by S. L. Naeole
“Grace, could you come here, please?” I heard being called out. I cringed as the thick voice of Mr. Branke said my name once more, insuring that if no one had heard him the first time, they did the second.
With resignation, I stood up and began the short journey to the front of the class where Mr. Branke had a stack of papers to pass out. I was two tables away from reaching him when my boot made contact with a substance on the floor that caused me to lose traction and I fell, quite quickly, to the cold linoleum beneath me. My head made a loud cracking sound as it hit the ground and a high-pitched hum began to fill my ears.
There were spangles of black and white that appeared in front of my eyes as I tried to focus on something, anything. I could barely hear the murmur of activity around me as people began crowding over me, their voices a dull buzz, their faces blurred and spotted. I moaned when I tried to raise my head and felt something push me back down.
“Don’t move, Grace,” I heard someone say, but the voice was indistinguishable. “You hit your head very hard on the ground. Just lay there while someone gets the nurse.”
“I need Robert,” I mumbled as I closed my eyes, knowing that no nurse would be able to help me the way he could. “Get Robert.”
There were giggles. I heard them as a female voice said snidely, “I’ll get him, alright.” I wanted to say something in reply but a sharp pain slashed through any intent I might have had. I could feel the throbbing on the side of my head now, a steady base beat that pounded its rhythm permanently into my mind.
As the buzz of voices grew more intense, I felt the need to see what was going on around me. My eyelids lifted and I was staring at a pair of gray pant legs. I lowered my gaze to their shoes and felt my breath catch.
They were brown.
With black laces.
My lungs began to fill with an intense pressure and I blinked, hoping that what I had seen would simply be a reaction from hitting my head. I blinked twice, three times, and the shoes only became clearer. They were a bit more worn than I had remembered them, but they were the same shoes that I had seen that night I had been mowed down.
Even the color of the pants was the same. I exhaled and inhaled at a rapid pace, knowing that I was setting myself up to begin hyperventilating, but not caring. I just needed to get away from this person, whoever it was.
“Grace? It’s okay, Grace. The nurse is coming.”
I shuddered as I recognized the voice that was attached to those shoes as belonging to Mr. Branke. I flinched when I saw his feet tip forward, he knees bending as he knelt down to touch my hair and my shoulder. “It’s okay. You’re going to be fine,” he said, his voice wanting to be comforting but failing miserably.
“Grace?” I heard being called out and my heart leapt as I recognized it. “Grace, it’s Graham. Oh God, what happened?”
“Graham! I slipped on something and fell; I hit my head pretty hard and they won’t let me sit up,” I managed to squeak out. I wanted to shout to the world—or at least to the class—that Mr. Branke was the man who’d run me down a few months ago, but I was too afraid, the horror of that night replaying itself in my mind like a movie stuck on repeat.
Graham grabbed my hand, his grip firm and reassuring. I felt instantly safer and nearly blurted out to him what I had discovered when the sound of more activity shook the two of us apart.
“You’re quite the little disaster magnet, aren’t you?” someone said as a cold hand pressed against my wrist. “You’ve been hit by a car, your friend was shoved into a doorframe, and now you slip on the floor and have probably given yourself a nice little concussion. I’d be worried if I were your friends. Keep this up and you might end up knocking on Death’s door.”
I couldn’t help myself as I started to laugh. “He climbs through my window,” I snickered, the pain of my body shifting with each chuckle causing me to take in deep gulps of air.
“You’re going to have to stop doing that if you want us to get you up and out of here, dear,” the voice said again. I nodded and then groaned at the sharp pain that caused. “I told you.”
I laid still for the rest of the examination while the nurse made sure that I hadn’t broken anything on the way down and could still use my legs and arms to stand up. When she was sure that I would be able to, she and Graham placed their arms around mine and helped me to a standing position. I felt woozy, the outlines of everything around me blending into each other and forming their own abstract shapes.
