The Forgotten Girl

by India Hill Brown

Maybe it was an honest mistake, she thought. She did have to spend a lot of time explaining to teachers and other students what the step team actually was.

  Or maybe, just maybe … they didn’t want that snooty, stupid school to be associated with her team.

  The step team, the Beta Club … Iris was a part of things at her school, but when it was time to get recognized for them, she was always forgotten about.

  She left her parents downstairs, cuddled up on the couch, flipping through channels in search of Christmas movies, and passed Vashti in her own room upstairs, playing in her dollhouse. She was talking excitedly to her dolls, giving them directions.

  “Okay, now stand over there,” she heard Vashti say, as if she were talking to a person. Iris scoffed. What was the doll going to do, walk?

  But she thought she heard a voice, a different voice saying, “Okay.”

  She stopped in her tracks.

  Get a grip, Iris, she told herself.

  She walked into her own room to find her window open.

  Again.

  Maybe Mama opened it to let some cool air in?

  She grabbed her tablet off her dresser and flopped onto her bed, looking again at the Beta Club picture on the front page of the school website. She squinted hard at the picture, trying to imagine herself standing there, the phantom image of a brown girl with beads in her hair.

  At school on Monday, Iris’s mom dropped her off personally while she went to speak with the principal about the ceremony.

  “I’ll talk to you about it when you get out of school,” Iris’s mom said from the driver’s seat. Iris just nodded and opened the door.

  “Iris.”

  Iris turned around, her mom’s no-nonsense face breaking into a small smile.

  “Try not to think about it right now. Okay? Recognition isn’t everything. But I’m still going to discuss this with him.”

  Iris nodded and forced a smile back as her mom pulled off in the direction of the principal’s office. She walked toward the building, the brisk air cutting across her face. The snow was turning to slush on the ground, already muddied from the footprints of the other kids who had entered the school before her. She saw the footprints and thought again of the graveyard—how she felt like the hand- and footprints were following her. Maybe one of the spirits of the snow was following her.

  The wind whistled a bit, causing Iris to shiver, before she opened the door to the main entrance of Nelson’s Pond Middle, the small middle school she and Daniel attended. The air was always slightly cooler here because of the breeze that came off the pond behind the school, but Iris couldn’t help thinking of the spirits.

  When you hear the winter wind

  that’s the sound of their screaming.

  She had to get a grip. She shook her thoughts out of her head and rushed to her locker to grab her books.

  Iris walked into social studies, one of the only classes she had with Daniel, and took her seat between Daniel and her friend from the step team, Kayla. The class around her was chattering animatedly about something.

  “What’s going on?” Iris muttered to Daniel, putting a notebook on her desk.

  “Nothing,” Daniel said. He fiddled with his glasses. “It’s not important.”

  “So, were you nervous?” a classmate behind Iris asked Heather. “You’re practically a celebrity now!”

  Heather Benson turned around in her desk and smiled, her long blonde hair hitting Daniel in his face. “Not at all! As editor of the school newspaper, I’m used to interviewing and being interviewed. The one difference is, this was actually televised!”

  Iris rolled her eyes. Of course. Everyone was talking about the Young Captains feature on the news this weekend.

  Kayla looked at Iris. “Why weren’t you there?”

  The jumpy feeling Iris felt about the footprints outside coupled uncomfortably with a sad pang in the middle of her stomach. Step team was so important to her and to her teammates. This weekend, it felt like it didn’t even exist to some people.

  “Yeah, Iris, we missed you!” Heather said, flashing a smile. Iris ignored her.

  “I wasn’t invited. I guess the school forgot to invite me to something else,” Iris said, an edge to her voice. She was already tired of talking about this. “My mom is talking to the principal now to figure out what happened.”

  “Oh, I’m sure it was an accident,” Heather said. “Did your mom check her email spam folder?”

  Iris’s emotions were boiling over. “Yeah, like it was an accident that I didn’t hear about the Beta Club photo? Miss Editor of the Newspaper?” she said, her voice rising.

