by Sarwah Creed
As we walked, all eyes were on me. But now, I knew that it wasn’t because I wasn’t the only one in uniform.
My bra was on display, like the middle buttons had all popped, maybe when I was distracted looking through a window which reminded me of a cathedral that I’d visited once when we went to New York. The name, I forget. But the window, I remember being amazed by it, like I was a few seconds ago. The same time it’d taken for my buttons to pop.
I rushed past Claire, “I need to go back to the room. This just doesn’t fit!”
I’d moved too fast, because this time it wasn’t my buttons that popped, but a large crack in my skirt. That was what it sounded like, nails on a chalk board, but it wasn’t nails. It was my zipper of my ever so short mini blue and grey pleated skirt popping and my blazer tearing apart at the seams.
“Tomorrow they’ll forget about seeing your body on display.”
Again, I didn’t feel well.
I heard the words, “Ms. Harris. I suggest you find your way to…”
And that was all I heard as I bent down to vomit. Yes, over Mr. Hawk. He’d opened his door and I bet that he would close it now, as the remains of the lunch came pouring out of me and all over his suit. His expensive suit. The remains of my uniform ripped at the seams and I cried as I dropped on the floor as cheers of laughter poured in each direction.
“Ms. Claire Winters what have you done?” Mr. Hawk asked her.
“Mr. Hawk, she insisted on wearing my uniform. She said that we were the same size.”
“Clearly not. I’ll take her back to the room and get this mess sorted out.”
“Yes, Mr. Hawk.”
The lying bitch. I turned to face her, and I could see a big smile on her face. Not only was Sarah the bitch of the school, but Claire was even worse! She’d pretended that she was decent, but I could tell that there was nothing decent about her. Not fucking at all.
Chapter Fifteen
Mr. Hawk managed to get me to my room, my ruined clothes covered by his suit jacket, but he didn’t say a word. I was practically naked with only my Mickey Mouse panties and bra on my body. Oh, let’s not forget my shoes and my knee-high socks. I was completely embarrassed. Something that I’d never experienced before.
Sure, I’d seen other kids in the school being bullied, questioned it and then been told ‘don’t get involved, or you’ll be next’ and that was enough for me to back away from it.
But, I hadn’t been here a complete day and so far, it was a living nightmare. I thought about little George Burns, a comedienne from back in the day, having a sign saying ‘kick me’ on his back all day and being warned that if he removed it then he’d have a worse day the next day.
It never stopped the bullying though, even though he wore the sign all day.
He would have it on his back every single day and then still be bullied the next day and more.
I felt like shit, remembering the many times I’d seen shit like that happen and had decided that being in the dark, being one of the quiet ones and pretending nothing was going on, was the better way to go.
Was this my punishment?
As if being a bastard child, losing my Gran, and then my mom wasn’t enough?
No, I’d been humiliated on the first day of school and there was no turning back. I told Aunt Rose that I would give it a try, I promised the same thing to Teresa and Ava, but I was regretting that decision deeply. I hated the fact that it’d only been an afternoon and I had to wonder what was in store for me tonight, tomorrow or even the next day. This had to be a teaser of what life was like here and I didn’t care if I’d made a promise. This was one that I wasn’t going to keep. It had to be broken, or I’d be even more broken than I already was, and I didn’t want to know what that meant or felt like.
“I want to go home.”
I didn’t even bother changing or hiding my body. I sat there with his suit jacket hiding my body my head down because it was too heavy to lift right now. I wanted to curl up and die, but not until I’d told him what I thought about his precious school and the students here.
He stopped in his tracks as he headed to my side of the room to get my things to help me get ready for class. He had to understand that there was no way that I was going to class. Not today, not ever.
“But, you only just arrived…”
He didn’t get to finish his sentence as I dashed to the bathroom once more not only to throw up once, but twice. I didn’t think that I had anything left inside of me as I soon realized that it wasn’t over with.
Holy fuck!
This was a nightmare, one that I didn’t need to be a fucking fortune teller to know that if I stayed here, if I didn’t leave, then this would be it for me. My mom’s life story came to a bitter end, I had no intention of making mine come to the same sad ending.
Chapter Sixteen
I sighed as I woke up in the room, a bedroom that Mr. Hawk said that I could stay in for a few days. A few days to think it all over.
How not to be bullied?
Or how to live with being bullied?
That part of the conversation we never covered, but then again, we didn’t say much about anything apart from him calling the school nurse. He’d told me after that I could move to another room, in the main house. His house. Mr. Hawk’s. That was two days ago. I’d been online, spoken to the girls and they’d told me to get the fuck out of here. They wished they’d been here to help me, and I felt the same way, but didn’t tell them that, there was no need to make them feel worse.
I’d stayed in this room, to myself.
Waiting.
Waiting to leave.