With tentative steps, the three of us walked out of the classroom and down the hallway towards the nurse’s station. After carefully maneuvering through the doorway, Graham and the nurse helped me to one of the two beds that were crammed into the tiny room. “We don’t get many of you in here at any given time, so they gave us a closet,” the nurse mentioned as she placed a sheet over my legs. “This will keep you warm until we can figure out what we’re going to do with you.”
She whispered some instructions to Graham and then left the room. Graham sat on the bed opposite of mine and started chuckling. “You know, if you wanted to give the school something to talk about besides Stacy and me, you could have just ran through the classroom naked. It would have saved you all of this pain.”
I glowered at him from beneath heavy lids. “I didn’t slip because of you. Something was on the floor when Mr. Branke-”
I stopped speaking and Graham’s head snapped to attention at my sudden silence. “What’s the matter, Grace?”
“Mr. Branke. He’s the one who ran me over,” I breathed, the image of his shoes once again filling my mind. I could hear the crunching of asphalt as the shoes began to walk away, leaving me on the cold, empty road alone and broken. “He…he’s the one who left me there. I saw his shoes today, they’re the same ones.”
Graham moved quickly to the floor beside me, his face rigid with shock. “Are you sure? I mean, your vision is kind of blurry—you did hit your head pretty hard—maybe you made a mistake?”
“No. I know those shoes, Graham. They were right in front of me,” I protested, afraid that he’d crack some joke about my being obsessed with shoes or something in an attempt to change the subject.
“Okay, okay Grace. What do you want to do about it?”
“I don’t know,” I whimpered. After all this time, I had no clue what I wanted to do, or what I should do. I had given up on ever finding out who it was and now that I was sure, I didn’t know what the next step was.
“Well, I think you should call the cops,” Graham said as he held my hand in his. “We’re not a very big town. Finding Mr. Branke should have been a piece of cake for them.”
The thought of having to tell the police, having to face Mr. Branke afterwards brought on a wave of panic that quickened the pace of my breathing once again. Graham squeezed my hand to calm me, his free hand patting my shoulder in a comforting gesture that did nothing to calm or comfort me.
“I don’t know if I can do this,” I said. “The last time I spoke to those cops, they treated me as though I had been the one to blame, that I had rode my bike in front of the car on purpose.”
Graham sucked in his breath as he heard this for the first time. “Why didn’t you tell this to me? Did you tell this to Robert?”
I shook my head and then moaned in pain—it felt like my brain was bouncing around the spiked cavern that was my head. “My dad was pissed, but they said they needed to know that I wasn’t partially to blame, and that my reaction was enough to convince them that I hadn’t been at fault. But they didn’t apologize, and kept looking at me as though they didn’t believe me.”
“Why haven’t you told Robert about this? I know his family has a lot of money. That would have greased the wheels a bit, you know? Made this more of a priority with the police.”
I sighed and closed my eyes at the suggestion. “I don’t want him to use that money on something like this. The police didn’t have a lot to go on, and I mean, all I could remember was a pair of brown shoes. There are over eight-tho
usand people living in Heath. How many guys own brown shoes?”
“So what makes you so sure that Mr. Branke’s brown shoes are the ones you saw?”
I felt myself shudder as I saw the shoes once more behind closed lids. “I just do.”
Graham patted my shoulder once more and we sat in silence for the next few minutes until the nurse returned with an ice pack. “Okay, Grace. I’ve called your dad and he’s on his way to come and get you. Graham, I think you need to get back to class. I’ll write you a pass and you can give it to your teacher.”
I heard her leave and opened my eyes to look at Graham still kneeling beside the low lying bed. “How did you know I had fallen anyway?” I asked.
He shrugged his shoulders, confusion written plainly on his face. “I honestly didn’t. I got a strange feeling that something was wrong, like a prickly feeling on the back of my neck, and then I heard this voice in my head that told me to get up and to check on you. It was like my conscience or something was warning me that you had hurt yourself. I didn’t think much about it, but now…well, now it freaks me out.”
