The Principle Rule of Regret

The Principle Rule of Regret

Harold Masterson was Principal of Little Falls Elementary School. He was loved by students, parents, and teachers alike. They all went to him for help. What to do with the child who won’t listen in class. What to do with the child who keeps falling asleep during math lessons. What to do to make their daughter do her homework. No matter what it was, Harold knew the answer.

Perhaps it was the way he looked. What little hair Harold had was cut short, the exact opposite of the large mustache that more than made up for his baldness. Kind brown eyes were always quick to laugh. Except for now.

Harold was sitting behind his desk, waiting. Every day it was the same. Every day he was forced to relive that painful experience, and today was no different than all the rest. Very slowly the lid lifted off of the box of paper clips. One by one they hooked together with the slow concentration of a child’s hand. Harold watched silently as the chain grew longer and longer.

The first time he had seen this he had been afraid and was quick to blame Bernice, his secretary, for playing jokes on him. After only a few weeks Harold was forced to face the facts. He knew the truth somewhere deep down. He knew, yet he did not want to believe, which so often happens to people when what they hear, feel, see, and smell has no logical explanation.

It was Sarah Baker. The little girl that was quick to smile and lend a helping hand to any who needed it. The same little girl who was ostracized by her class mates just because she looked different. Sarah was an albino with long, almost white hair and eyes such a light color of blue that on first seeing them you would think that they had no color at all.

Harold closed his eyes, willing the memories to go back to the inner recesses of his mind. To go back to the shelves where they could acquire a good layering of dust and be blissfully forgotten. Remembering was too painful. The fate that little child suffered. The horror of the other students. It was just too much for Harold to handle, even now, nearly thirty years later.

They had found her in the boiler room. The students always found it fascinating and at first the teachers thought that she had snuck in there with some of the other students to get a better look at the furnace. Billy Alderight stepped forward a few days later. He said that they had all gone into the boiler room and had then closed Sarah in for a laugh. They were about to open the door when the mean spirited janitor chased them away. Sarah lay lonely and forgotten in the boiler room when the gas leak happened, her tormentors safely outside. When they evacuated the building and mechanics and firemen were going in to fix the leak they found her. The crumpled little body lay huddled against the wall. If Harold didn’t know better he would have thought that she was asleep.

Poor Sarah, and her poor parents. They had said that they didn’t blame Harold, that it wasn’t his fault, but behind the facade Harold knew the truth. They blamed him entirely, and Harold blamed himself. Even without the daily visit from Sarah, just like he received at lunch time when she was alive, he would have been haunted by the memory.
There was a soft giggle and paper clip chain, now longer than Harold had ever seen it grow, was being used as a jump rope by an invisible Sarah. Harold smiled in spite of himself.

“Don’t worry about me any more, Mr. Masterson,” a light, whispery voice said. It seemed to be all around him, not coming from any one place in the room. The make shift jump rope ceased its turning and was returned to the paper clip box.

“Sarah?” Harold called out tentatively.

“I’m happy now. So you should be, too.” The simplicity of the statement astounded him. Only a child could say a thing like that. Only children could make sense of situations where adults could not, or would not. Sarah had been a master at this and, it seemed, she still was.

“See?” The blinds lifted at the window closest to Harold’s desk. He stood and walked over to it. Outside were all of his students, recess just having started. Out of all the children in the playground only one caught his eye. It was a little girl with white-blonde hair and eyes that seemed to only have a pupil and no iris from this distance. Sarah was sitting on a swing around a group of students who watched in awe as she swung higher and higher. They called out words of encouragement to her.

Sarah wasn’t paying attention to them though. Her eyes were on Harold. She smiled and waved. Harold raised a hand tentatively and waved back. Then Sarah was gone. The students all looked at each other stunned. Harold turned away from the window.

“Now it’s your turn to live. Be happy again.” Harold felt a kiss on his cheek and then a peace that he had not felt in over thirty years. Sarah was gone, finally at rest. Why it had taken her this long to leave, Harold would never know. The one child who Harold could not save had just saved him.