A girl with blonde hair carrying a large pink bag sat down next to Alice, giggling to her friend across the room. The girl was beautiful, her frothy blonde locks shining. Alice shook her black hair over her face, wishing she could pull it over her completely like a shield.
Mr. Alden began droning about the class. Alice shrunk in her seat as he walked towards her.
Not even looking up from the attendance clip-board, he asked her, “Will you pass these out to the class please?" Handing her a stack of rubrics he walked back to the board, not giving her a chance to protest. Alice swallowed hard. She would have rather faced a legion of tanks and machine guns than hand out those rubrics. What choice do I have?
Panicking inwardly, she stood. Taking the first paper, she offered it, with a shaking hand, to the blonde girl. She looked up at Alice's face, the smile falling from her lips, replaced by the look Alice had come to dread. Shock, revulsion, embarrassment. They flashed across the girl's pretty face in an instant.
She stammered a thank you and quickly looked down. Hate and self-loathing burned in Alice's chest. She handed papers to several others. One boy looked at her openly, smirking.
"What happened to you?" He whispered cruelly. The teacher shuffled distractedly through a pile of papers as he explained the rubric. Alice practically threw the papers at the last few students before falling into her seat again, tears stinging her eyes. She heard nothing more the whole class. As the bell rang and the students exploded out into the hallway, she ran for the bathroom, unable to stop the hot rush of tears that flooded her cheeks. Sobbing, Alice threw back her hood, staring at her reflection.
Ice blue eyes framed by thick black strands of hair, contrasted strongly to her pale face. She tried to imagine what her face would look like without the crude scars that ran from her forehead across her nose and down her right cheek. They severed her face like a slash of black soot across a watercolor painting.
Straining for some way to cover up her face, Alice yanked her hoodie up again, pulling her hair across her eyes. It was useless. No point in being blinded by her hair as well as scarred and disfigured. Stifling her sobs, Alice inhaled shakily, forcing herself back out into the world. A world that hated her.
Connie Wheeler shifted her bag to her other shoulder uncomfortably. She was earlier to English than she had expected, and the strange girl was already there. She sat hunched over that blue notebook scrawling swirly dark letters across its pages as if her life depended on it. Connie had never dared to glance at the words, but she suspected that they weren't English notes.
Now, nervous to be alone with the girl, Connie walked slowly over to their desk and took her seat. She pulled her own notebook from her bag and began doodling.
The pale hand hesitated in its frantic pace for a moment. Then, as if reassured that Connie was not going to bother her, the girl resumed her writing.
Connie scribbled flowers and hearts for a few minutes, her thoughts fixed on the purpose of keeping her eyes downcast. They strayed towards that small figure next to her. Connie jerked them back. Why did no one come?
The clock read 7:16. Fourteen more minutes until class. Connie shuffled her feet nervously, setting her English book upright on the desk. She glanced back towards the girl. A quick look. She would never notice...
Unable to resist her curiosity, Connie peered cautiously around her English book. The scars were deep. What would cause such horrible, ugly marks? Had she been maliciously attacked or mauled when she was a child? An abusive father maybe? Or an uncle? Or perhaps she was burned in a terrible fire.
Connie's vivid imagination quickly concocted a scene in a large gothic mansion. Blazing fire snaked its way towards the innocent babe as the mother fended off an insane first wife of the father. Satisfied with the romantic horror of this scene, Connie spun the tale further. Her mind spiraled faster and faster, enjoying the delicious eeriness of her story. She concluded that the insane woman must have murdered both of them and then killed herself, leaving the child to be rescued by a servant.
Pleased, Connie tucked the plot away in her mental file cabinet to be used later. Coming back to reality, her eyes refocused. Startled, Connie realized in horror that she was still staring at the girl's face, more specifically, straight into her cold, clear blue eyes. Gasping, Connie dove behind her textbook again. Her face filled with hot color.
What must she think of me?!
The girl continued to stare at her. Those eyes, like pale blue daggers, pierced Connie's very soul. Filled with shame and embarrassment, she searched her mind for some apology. Nothing.
What could she say? I just couldn't help it. Your face is so weird I had to look?
Of course not! Desperate for an excuse to leave the room, she sniffed loudly.
"Oops, need a tissue."
On her way out Connie upset her chair and a pile of papers on Mr. Alden's desk. She didn't stop to pick them up.
Alice sighed. She stooped and set Connie's chair right side up and collected Mr. Alden's scattered papers. Looking at them she noticed an A+ on the paper she had written. Trying to smile, Alice could only manage a weak grimace. She couldn't shake the raw feeling that came every time anyone looked at her with that embarrassed expression she had seen on Connie's face a few minutes earlier. Setting the papers on the big desk, Alice walked slowly to the window, thinking. Outside students were arriving. Soon they would pour into first period classes, then the next, and the next. They would go home, eat, sleep, and repeat the whole process the next day and the day after that and the day after that. Every day for years. Two more years in her case. Then what? Most would move on to a four-year university, more education.
Education? She thought. What were they really learning? She looked around her at the school, the students. Did they really learn anything here? No one knew how to behave around her. She didn't know how to behave around them. Surely things like that should be taught as well as Algebra and English.
Wearily, Alice sank back into her seat. Mr. Alden opened the door and a train of kids piled in after him. Connie came back, sitting down next to Alice as if nothing had happened. Connie's soft brown eyes so conspicuously ignored her that the raw feeling grew sharper than ever.
Class started and Alice retreated to her writing, barely listening to the lecture as she lost herself in a world of magic and mystery where she was a beautiful maid twirling around a woodland camp-fire among a crowd of dancing peasants.
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