Not having the courage to tell Aunt Rose, let alone Uncle Graham about my fate. I just sent them both a text saying that the academy was hard, and I had a lot of studying to do. True, Mr. Hawk did bring a few books for me to look over and I was a straight A student back home, but those books made me feel as if I’d need to catch up by a year or two.
Another good reason to go back home.
I didn’t know what I hated more, being here or wanting to leave. I’d spent a short time deciding if I wanted to come here in the first place. I’d decided that I owed it to my aunt to try and all I could think about now was my first day being my last.
There was a knock on the door, and it didn’t take a genius to figure out who was on the other side.
“Come in, Mr. Hawk.”
I was tempted to say, ´my door is always open´.
But, I wasn’t in the mood to make a joke with him or anyone. I decided that I just wanted to go home, until I realized that my home was the bank’s. And on the other side of the world, wherever Aunt Rose happened to be at any given time.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to disturb you. But I heard that you hadn’t had breakfast and it’s nearly lunch time.”
I stood up as he spoke, I was looking out of the window to the left. Not the right. The right side was the academy, the left was fields and in the distance, it looked like mountains. Either way, it wasn’t the academy. Students. Bullies. Everything that I’d encountered since I set foot in this academy. The view to the left reminded me for some crazy reason of being back at Gran’s. A different type of field, but it still gave me the calming effect of thinking that I was free. Something that I’d never really thought about until he walked through the door.
“Am I free to go out?”
I came out with the first thing that came through my head.
Then I wondered who had told him that I hadn’t had breakfast? His housekeeper, Magdalena undoubtedly. The one that was nice if I made sure that the conversation stayed on what was in the pancakes, what spices were used on the chicken, or anything to do with cooking, but turned to silence if I asked a personal question.
“Free to go out?” His eyebrows pulled down in confusion until I pointed to the fields. “Ah, out. Yes, of course. You are not a prisoner. I just wanted you to have time to get over that bug you seemed to have on your first day here. And the things
that happened, as well. I wanted the ones that caused some of your discomfort to have time to think about what they’d done too.”
I didn’t think that it would go that far. For some reason I thought that they belonged, and I didn’t and that was my punishment. End of story. I didn’t think that they would get punished for it.
“What happened to them?”
I had a feeling that he would say, none of your business.
But instead he said, “Well. The main culprit and the other two have been put on detention and her privileges have been removed for the rest of the month. We will not tolerate bullying at the academy. Not for one second.”
He looked at me, maybe to ask if I was satisfied with his punishment or maybe he thought that by telling me this I would want to stay.
It didn’t. Knowing that there were consequences to what happened, told me that it would happen again. They’d want payback for their punishment, even though it was their own faults they were being punished.
I didn’t care.
My mind was focused on one thing and one thing alone.
Outside.
I turned to put on my sneakers and walked up to him.
“Would you mind showing me outside?”
For the first time, since I met him, his eyes softened and his mouth curled into what I thought would be a smile, but it didn’t as it hovered in this position.
“Sure.”
I nodded my head. I didn’t thank him or even feel pleased about going outside. I was just relieved that I could go out. That’s all I wanted to do. Go out and not feel like a prisoner. I hated exercising, but my heart was racing at the idea of going outside. Even if he wasn’t smiling, I knew I was the minute I heard the door close behind us.
****
He talked as we stepped around the grounds and for a moment I thought that we weren’t exactly friends but the division between principal and student had disappeared as he cleared his throat and started to talk about the next steps.
“I just wanted you to know that if you decide to leave, then I would understand. What you went through no one should suffer. Especially not at the hands of other students here, even more so during your first day. I don’t encourage my students to act that way.”
“So, if they’d done it on the second day or second week, then it would be okay?”
He shook his head. “No. But I’m sure that bullying existed even at your old school. We try to put an end to it here, prevent it, but this caught me by surprise. I never expected such behavior from one of my students.”
I stopped in my tracks remembering the fate of others who had been bullied and remembering witnessing and feeling guilty for not doing anything about it. But still not doing anything about it, after witnessing it over and over again.
“No, I suppose you didn’t,” I answered him and pushed hair out of my face. “I remember seeing it at my old school, but I didn’t expect it here, at all. Maybe a little bit, I am the new girl, but nothing like that total humiliation. She told me that was my uniform, and even when I asked for a new one, she insisted I wear that one. It was just…”
My words trailed off as tears thickened my voice. I looked away and he broke in this time.
He stopped to look around, anywhere but right at me. “I see. So, you’ve never been bullied before, but you’ve witnessed it?”
I wanted to ask him something else, but I just nodded confirming what he’d already said about me.
“I see.”
His favorite line.
“Well, it wasn’t a pleasant experience for you or for me. I pride myself on Hawk Academy being one of fine-tuned students and what you experienced three days ago, was far from that.”
Three, I thought that it was two?
