At Jefferson High, it was
a normal day, a normal class, and a normal existence. But the moment was not
normal. At least not for two students on that bright autumn morning.
Connie Wheeler had skipped almost four
complete days of school, under the pretence of a sore throat, and her friends
were beginning to wonder about her.
Now Connie, despite her modern, popular appearance,
was really a very traditional and conservative girl, who had been raised to
believe that an apology was due after a mistake. She was nervous, but bound by
her sense of right and wrong, she swallowed her fears and resolved to say what
needed saying and have it over as soon as possible.
Outside the door to room 11, Connie
hesitantly peeked in expecting to see Alice at their desk, bent over her blue
notebook, scrawling away as usual. But what she saw surprised her.
Alice stood at the window, her scarred face
uplifted and smiling. The hood of the blue jacket was down around her
shoulders, and midnight black curls fell about her face in soft waves, the sun
shining on her peaceful profile.
Connie was captivated. This new picture of
Alice, looking so gentle and at ease, surprised her. As she stood watching in
the doorway, the girl shocked her even further. She began to sing, soft words,
unrecognizably low, but with so much spirit and in such a beautiful voice that
Connie found herself in tears when the song was over, moved by the heartfelt
passion in Alice’s voice.
Wiping away a damp eye, Connie sniffed---a
fatal mistake. Alice’s head whirled around, her eyes blazing, cheeks flushed
with anger. Immediately snatching her hood up and brushing hair over her face,
Alice lowered her face to the floor, feeling that this invasion of her private
moment was too much embarrassment to bear. She glanced around for an escape of
some sort, but finding none, darted to a seat in the back of the room. Mr.
Alden was one of those people who did not deal well with speaking to her and so
Alice knew he would make no comment.
Connie sprang quickly over to her, wishing
fervently to make things right. But the bell ran and a flood of juniors and
sophomores came pouring into the classroom. Helplessly, Connie took her seat,
on the brink of despair, when she saw that Alice had left her precious blue
notebook on their desk.
Jason Swingle, whose seat Alice had taken, walked
in, saw Alice in his chair and collapsed sleepily into the spot beside Connie,
quite pleased to find himself next to her. Mr. Alden gathered his teaching handouts
and found that he was several short. Instructing his class to behave
themselves, the teacher left to make copies, with little hope that his orders
would be obeyed.
As soon as the door shut behind him, Tim Carey,
an overly confident basketball star at Jefferson, began to look for some way of
making trouble. He spied the blue notebook on Jason’s desk and thought to make
a joke of it.
“Hey Jason! Pass!” His robust voice called
across the room. Jason good-naturedly tossed the notebook over, and Tim grinned
wickedly as he flipped it opened. Alice sat like a stone statue afraid to
breathe. That notebook held the contents of her world. It would shatter if
anyone looked at it and so would she.
Thinking of the horror she would feel if her
own little jottings were read aloud, Connie quickly leapt to her feet.
“You give that back Tim Carey!” Her voice was
sharp, but Tim was only encouraged by the fact that he’d caught the attention
of one of the prettiest girls at school. Laughing, but more interested in
Connie than in the book itself, he called back,
“What if I said no?”
Alice smiled. Her smile
felt stiff, as if it hadn’t been out in months, even years. But she wore it
almost proudly. Oh it felt good to smile! The rising sun shone down on her as
she walked to school through the crisp autumn air, colored leaves crunching beneath
her boots. Arriving at school, Alice pulled her hood up further and slipped
quickly up the stairway to Mr. Alden’s English room. She always got to school
early so as to creep in unnoticed by the other students and take her seat. They
paid her little attention during first period. Probably insults took too much
energy at 6:30 in the morning, and the real taunts didn’t begin until lunch.
Alice did her best to escape. In between classes she could do little to hide
but stick to the walls and keep her head down. During lunch she hid in the art
room, and she never stayed at school longer than necessary. Once class was out,
Alice was gone, speeding her way home through the cold afternoon light.