  “Iris,” Daniel whispered. He jerked his head to the front door, where the teacher was walking in. The class grew quiet around her.

  Heather’s cheeks turned pink. “What, you think I left you out of that photo on purpose? Oh, come on. It was an accident.” She rolled her eyes. “Maybe the Young Captains Society forgot to invite the captain of the step team—or maybe they felt like it was too close to what the dance team does. And dance was already represented.”

  “Just because you can dance, doesn’t mean you can step.” Iris sneered. “So you can just—”

  “Iris! Settle down, please,” Mr. Hammond said.

  Iris looked up at the teacher. “But—I wasn’t—”

  “Iris. Just drop it and settle down.”

  Iris sighed and opened her notebook. Wasn’t Heather going to get called out, too?

  It seemed like Iris kept getting remembered for the bad stuff, but never for the good stuff.

  Class dragged on in another history lesson she’d heard about a million times until Mr. Hammond handed out a stack of papers to each student.

  “A project,” Mr. Hammond said. “About getting to know the community you live in, outside of these walls. Easaw is rich with history, with the town dating back to 1869. You never know what you’ll find right in your own backyard. I have some ideas that you can choose from, or you can come up with your own. This will be done in groups of two. Pick your partner and get together. Be ready to tell me your choice of topic by the end of class.”

  Iris and Daniel looked at each other and grinned. A group project with just the two of them would be fun.

  Daniel scooted his desk to Iris’s and together they looked at the options they could work on for the project.

  They were all boring.

  Iris read off the list. “The Parks of Easaw … the Agricultural Impact of Easaw … the Confederate Soldiers of Easaw …”

  “We’re doing the Confederate Soldiers of Easaw,” Heather announced loudly to her partner and the class. “My daddy has my great-great-grandfather’s Confederate sword. I already know some of the history!”

  “What about the Parades and Festivals of Easaw?” Daniel asked. “That could be fun. I mean, we could talk about the Cornbread Festival since we go every year …”

  Iris scanned the list, again and again. This was all the same stuff she’d learned about ever since second grade. She zoned out, looking around the class at everyone talking excitedly about their projects. Someone was talking about the factories in Easaw, while Kayla and her partner were discussing local sports teams.

  She looked out the window; a cloud covered the sun, casting a shadow over the skinny branches outside. It took her back to Friday night, the way the trees looked like they were waiting for her. The branches stretching out, trying to stop her from leaving. She felt that feeling again, that pull. She looked out the window to see the edge of Nelson’s Pond, the light bouncing off the water in the way she loved.

  Wait. That’s it.

  You never know what you’ll find right in your own backyard, Mr. Hammond had said.

  We could research abandoned graves.

  It wasn’t a bad idea. She could stop thinking about the nightmare she had about the girl in her window. Prove to herself there were no spirits of the snow after her. Then she could go back to not being afraid of anything.

  “Mr. Hammo
nd,” Iris said, raising her hand. “So, we don’t have to pick a topic off of this list?”

  Mr. Hammond rubbed his beard. “No. As long as it has historical context in Easaw, you can pick whatever you want.”

  “Daniel,” Iris said, her voice almost a whisper. “Listen. Let’s do abandoned graves of Easaw.”

  Daniel raised his eyebrows. “Why?”

  “Because that way, we can find out more about that grave we saw and why that girl was buried out there in the woods, of all places.” The thought was knitting together in Iris’s head, faster than Suga’s fingers when she made those scarves for her and Daniel.

  “Iris.” Daniel sighed. “Are you still thinking about that?”

  “Five more minutes, class,” Mr. Hammond said. “Be ready to turn in your topic.”

  Iris looked at Daniel. Daniel looked down at the suggested topics and shrugged.

  “Hmm. It is pretty sad that her grave is just back there, forgotten. We could bring some recognition to it. Okay. It beats writing another essay about the Cornbread Festival.” He wrote Abandoned Graves in Easaw on his paper and circled it.

