He winks at me, noticing me waiting for him for the first time. He takes the heavy briefcase that has begun to feel like a suitcase while I have waited patiently for my hug. He ruffles my red curls, that he believes my mom and I gain our tempers from, before heading out the door. He is still talking to whomever is on the other side of that conversation and never looks back at me when he closes the car door.
I watch my father’s black sedan retreat silently from the driveway through the large window and I know with a heart crushing truth that I am not going to be getting my good-bye hug today. He forgot me.
“Scooter?” My mother is calling to me but I stand still, frozen, watching the black car as it makes its way down the street with high hopes that he will turn around. He will return with a big smile and an apology covered in tight hugs and kisses to make up for it. When I watch the last view of it turn the corner, I know I am watching in vain. I sigh and make my way to the kitchen where Mom is waiting. I would have really liked a good-bye hug today.
My plate is waiting for me at the high kitchen island. The dark granite of the counter mirrors my mood after being so easily forgotten by the man I look to for protection and guidance. She has made a smiley face out of the pancakes, bacon, and eggs. The bacon smiles as proudly as she does at me with my discovery. She knows that he forgot my hug and is trying to make up for it. Moms do that. Sometimes, moms have to do that a lot.
I start my breakfast with the fluffy yellow hair fashioned from the eggs because I hate them the most. They are spongy and moist, feeling weird on my tongue. They slide down my throat with cold lumps like oatmeal left out too long. I will save the bacon for last. It’s better when it is crunchy from sitting, anyway. So, it will sit and it will wait just as I did moments ago, but unlike Dad, I won’t forget.
Who could forget bacon? I ask myself. My dad. I bet my dad could.
I watch my mom dance around the kitchen cleaning up the many pans used to cook breakfast. She sings off key with her songs filling the breakfast fragrant kitchen. She sings into whichever cooking utensil she has in her hand at the time of high notes like a make believe radio diva. Her long ponytail swings back and forth with her movements. Her brown boots click on the tiles, keeping beat with the music from the radio as she cleans. Her smile is contagious and my sour mood can’t win against it. I smile at her between bites of my breakfast. Her antics are helping me to forget about the missing hug and the disappointment it causes me. Moms do that.
They keep secrets. They make special breakfasts and pack special lunches. They help with your hair, tying perfect bows with the ribbons no matter how many attempts it takes, or the words muttered under breaths. They dance around knowing how silly they look just for a smile. And they never, ever, forget good-bye hugs.
CHAPTER 3
My hair is held high in pretty white ribbons that refused to tie evenly at first, resulting in Mom whispering words that I thought only Dad knew. The perfectly arched bows are securing two perfect red pigtails that spiral down around my face with many layers of hairspray holding them firm and thicker than the paste that our teacher calls glue. I can feel them patting my cheeks when I turn my head and I smile with the sensation. The spirals bounce as I tilt my head from side to side with the music in my mom’s car. She is still attempting to sing along with the songs that surround us with their upbeat rhythms. There is no shot of a singing television show try-out in her future, but I love her voice just the same.
The car line wraps around the school with the extra amount of nervousness of today’s well known event. Kids that would normally ride the bus are being driven in today with the extra hugs and kisses needed to encourage them through the morning. An excess of teachers have been brought out in their bright orange vests to help direct the traffic and dislodge stubborn kids from their parent’s arms or legs with gentle smiles to mask their annoyance. My mother sings extra loud as we watch the added confusion and I feel as if I am being hauled off to something much worse than a school day with her over emphasis of false cheer.
“Good morning, Margaret! Are you ready for school today?” Mrs. Schinder asks me as she opens my door. It is a shock to see her out from behind her long desk in the main office. A shock that I know my face did not cover well.
Normally she holds the position of school secretary as formidably as a military commander holds his squad in check. To have her out among the teachers is a sure sign of the break down of control or the amount of extra concern that has been taken for today. It does not help to calm my rumbling stomach at all. Between her and my mother, I may be honestly sick.
“Scooter, it won’t be so bad, ok?” My mother’s voice is soft and holds the same comforting pitch used after a nightmare. “Your father and I are meeting for lunch and then we will be seeing the doctor to get ours, too. After dinner, we will all go out for ice cream. The three of us. We can swap stories over who cried the most, ok?” She smiles at me while twisting a section of my hair around her long delicate finger with genuine concern. My stomach is not convinced.
“I bet your dad will cry the most.” She whispers it, with a hidden smile, and I join her in the enjoyment of the thought of my tall father sobbing like a baby in a white, sterilized doctor’s office.
“That will teach him for forgetting me and not hugging me good-bye.” I whisper back, almost ashamed of my enjoyment at the thought of him crying. Almost.
“You bet it will!” She wrinkles her nose while smiling at me before giving me a wink in female solidarity.
She kisses my forehead as Mrs. Schinder drums her fingers on the car door, growing impatient with our delay. “Don’t let the troll bully you.” She whispers one final good-bye before I exit the car, as we are unable to prevent it any longer.