My eyes bulged at his description. He didn’t notice and continued. “You’d think that the voice of your conscience would sound like yourself, you know? But mine didn’t. It sounded metallic at first, like those cartoon aliens we used to watch when we were kids, but then when it got clearer, it sounded like…”
“Like what?” I wanted to know.
He grinned guiltily as he answered, “Lark.”
I groaned once again. “Oh dear bananas,” I murmured as I rolled onto my back and stared up at the popcorn ceiling. “What else did she—um, your conscience tell you?”
Graham stood up to stretch his legs and looked up as well, the grin never leaving his face. “I cannot explain it, Grace. I mean, it felt like Lark was in my head telling me that you needed my help, and it kept repeating over and over again until I got to you.” He lowered his head to look directly into my eyes. “It sounds crazy, doesn’t it? I mean, it does to me. Why would I hear her voice in my head? And why would her voice be telling me that you were hurt?”
“I don’t know,” I said softly, hating myself, hating the lie. I turned my head away to stare at the cement wall beside me—it couldn’t make me feel guilty, too.
“I’m not going to lie to you, Grace. I wish it hadn’t stopped. I hadn’t felt that at peace inside of my head before. Even if the only thing I could think about was you being hurt, it was like her voice made things okay…and I hate it,” he admitted sadly. “Look, I’m going to get back to class. I’ll see you after school, okay?”
The shuffling of his feet was the only clue to his leaving. I waited until I heard the soft thump of the door closing before I turned around and focused on what Graham had told me. For whatever reason, Lark felt it was important that Graham come to help me, and she had gone against her self-imposed ban of entering his thoughts to do so.
I tried to understand why, but aside from him being my best friend, there wasn’t any reason why he would have a need to be there. I raised my hand to the side of my head and felt around gingerly for the spot that I had hit on the ground. The lump that met my fingers was larger than I had anticipated, and felt like a cucumber was protruding from beneath my skin. “Ugh, now it’ll look like I’ve got a horn shooting out of the side of my head,” I mumbled to myself.
“No it won’t,” the nurse said as she walked in with my dad right behind her. “Although, it doesn’t add to your looks either.”
Dad pushed past her and, with ungentle haste, he picked me up from the bed and cradled me in his arms like he used to when I was a little girl. “Grace, I don’t know what I’m going to do with you if you keep giving me scares like this,” he said, his voice muffled by my hair.
“I’m okay, Dad. I just slipped,” I said as sincerely as I could. His burst of emotion had made me weepy and I didn’t particularly like it. Not when I had the pressing issue of Mr. Branke and his shoes on my mind.
“Listen kiddo, you’re the sole reason why my hair is mostly gray and thinning. How am I supposed to face the new one without a full head of hair?”
Dad pointed to the spot at the top of his head that had been thinning out since I was thirteen. I rolled my eyes, wincing at the pain that caused, and then reassured him once again that I was fine. “I’m going to have a headache, but I’m not nauseated or anything. My vision has improved, too. I can definitely see that you’ve got more than enough hair to greet little Matthew with, so I don’t see how you can try and place any more guilt on me than I already have.”
“Nevertheless, I’m taking you to the emergency room and have you checked out. The doct-”
An unintelligible sound shot out of my mouth, cutting him off before he could finish his sentence. “Dad, you can’t! They remember you there. They might lobotomize me if they see you again!”
He brushed off my concern and patted my head, my role as helpless daughter going to his head. “You’re going to be fine. They’ll just check you out, and I’ll stay out of their way. I won’t complain or accuse them of doing or not doing anything. I promise.”
I eyed him skeptically, not believing him for a second. He laughed at that and patted my head once more. When I winced his laughter silenced and a contrite look spread across his face. “Oh, your head. I’m sorry!”