  Iris grinned. Iris and Daniel’s project was going to be so different that it was bound to get noticed.

  She looked toward the window again, at the trees swaying in the winter wind. The branches looked like old, dead fingers, waving at her.

  Iris and Daniel walked home, passing the basketball court where some boys from school were playing. The boys called and waved to catch Daniel’s attention, but he pretended he didn’t hear them.

  “Come on,” Daniel said, walking past them a little bit faster, turning his face away. Iris jogged a little to catch up with him.

  “Daniel,” Iris said. “What’s up? Why don’t you ever play with them anymore?”

  Daniel shrugged, and Iris frowned. She remembered when Daniel would play basketball every day after school, meeting up with her after she finished step practice so they could walk home together. Now, she realized, he never played anymore.

  “I just don’t. I’ve been having a lot of homework lately. I need to go home earlier to study.”

  “Daniel,” Iris said again. “Really? I know we don’t have all of the same classes, but I think the homework is the same amount—”

  “I just don’t want to right now, okay? I haven’t been in much of a mood to play basketball.”

  Iris opened her mouth to ask Daniel if it was because basketball was his thing with his dad, but Daniel had an edge to his voice that he didn’t normally have, so she decided against it.

  They walked in silence for a little while, passing the courts and the adjacent street with all the small local shops. Iris thought back to the one pair in the class doing a project on Easaw’s most famous small businesses.

  Iris filled the silence by patting her thighs to the rhythm of the new combination she was working on for her step team. They turned onto their street, and Iris stared transfixed at the trees behind their neighbors’ houses, the bare branches curling around and up toward the gray sky. She felt that pull again, the same one she felt the other night. With every gust of wind, the branches swung, beckoning her to the clearing.

  It was still daytime. The weak sun shone down from the gray sky. She wasn’t afraid. Well, she was never afraid. But especially not right now.

  “Hey.” Iris stopped abruptly. “We should go back to the clearing and look at that grave again.”

  Daniel turned to Iris, his brown eyes wide behind his glasses. “Iris, are you serious?”

  “For research! We’re doing a project on abandoned graves, we might as well research the one we just found in our own neighborhood.” The yearning to go back to the clearing was getting stronger. She’d walk straight inside the clearing, right now, if she’d let herself.

  “For research, we should start in the library,” Daniel said.

  “But this is hands-on research, just like when we go outside to look at plants and bugs and … stuff.”

  “Iris, I don’t think that’s the same thing.”

  They continued walking, slowly. Iris could almost hear her name in the wind, in the crunch of the snow on the sidewalk, calling her back.

  Iris. Iris. Iris.

  They paused in front of their houses. Iris felt so strongly that the woods were whispering a secret, and she wanted to know what it was.

  It was strange, knowing that a little girl was buried back there. So close to her own bedroom window. She had to know why, to know what happened to her. Maybe that’s why she had that dream. And the only way to stop herself from having it again was to face it head-on.

  “I’ll see you tomorrow, Iris,” Daniel said, jerking Iris out of her thoughts. She waved as he walked to his house.

  “Hey, baby!” Iris heard the familiar, high-pitched voice of Suga. She peeked her head out and waved. Iris waved back.

  Before she went in her house, Iris turned and looked at the trees again. She saw the trees move, but didn’t feel any wind against her body. The branches were the only things moving around her. They were beckoning to her, telling her to come back.

  The sound of a sports channel murmured through the house, accompanied by her daddy’s occasional clap or groan at the TV. The dinner he made and the dessert Mama made sat heavily in Iris’s stomach.

  Her parents sat on the couch together, and Vashti was in her room, talking, giggling with her dolls.

  Iris was in the dining room, slowly putting her school books back in her book bag.

  “Oh, Iris, I need to talk to you.” Her mom stood up and walked toward her, her lips pursed in a straight line. Iris’s stomach lurched. Did she find out about them sneaking to the clearing?