She keeps pace with me as she pulls forward through the long, winding line. We make faces at one another through the lowered window until she is forced with the flow of traffic to drive away. She waves one more time into the rear-view mirror at me and I fight my stomach to be brave.
I am not a baby like some kids that are still clinging to their parents, afraid of the shot and the possibilities of the stories they have been told. I am not on the outside, anyway. On the inside, I desperately want her car to turn around and come get me. Just like last time, I watch a car’s taillights before the red glow from her brakes slips from view. This car doesn’t turn around either. It also keeps going straight ahead into the day, so, so do I.
Pulling my rolling, soft pastel colored book bag behind me, I walk to my normal morning group of friends in our normal morning spot. The wheels catch on the segments of the walkway, making a clumping noise when the wheels overcome the cement obstacles. It sounds like a beating heart. This false heart is beating with the same speed as my very real one. Both pound in my ears with each step that I am taking that leads me closer to the school’s entrance.
It’s just a shot, right? Has become my silent mantra of courage in my mind. If I repeat it enough, I may even start to believe it.
Charlotte stands in the middle of our group like every normal school morning. She is wearing her dark jeans and a billowing style of a shirt. Today, it is a bright neon color that helps her to stand out even more among us with the over dramatic flair that she enjoys. She is also taller than the rest of us. Now, draped in the bright color, she seems to tower over us. Her boots shine with their high quality brown leather that reaches higher on her legs than most would dare at our age. Her lips are a deeper hue than they should be with the lip-gloss she has placed upon them. Something, also, the rest of us would not dare to do.
My parents call her family “new money”. I am not sure where one gets “new” money from, but Charlotte sure does like to show it off from the perfectly salon colored hair on her head to her high fashion book bag. All of it has to match and today is no exception. My dress doesn’t seem as pretty as it did a few hours ago. I slide into the space between April and Teddy as Charlotte, o
nce again, begins to spread horror stories of what is to come with great theatrical renditions of what she knows to be true.
“They will line us all up and then this giant machine will be aimed at our arms. When we stand next to it, it will shoot this huge needle into our arm like those sliding doors in the stores that just sense when someone is near. This chemical will then swim through our body with all these viruses in it. But the viruses are, like, dead so we won’t get sick from them.” Charlotte uses impressive hand gestures to accent her impressive knowledge on a very impressive situation. One of us is not impressed.
“We are going to have dead stuff inside us?” April’s face sours with the thought.
“I had a dead fish once. It didn’t swim at all.” Meghan shrugs, implying she doesn’t believe Charlotte, but not willing to actually say it. Yet.
“Not, like, that kind of dead. Like, a different dead.” Charlotte says this as if it should make perfect sense now to us with her definite clarification of the matter. It doesn’t. At least not to me.
“Dead is dead. How can something move if it is dead?” Meghan continues to push the boundaries of Charlotte’s logic with her stubbornness to fall in line like the rest of us good soldiers.
“It’s a different type of dead and you’re just too stupid to understand it.” Charlotte folds her arms across her chest, unhappy to have her words doubted. It is a very much a “so there” posture.
“I’m not the one that believes dead things can move around. My dog didn’t move. My fish didn’t move. That’s how you know something is dead. They don’t move.” Meghan stands firm with her voice and posture about her beliefs on the matter like a Christian on a Crusade.
Neither Charlotte’s crossed arms nor her glare affects Meghan. She is the only one that it doesn’t. The rest of us have already begun to take hidden steps backwards, afraid of the reaction Charlotte will have with the gauntlet thrown at her feet.
Whatever that explosion may have been, Meghan is saved from as the loud chime of the bell sends its normal three rings across the green grass of the yard. Charlotte’s glare hints that this is not over yet. With teachers corralling the large amount of kids that mingle together at the entrance today, it is easy to slip away from those hate-filled eyes when we separate into our class groups, but we still keep our steps in a backwards retreat though. Just in case.
Charlotte is the oldest, requiring her to leave first. Her hair swings with her anger over not being able to defend her logic from what she views as an attack instead of a conversation. Who knows, maybe it was an attack. Meghan is not a huge fan of Charlotte to begin with. Everyone knows that and we were reminded of it.
I’m more concerned with the large machine that will be used to give us the shot than over what the shot is, or what it may do or not do to my body. The idea of dead things swimming around inside me does not make me feel any better though. Or, the not really dead things, depending on who you want to believe. Either way, my stomach does not approve.
April’s face is still contorted with wrinkles of concern over it. “Do you think she meant like dead, dead? Or just like ….” Her voice trails off, unsure of what else dead could be, but dead.
“Maybe it is one of those medical things that doesn’t make sense unless you have a big framed piece of paper on a wall behind a big wooden desk.” I offer, as the only hope I have to understand it all myself.
She nods, seeming to be content with my answer.
If only Charlotte was so easily convinced of such things. I roll my eyes with the thought. Santa will come in July before Charlotte would ever agree with another.
April, Teddy, and I walk along the brightly colored purple and teal halls leading to our classroom. Normally, we would skip along the patterned tiles, avoiding the “cracks” as we call out the classic rhyme. Today though, we march, lifeless, along the brightly painted halls with each of us lost in our own mental debates over what today will bring for us.