Usually, avoiding people was fairly easy, for
most of her peers, and most adults too, were uncomfortable around her. She
could see fear and hate in their darting eyes as she walked through each day. Few
spoke directly to her, but always she heard the whispers, the snickered jeers
and the gossiping mockery. Their words sounded brave, bold even, but their fear
was real and so was the distaste of even being around her. There were only a few
students at school who would dare come near Alice at all: the bullies. They
came to tease, to peck, to openly abuse. More than once at her old school,
Alice had been so badly beaten that she had to stay home for weeks, and been
too afraid to come to school at all for months. Here at Jefferson, she had
escaped without any serious physical punishment. But the names they called out
wormed into her mind and threatened to tear her soul apart.
Today, however, Alice’s mind was far from
these thoughts. The smile on her lips was real, the sky was brightening, and
for the first time she could remember, Alice was almost happy. Taking her seat,
she settled down with her blue notebook and pulled a pencil from her bag.
Pressing it into a fresh sheet of paper,
Alice’s heart swelled as words spilled out from the deepest part of her
awakening spirit.
Connie ran the whole way
home, her eyes blinded by tears. How could she have been so rude? All the
horrible feelings brewing inside her had suddenly spilled out in an
uncontrollable flood of words. She fumbled with her keys, wishing her mom were
home to comfort her, at the same time glad she wasn’t there to be angry at her
daughter for skipping school. Sobbing, Connie dumped her bag on the floor and
fled to her backyard sanctuary. There was a tree in her yard that held a
special place in her heart. Through every trial it had been her thinking place,
a safe and familiar habitat for tears or laughter. Now beneath its quiet
branches, Connie sank wearily down, desperate for peace to ease her twisted
spirit. Even in the shade of her special tree, she couldn’t erase the look of
calm despair shining through Alice’s eyes. Those horrible scars. They were ugly
even to remember. Connie stood and walked back into her house, up the stairs to
her bathroom. She stared at her reflection critically.
Even with her face stained with running
mascara and her nose red, Connie knew she was still beautiful. Her soft brown
eyes were framed with thick lashes, her mouth was pretty and full, her teeth
were straight and known for their whiteness; her hair was a pearly blonde and
always hung neatly and stylishly atop her head. Connie’s family was rich and other girls were often jealous of her beautiful clothes and expensive jewelry.
Most of them showed it. Spiteful and nit-picky, they would scrutinize her for
flaws and spread rumors about her.
Breaking into tears again, Connie realized
that the one girl at school who had the most reason to be jealous had never so
much spoken a word against her to anybody. She had never acted unkindly even
after the way Connie had treated her. Compassion gripping her heart, Connie
picked up her eyeliner from the sink top. Wanting to imagine, wanting to step
into another world, another heart, another face--- she drew a jagged black line
from her forehead across her nose and down her right cheek.
Alice ate lunch in the art
room. Often she would paint while she ate, humming softly as she worked away at
a still life and a cold turkey sandwich. Nobody else ever came to the art room
during lunch, so it was the one part of the day that she could relax at school.
Today though, her painting reflected her perturbed frame of mind. Rich blues
that had begun as a tranquil seascape now swirled and thrashed like the storm that
shook Alice’s mind. She was uneasy after English. Connie had never come back to
class, and Alice had not seen her in the hall all day. Refusing to admit that
she was worried over someone she hardly even knew, Alice sat in silence,
determined to enjoy painting her picture. Still, her mind kept drifting to
Connie’s strange behavior.
Alice bit her lip as she worked, unconscious
of time or sound outside of her own thoughts.
Behind her, something clattered loudly to the floor.
Whirling quickly around, Alice looked to see a student in a black t-shirt bending
to pick up a pallet from the floor. Stomach flip-flopping, Alice hurriedly hid
her face behind her hood. How long had he been there? She wondered, forgetting
Connie and her troubles in a wave of panic.
A rainbow of colors ran across the white linoleum,
as the boy knelt to wipe up the spill. Alice felt a stab of guilt as she
watched him struggle to keep ahead of the running paint. She was rude not to
help him, but if she went over….
The boy didn’t seem to know where anything
belonged in the art room, and she realized that she had never seen him before. Maybe he’s new. Fighting fear, Alice
stood and got a roll of paper towels from the cupboard. Walking the five steps
she needed to reach this unknown boy was harder for her than a journey across
Death Valley in July.
Alice held out the towels with a shaky hand,
but the boy didn’t respond. She waved them a little, but still nothing. He didn’t
look up.
She cleared her throat. Nothing.
She cleared it louder. Nothing.
