are you?”  She looked down at the paper in her hands.  “You’ll stay after class for an extra half of an hour.  Maybe that will cool your artistic ambitions.”  She glanced from the paper to Grace then added as almost an afterthought, “It is, however, quite a remarkable likeness.”  There was what appeared to be a cruel glimmer in her eyes as she held the drawing up to show the class.

         On the sheet of paper, beneath the word “Grace” and an arrow which pointed down from them, was the crudely drawn figure of a girl with a tall, pointy hat, straw-like hair which stuck out in all directions, and a long, black robe which fell below the broom upon which she was flying.

         The class erupted in laughter, all except for two children, that is.  One of them, of course, was Grace herself, who blushed a deep shade of red and wiped at the angry, embarrassed tears which trailed down her cheeks.

         The other child, though no one observed her, was the new girl Bell, who sat silently in the back of the classroom and stared at the laughing Catherine Cuthbert with a look that, had she seen it, would have left her a good deal less amused and a great deal more afraid.

*          *          *          *          *

         The area in which the students recessed was fairly large, large enough to easily support two classes trampling, jumping, and screaming upon it at the same time.  There was a series of swings on the side nearest the school and three seesaws, two red and one blue not far off (the custodian, Mr. Smiley, had started painting them the year before but had apparently forgotten to finish, and no one could now remember whether he’d painted two blue ones red or if he’d painted only one of the red ones blue).  Beyond this were two sets of monkey bars, one taller than the other, and a large jungle gym shaped like a half globe.  Far off in the distance was a baseball diamond, interrupted by a good sized stretch of grass which was used for everything from a soccer field to the sixth grade fair grounds in late May of each year.  Between this open space and the playground were a number of wooden benches, painted red and bolted to the concrete slabs upon which they stood.

         It is upon one of these benches that Grace sat, as usual, and made up stories during recess.  This had been a habit of hers long before the persecution of recent days, so please do not think of her as though she had retreated there out of fear, for such is not the case.  This is not to say that the isolation from her tormentors (who usually huddled together beneath the jungle gym) was not welcome, only that it was not unusual.

         Grace’s imagination was quite large and she put it to use creating fantastic stories.  She had even, at her grandfather’s suggestion, committed some of them to paper and had begun collecting them in a small, leather journal which she kept hidden in a box beneath her bed – a box labeled “TOP SECRET, STAY OUT!” (she was a bit self-conscious of them, I’m afraid).  Her recess time was used merely to create, however, and it was rare for to actually commit any of these particular stories to written form.

         Perhaps it sounds a bit odd that she should use her free time in such a way, but the absolute truth of the matter is that Grace herself was a bit odd.  She never quite felt as though she fit in with the world around her, like she was the leftover puzzle piece you sometimes find sitting in the box after the puzzle itself is complete.  The time she spent within her own imagination, though, seemed to find her a place, and it was often upon that red bench, all alone, that her existence in the universe felt a bit more… right.

         She was in the middle of one of her very favorite stories – one of a world called Bowland, where the inhabitants (tall, thin beings composed entirely of light) traveled upon rainbows to conduct business or work magic in whatever place they desired – when the vain, taunting voice of Catherine Cuthbert stabbed through the silence and pulled Grace from her story.

         “Working on a few spells, Sullers?”

         Grace looked up and saw that Catherine had not come alone.  She was flanked by five or six of her faithful lackeys.  “I don’t know any spells,” she said.  Her voice was quiet, but she stared into the eyes of her accuser without blinking.  “Because I am not a witch.”

         “That’s not what we heard,” said Catherine, as though she and her friends were privy to information about Grace which even Grace herself did not know.  The truth is, though, that neither she nor a single student at that school believed Grace to be a witch (except perhaps for a few of the very youngest and most gullible among the children, like the poor boy who had run screaming from her earlier that morning).  It is the unfortunate state of the human heart, however, which leads both children and adults alike to ever seek someone to attack, even if it must feed upon outright lies in order to do so (do not believe the modern misconception that man’s heart is pure for it is not, as witnessed by thousands of years of wicked and terrible history, a history which reached its peak in the long ago death of an innocent man named Joshua – a man with whom, though you will find his name only this once – these chronicles have much to do).  This is all a long, wordy way of saying that Catherine picked on Grace simply because she felt as though she had to pick on someone, and the rumors about Grace gave her the excuse she needed.

         “Then you heard wrong,” Grace said.

         “Are you calling my friends liars?”  She walked closer.  “Huh, freak?  Are you?”  She grabbed a hold of the golden streak in Grace’s hair and tugged on it sharply.  The girls behind Catherine giggled as Grace let out a pained whimper.

         “Please don’t,” she said and meant much more than the act of simply pulling her hair.  Please don’t keep this up, please don’t laugh at me, please don’t make me cry in front of all these people.