Our silence presents our teachers with added concerns as they watch us file into the rooms with our silent foreboding. The whole school is more restrained today with the knowledge of what lies ahead. We pout and sulk, knowing we are unable to avoid it with the grace that only those of our youth can get away with and master.
We flop into desks. Book bags “accidentally” fall too hard from shoulders, hitting the floor with loud, unnecessary noises. Arms cross, eyes glare and lips frown all in silent conversations. Conversations that express our moods and the thoughts that are transforming us into the cranky, moody creatures that now fill the room.
Our teacher’s name is Mrs. Mary Lamb. Seriously, I can’t make this stuff up. Of course, this means that our room is themed after the classic nursery rhyme. At the start of the school year, we were each asked to make our own cotton stretched lamb to place along the wall to display our names like dining table place mats marking our territories. Now, the room is filled with different designs of white lambs and their black drawn eyes of many sizes.
I named mine after my own lamb from home even if my name is written on the pink collar around its neck. This way, he truly is with me everywhere I go. His bright colored smile is not as comforting as the one that awaits for my return home, but it helps as he stares down at me from his high place on the wall to brighten long school days, like today.
The rest of the room’s walls are painted in a vivid mural depicting rolling green hills of a countryside scene. It winds around the room to focus on Mrs. Lamb’s desk, framing her within the classic story of a girl and her lamb’s trip to school. I used to find it pleasant and peaceful. Now it seems too bright for a room filled with so many silent frowns.
Today’s schedule is placed upon the board, but the only entry our eyes see is the one labeled “special activity” and it falls far down on the list, making the day loom long and depressing before us. Nervous glances are passed around the room with each new set of eyes that finds the time slot. The shared horror stories of the potential possibilities of what may happen are easy to read among the many faces of my classmates. It brings forth new versions with each sigh as we all wonder what the other has heard and who has the truth.
If there was even a truth that was told? I wonder, with all the many stories that float around, and each of them being more horrible than the last.
Busy work is waiting on the desks to entertain the ones already here while the time passes for each student to make their way into the classroom. Normally, it is activities blurred with the current spelling list or main topic of a subject disguising it as an attempt at fun.
They are rarely ever fun. Today we have a coloring sheet that has nothing to do with any topics we have held for the past week, or year for that matter. It is a blatant attempt to distract our minds from the very thing they are soaking in. The fact that Mrs. Lamb is trying so hard to distract us from the “special activity” makes it seem that much larger of a threat. The busy work has failed.
The distraction only coaxes a select few into ease of mind. These are the same ones that we often find easily distracted with bright colors or shiny objects. Some stare in panic, trying to remember what the scene in front of them is supposed to link back to as if some important fact of the past lesson has slipped from them and now taunts them. Some have caught on, like myself, to the reason for such a detour from the typical and are glancing around to see if they are the only ones. We hold a silent conversation when we meet the gaze of another that recognizes the truth. For something that our parents told us would be so simple, there sure is a lot of “to do” to avoid it from not only them, but now the school as well. If a pony were to walk in right now, I would know that I am doomed.
CHAPTER 4
“At this time,” Mrs. Schinder’s voice comes over the school’s speakers and we all stand, programmed to do so by the many mornings spent following the same routine. Today though, the routine is about to be thrown out and the confusion it causes
stirs more than just trouble for the teachers. “We will have all staff, excluding teachers and office support, to report to the gym for their vaccinations.”
Just the word finally said aloud by the school’s personnel results in many shuffling and hushed, whispering voices. The elephant in the room has finally been acknowledged and it frees us to speak of it. Some speak, some just start to cry. Someone find something shiny, stat!
“Teachers, please disregard all previous planning for the student vaccinations. At this time, please go ahead and start lining up your students and wait for further instructions.”
The loud sound of the system being disengaged with its loud rattling is the only sound now that is echoing through the painted overly pastel halls. The combination of the words “students” and “vaccinations” has stolen all speech from not only us, but the teachers as well.
Adults have a way of reading between the lines that we have not yet grasped. They no longer spell out words but punctuate the silence with hidden looks and expressions. Something about the sentence, other than the obvious inclinations, is twisting Mrs. Lamb’s normally pretty face into many deep wrinkles of concern. She looks like she may need some busy work now, too.
Rows of eyes are resting on her as we wait for instructions. We are all still standing, waiting for the Pledge that never comes. There is no “Star Spangled Banner” today. There is just a prolonged moment of silence in our confusion.
Mrs. Lamb rearranges the papers on her desk to mask her lack of knowledge that has prompted the schedule change, but she still instructs us just the same. A good teacher is not just one that can lead a class, but also one that can hold control under any circumstance. We learned the first week in the school year that Mrs. Lamb is not afraid of being in control.
“Let’s go ahead and clean up our areas and pack away our book bags under our desks. Go ahead and leave that sheet on your desk. We will work on it later.” Her face may still hold confusion but there is no room for any in her demeanor.
The Risen (Book 2): Margaret Page 2