I squirmed out of his arms and planted my feet onto the ground, determined to walk out of the room on my own. “Well, let’s get this over with then,” I sighed.
“Alright. Oh, hey, before I forget, your biology teacher met me outside to explain everything before I showed up so that I wouldn’t frighten you with my concern. I think you should thank him for that because I might have ended up making things worse…you know me,” Dad said as we exited the nurse’s station and headed towards the school’s main entrance.
I stopped moving and turned to face him, shock and fear overtaking the pain the sudden loss of motion caused. “I can’t, Dad,” I gasped. “I can’t.”
He gripped my arms in his, my change in mood transferring my fear onto him. “Why? What is it, baby?”
I looked into his eyes and I could see my reflection in them, I could see my pupils dilated in fear. “He’s the one.” Those three words left my lips in a breathless whisper, almost silent and imperceptible, but he heard it, and he knew what it was that I meant.
This time, it was his mood that changed rapidly. His face lit up like a red beacon of fury as his hands loosened their grip on me, his arms dropping to his sides. I grabbed for him, knowing what it was he was intent on doing, fearing that nothing good would come of it. “Come on, Dad. We’ve got to call the police,” I said in a much firmer tone. I pulled him away from the direction I knew he was fixed on heading.
He followed, somewhat unwillingly, saying nothing until we were in the car and leaving the parking lot. “How long have you known?” he finally managed to say after all we could see of the school was its outline in the rearview mirror.
“Not long. I realized it after I fell,” I answered softly.
“I’m going to call the police as soon as we get to the hospital. This is going to be finished today. I promise you, Grace,” Dad said determinedly. “He smiled at me, actually smiled at me when he saw me. That bast-”
“Dad!” I yelled as he raced towards a stoplight on the red. Dad’s foot slammed on the brakes and we screeched to an undignified halt. I braced myself against the dashboard, one hand over my fluttering heart. My head began to throb again and I moaned as the pain grew worse.
“Damnit, I’m sorry Grace,” Dad said as he fidgeted with one hand to comfort me and steer with the other. “I’m not good at this emotional driving thing. I must have been a woman in another life.”
“Dad,” I grumbled beneath heavy lids. “That’s not nice.”
He chuckled at my complaint and patted my leg. “Well, when you learn how to drive, you can prove me wrong. Grace?”
I mumbled something incoherent as the black and whit
e spangles returned to my vision. I tried to rub them out, my hands pressing against my lids, but they remained steadfast. “I think you’d better hurry up and get us to the hospital, Dad,” I managed to get out before everything turned black, the high-pitched hum returning to my ears and blocking out any other sound.
***
It’s something quite surreal, waking up in a strange room, surrounded by strange people who are all talking and the only sound you can hear is the pounding of your own heart, out of synch with the moving lips, yet creating an interesting beat all its own. The feeling of something cold rushing up my arm and the painful pinch in my hand told me that Dad had made it to the hospital, but being unable to hear anything made me question whether or not my lobotomy theory had been proven true.
I opened my mouth to say something but the words held fast to my tongue. No one above me seemed to notice as they continued to work around me. There were some familiar faces and some that I didn’t recognize from the many recent trips to the emergency room I had made over the past few months. Someone flashed a bright light into my eyes, moving it from side to side; my own personal light show.
The doctor that had treated Stacy looked at me with a blank expression on his face. He said something to the nurse standing next to him, but his words contained no sound.
And yet, I knew what it was that he had said. I could hear the words in my head, like a little song that flowed in time with the beat from my heart. He was asking for ammonium carbonate. I recognized that from chemistry class the year before as smelling salts. The nurse handed him what looked like the wrapping for a suppository, which he opened. He then leaned in towards me, his hand extended out farther till it was directly beneath my nose.
The intense odor that felt like my head had been dunked into a bucket of cleaning solution hit my nose like a sucker punch. It stung and burned and I could do nothing to get away from it.