         “Please don’t,” mocked Catherine in a nasal tone and tugged again, harder – hard enough to pull Grace from the bench and onto her knees.  “What’s up with this stripe anyway?  Is it a witch’s stripe?  Is this how you floated when you fell out of that tree?”

         Grace, upon her knees, would not look up at Catherine.  She was too busy using every spare bit of strength she possessed to keep from bursting into tears (not that she was particularly ashamed to cry, but she knew that to do so would only give her ridiculers more fuel with which to stoke the flames).

         This did not go unnoticed.  “Are you going to cry, Grace?”  Catherine spoke as though addressing an infant.  “Have I hurt the baby’s feelings?  I’m so sorry little baby.  Maybe you can go tell your Mama and Papa and they’ll… oops!  I forgot how you scared your parents away.  Isn’t that what happened, Grace?  They saw what you were and they left you in a trashcan while they ran as far away from you as they could get?”  She looked back at her followers then returned her cold but glimmering eyes back upon her prey.  “Or did you kill them?  I heard that, too, that not long after you were born you did something to them to make them wither into ash and blow away.  Is that it?  Huh?”

         Grace began to cry then.  Anything but her parents!  Dear God, why was she so mean?  I wish she’d just shut up!  Grace thought in desperation, her sobs making her chest heave as she watched her tears fall like fat little blobs of liquid crystal upon the ground in front of her.  Shut up!

         And then occurred another of those strange things of which I’ve told you about, for in the very instant that she wished her tormentor to be quiet Catherine’s long, blond hair suddenly wrapped itself around her face and made a tight gag about her mouth.  And then Grace had what she had asked for as Catherine was left silent save for a series of shocked and frightened humming noises which managed to slip around and through her hair.  Her eyes grew wide, no longer cold or glimmering, but filled with outright terror, mirroring the eyes of the girls behind her.

         She pointed at Grace and said something to the effect of, “Hmmm!  Hmm hrr hmmm hmm! Hmm hrrr hrr!”  Of course no one could understand a single word she was saying, but the general idea was clear enough and soon a number of the others had picked up on it.

         “She is a witch!” said one.

         Catherine tried to lunge at Grace but it was then that something utterly unexpected occurred.  Someone stuck up for her.

         “Leave her alone,” said Bell in a clear, stern voice that seemed even stronger because of her clipped accent.  She seemed to have appeared out of nowhere, but it mattered little to Grace.  Bell pushed Catherine, causing her to fall hard upon the ground.

         “Oh, no…” muttered Grace, but no one heard her.

         “Does it take seven girls to pick on one here in America?” continued Bell.  Catherine attempted to rise but Bell, taking a threatening step toward her, convinced her to change her mind.  A few of the more cowardly there chose that moment to flee.

         Bell spit on the ground next to Catherine who had once again decided to make an attempt at standing.  She was pushed back down on her butt and it was from this vantage point that she stared up at Bell with an uncomfortable mixture of hatred, fear, and shame in her eyes.

         “Please, it’s okay,” said Grace.  Even after the humiliation she’d suffered at the girl’s hands she still hated to see anyone – even someone like Catherine – being hurt.  “I’m fine, really.”

         Bell, who was standing in front of Grace like a protective mother or a guardian angel, turned and looked at her.  A warm, friendly smile lit her face and made her impossibly green eyes shine even brighter.  A look of concern passed over her features.  “Are you sure?” she asked.  Her voice was not the same, authoritative one she’d used with Catherine, but was soft and filled with compassion.

         Grace looked up at her.  “Yes.  They didn’t hurt me.”

         Bell reached out and helped Grace to stand.  She smiled at her once more then wheeled about on Catherine and those still remaining with her.  “Get out of here, then.  Go!” she shouted and they wasted no time in doing just that.  Only Catherine, her hair still tightly locked about her mouth (the school nurse would later spend nearly an hour undoing it, and she would lose a good bit of it in the process), so much as dared to brave a glance behind her.  These girls, it seemed, were not at all used to anyone standing up to them in such a fashion and they responded as scores of bullies before them have for centuries: by running away.

         “Thanks,” said Grace.

         “It was nothing,” Bell responded, a bit shyly it seemed.

         There was silence for several seconds, broken at last by Grace’s hurried statement: “I’m not a witch, you know.”          

         “I never said you were.”

         Another pause.  “I can’t explain what happened with her hair, though.”  She’d been staring at the ground until this point, but now risked a glance toward the girl who had saved her.  “Stuff like that happens around me sometimes… but that’s the first time anything’s ever happened to another person like that.”

         Bell smiled.  “She deserved it.”

         “Maybe,” answered Grace, who found herself feeling sorry for Catherine nevertheless.

         The girls smiled at one another and in that moment Grace knew she had found a friend.