They say that time flies by when you’re having fun. I just realized that the saying wasn’t only describing about having fun, but about being tortured too.
Disgraced.
Making you feel completely insignificant in so many ways.
“Why is being an orphan so bad?”
He chuckled and I didn’t know if he was mocking me or not, but I didn’t like it. I stopped dead in my tracks.
“It’s not.”
He cleared his throat as his smile was met with my hands on my hips and my eyebrows pulled together.
“Most of the students have both mothers and fathers present in their household. It doesn’t mean that it is a happy household, it is just that your situation is a little different and this is the problem.”
“Sorry?”
Now, I was completely confused.
“Different is something that some students are not used to. Not only students, but adults too.”
I was no clearer and it must have been written on my face as he went on to explain.
“You are an exception to the norm. Students should want to get to know you better. But the unknown brings out fear in others. I’m not sure why, but it is a fact. Studies prove this theory. So, what happens is that when people see something different, they tend to lash out and feel that they need to be protected from the unknown quantity. They don’t realize or even comprehend that the one that is different needs more protection than they do.”
I asked the question, the one I asked the first time we met, and he failed to answer.
“Do you know my mom?”
I couldn’t help but talk about her in the present-tense. Sure, she was dead, but I didn’t want to think of her in that way. I was dealing with her death in my own way, even though my aunt told me that talking about her in the present tense wasn’t healthy. Talking about her in the past-tense just made me want to cry.
“No,” he answered me at last, but it wasn’t the answer I expected.
The first time we met, he said that he knew my mom a long time ago. My mind was searching for a better way to ask the question, how could I get him to respond in a way that would make sense. The more, I thought about it, the more I realized that I was out of my league.
I give up!
Then he really shocked me and said, “I know your father.”
He said it in the present tense. He knows my father.
That left me speechless and I followed along blindly beside him, too shocked to think of anything. I wanted to know more, I had a thousand questions, but none seemed to form into a complete thought in my mind. I wondered if he’d answer my questions, once they finally formed into a thought that could be spoken. He was just as silent beside me, when he should be spilling the answers to the questions, I hadn’t even asked yet. I knew he probably wouldn’t volunteer anything now, not unless I asked specific questions.
I didn’t want to spend any more time at Hawk Academy than I had to but knowing that there was a possibility that one of my parents was still alive was enough to let me know that I wasn’t going anywhere. I was going to stay, so I could learn more. Not about the academy, but about my dad.
Chapter Seventeen
We walked the rest of the way in silence. I took a deep breath as we arrived back at the room. I wished that he would talk more about my dad and I wished that I had the courage to ask him more.
But, I didn’t and a part of me hated myself for it.
I’d spent enough time with Teresa that I wished that some of her braveness or even Ava’s aggressiveness would rub off on me, but neither of them was present as we were climbed up the stairs and made it to my room.
As we got to the door he asked, “So, do you want to stay or leave?”
I nearly asked him, Leave to go where? If he knew about my situation, which I knew he did, he knew that I had nowhere to go officially and that this was my new home. Whether I liked it or not.
I shook my head.
“Please speak when spoken to.”
“Stay.”
I hated me more than him for saying that word.
“I see. I have appointments to attend to and then we can sit down and talk during an early dinner.”
I was sure that Mr. Hawk was married, I’d read
about it on the Net, or even had a child, yet he seemed to be taking up so much time to spend with me. A little bit too much. I shrugged wondering if he was going to correct me again for not speaking to him. I couldn’t be bothered. I was tired and fed up of the situation. Damned if you don’t and damned if you do!
“Sure….” I knew that there was something else to add to that and finished the sentence with his name, “Mr. Hawk.”
He sighed and then he nodded his head.
I opened and closed the door as fast as I breathed, and it was over before I knew it. I waited for a second, just one, wondering if he would knock on it. Instead I put my ear against the door and breathed with relief as I heard nothing.
Nothing at all.
Which meant that I could leave, I shook my head at the idea of it. Running away, doing things that I shouldn’t do, was something that I did when my mom was alive. The idea of getting caught and doing something out of the ordinary, now, just seemed childish, pointless, as if there were no consequences and the idea that I had no real place to go went through my mind.
Sure, I could move in with Teresa’s parents, but they worked all the time, which meant that they were having it hard with two kids, moving in with them would put a strain on them even if they didn’t say it out loud. The signs were all there.
As for Ava’s parents. They were so free spirited that it would probably drive me insane. It did most of the time, which is why we tended to avoid going inside her house. But that night, it was as if everything that we’d done which was normal suddenly became abnormal and resulted in me losing my mom. And a stepdad that not only killed her but had killed a part of me before that night.
I sighed and stared back on my reflection. If anything, Hawk academy had been good in doing one thing, it’d stopped me wanting to eat as much as I’d been doing until now. Gran’s death had made me eat a little more. Abe showing signs of real interest in me had made me become even more nervous.