  “Yes, Mama?”

  Mrs. Rose sighed. “I talked to the principal today about how irresponsible it was that we weren’t given notice about the Young Captains Award Ceremony, and that we had to find out on television with everyone else.”

  “Mm-hmm?” Despite herself, Iris’s stomach jumped again, with a little hope. She couldn’t help it. Maybe they would honor her again, alone, or make an announcement on the intercom, or—

  “He gave the same terrible excuse. That I, along with everyone else, got an email and it must have been in my spam folder. When I assured him it wasn’t, he said that he’d send your certificate in the mail.”

  Iris’s heart sank. While announcing her achievement on the intercom wouldn’t have been as good as being on TV, this wasn’t even close.

  “Don’t worry, Iris, I let him have it, for the both of us.” She gave Iris a hug. “You know what great work you’re doing and so does the step team. I don’t want you to get caught up in doing things for show. Just keep doing what you’re doing. Be so good that they can’t ignore you.”

  Iris just nodded as her mom kissed her on the cheek and said to her father, “I’m going to give Vashti a bath and put her to bed.”

  “Okay,” Daddy grunted, then clapped at the TV. “I’ll be right up.”

  Iris just stood there, watching her dad watching TV, her book bag on her shoulder. She was going to go upstairs, too, but she couldn’t ignore how this news made her feel.

  Be so good they can’t ignore you.

  Iris planned to do that. Once the step team competitions started up again next semester, Iris knew her team would be more than ready. But she wanted to do something now.

  To show Heather and everyone.

  Her project on an abandoned grave in her neighborhood would be so much cooler than Heather’s great-great-grandfather’s Confederate sword. She had to find out more.

  She needed to go back.

  Iris looked around her house. All the lights were on, including the ones on the Christmas tree, making her house feel safe, warm, and cozy.

  She walked behind the couch, through the foyer, to the front door, and looked out of the window beside it. There were the trees, still swaying in the moonlight, so dark compared to the blinking lights on the house in front of them.

  What if the spi
rits of the snow were real, and one caught her this time?

  It’s okay, she thought. Don’t be scared. It’s just research for our project.

  That’s all.

  She watched Mama walk upstairs, and halfway up, Iris blurted out, “Oh! I left my tablet at Daniel’s.”

  Her mother stopped on the steps. “Oh, Iris. When did you take it over there?”

  “Um—today. I stopped by really quickly after school.”

  She absolutely hated lying to her mom. But she had to go see the grave again. She had to have the best project. She had to prove to herself that she wasn’t afraid.

  Iris heard a faint giggle.

  Her eyes widened, until she realized it was Vashti, of course, her laughter coming all the way down the stairs. Iris fought hard not to roll her eyes again, frustrated at herself for jumping, but also at Vashti. She knew playing with dolls could be fun, but was she really laughing that hard at her own jokes? Vashti was probably doing it to get Iris’s attention. Well, she had more important things to do.

  “Can I go get it?” she prompted.

  Mama looked at Daddy on the couch. “Just wait until—”

  “Mama! Daddy!” Vashti yelled. “Are y’all coming?”

  Mama looked at the stairs then at Iris.

  “Okay. But come right back.”

  Finally, her putting all of her attention on Vashti can help me, Iris thought sadly.

  “I will,” Iris said.

  She had to be quick.

  She ran upstairs behind Mama to get her jacket. When she opened her bedroom door, her window was open again, the whistling wind blowing her curtains around.

  Again?

  It had to be Vashti. She was up here by herself.

  She went to the window and quickly did the flashlight signal, hoping Daniel would come with her.

  Just in case.

  Daniel was lying on his bed when he saw it.

  He had been drawing earlier, thinking up ideas of a picture to give to his mother for Christmas, before it got too dark as the sun set behind the house. He just lay there for a second, not getting up to turn on the light in his bedroom.