“Hey, do you
need these?” The sound of her own voice felt louder than a bomb going off, but
the kid barely noticed. He looked up at her in surprise, and Alice prepared herself
for the inevitable grimace of revulsion.
“Oh sure, thanks.”
He smiled, no sign of shock or horror on his face. Alice stared. For the first
time she could remember, a person had looked at her as if she were anybody
else.
“You’re welcome.”
She stammered. But thank you was in her voice.
Alice was aware of the change in her seat partner
the minute Connie sat down that morning. Instead of seeming awkward and
embarrassed, the girl sat in an aura of anger. She dropped her pink bag carelessly
on the floor, slammed her notebook down on the desk and began scrawling doodles.
Not the usually hearts and flowers, but words. Dark, black words. Alice looked
at Connie with new interest. What could Miss bright, sunshiny cheerleader
possibly have to be angry about? She wondered. Shrugging, she turned to her own
writing, pouring herself back into her own world, where characters were dancing
in a moonlit night.
Connie, frustrated and cranky, scratched out
the sentence she had just written, accidently flinging her pen out of her grasp
in doing so. It landed under Alice’s desk. Both girls felt, rather than heard,
its echo as it landed on the hard white floor.
Alice
swallowed, setting her pencil down. She reached under the table and felt
around. Neither of them breathed, vaguely aware of the other’s thoughts. Alice
found the pen and handed it back to Connie without even turning her head.
In that instant, as the two hands touched,
Connie’s need to blame someone for her troubles erupted.
“Why do you even come here?!” She exploded,
wrenching the pen from Alice’s fingers and jumping to her feet. “You don’t have
friends, you don’t come to school events or activities, you don’t even seem like
you learn. All you do is sit there scribbling in that stupid notebook all class
long every single day. So why do you bother coming to school? Couldn’t you do
that at home without ruining everybody else’s life?” The silence that followed
this outburst was deafening.
Connie gasped, disbelieving of her own words.
Horrified with shame, she collapsed into tears and ran from the classroom.
Alice watched her go, dumfounded and confused. A spark of anger flickered in
her chest, for this blow hurt her worse than all the jabs she had received since
the beginning of the year. Connie, with her good-natured countenance and sweet
smile had always treated her with careful avoidance since that first awkward
encounter. Her beauty and popularity seemed to flaunt itself in the wake of
Alice’s ugliness and loneliness. She tried not to be jealous, but she was. She
hated when people avoided her or treated her as if she didn’t exist, but at the
same time it seemed to make things easier. After all, embarrassment was
preferable to outright hatred. Now, to hear the girl say such things cut Alice
deeply, realizing that Connie had been one of the few people in the school that
she had never heard whispering jokes or snide comments about her. But now this.
Connie, pretty, kind, ASB secretary, cheer squad, straight-A Connie, hated
Alice just as much as the rest of the world.
A single tear slipped from those ice blue eyes.
For some reason, Connie
couldn’t get that horrible face out of her head. It haunted her, appearing
repeatedly in dreams and throughout the day in the halls of Lincoln High. Her A
in English slowly descended to a B and then a C and then even a C-. Every class
was spent dreaming forbidden dreams about the soul locked behind that face,
those ice blue eyes, so filled with…something. Connie couldn’t put her finger
on exactly what. But whatever it was, it broke her heart every time she
remembered it.
Ashamed of
herself for staring, for dreaming, and for being too much of a coward to speak,
Connie avoided Alice. But the more she tried to avoid her, the more the two of
them met. One horrific day, Connie was so engrossed in a novel that she bumped
right into Alice in the hallway. Stammering an apology, she hurried on, aware
that, that lonely figure was still staring after her.
Now, three months into the school year,
Connie was getting desperate. Her parents had met her at the door the day
before with grim faces.
“What’s going on? Since when do you get a C
on any test? English is your best subject!” They were angry, and rightfully so.
She promised to do better, but wondered if she even could now. All Connie’s
grades were slipping and she had been cut from the cheer squad. Her boyfriend
broke up with her in order to date her best friend since kindergarten, and the
ASB vice told her she was failing in her duties as the secretary.
Connie’s world seemed to be falling apart
all around her and she had no one else to blame but herself. Or did she?
The whole thing seemed to have started with
her first bad grade on an English test. And who was to blame for that?
