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Chapter 3
John quietly snuck out of the office. No one noticed that he left in the middle of chapel, and never came back. Most wouldn't care if he didn't show up for another class period or two. As he rushed to class, people were still leaving the auditorium. Those that were leaving though, were the people that slacked off, or did very little work and still got high grades in classes. He knew one girl that was almost the queen of doing nothing. Her annunciation of words was different than most. With an odd arrangement of friends, she seemed like the only girl that was out of place. She didn't dress like everyone else. She didn't do anything like everything else.
The girl gave John a small smile, which had been forced, and continued down to Phys Ed, carrying a drawing book. She hadn't participated in class for the past two years, and no one was really sure why. She had bandages on her arms and she always wore a wide necklace. At times, John would see another bandage, but she rarely moved her blonde hair from the position it naturally sat in.
Owen walked up behind John and patted him on the shoulder. "Good to see you finally skip out on chapel!" Owen exclaimed.
"I was coughing and sneezing. I needed a tissue, so I went in to the office," John said defensively. Owen and John were walking in to the locker room as the conversation ceased. Another conversation was stronger, and seemed to be the main one.
"You guys didn't know that!?" the boy with dark hair said in surprise. Apparently he was the only one that knew whatever it was he did.
Owen walked up behind the guy and tapped him on the shoulder. John was surprised that Owen was going to even talk to Oliver. Oliver's black hair was still the same as earlier that morning. Only now did John realize that Oliver looked as if he was having family problems. He saw bruises on Oliver's arm and a scratch on his cheek. Oliver looked towards the ground, his eyes most likely filled with shame, to avoid John's gaze.
"Hey, Oliver, what don't we know?" Owen eventually asked, thinking what was going on between John and Oliver completely pointless. Or he didn't notice what was going on around him.
Oliver snapped back in to the position of leader in the conversation. "Well, you know that one blonde girl, the one that has bandages on her arms?" Oliver started, Owen nodded, "Last summer, a burglar broke in to her family's house. She was the only one home. She had been talking on the phone and then put it in her pocket once she was done. Of course the burglar didn't know that, luckily. He was surprised to see her, and since her back was to him, he grabbed her from behind and took a knife and cut her arms, her abdomen, and barely the back of her neck. He ended up calling 911, but left the phone on and literally seemed to have disappeared," Oliver's voice was tired by now, so he didn't say anything that wasn't necessary.
Owen just walked out the door. He had already changed in to light blue shorts and a white t-shirt that said Canterbury on it. John had clothes very similar to those of Owen, only his shorts were black.
Outside the grass was green and wet with dew. The bleachers were shining in the sunlight that peeked out of the clouds. John stared at the girl whose bandages seemed to be the only thing keeping her alive. Suddenly he realized how fragile she looked as opposed to everyone else. She seemed to walk, favoring her left side. Her blonde hair had streaks of pink in it, and there seemed to be something that pushed her away from the rest of the crowd.
Oliver just looked at the girl as she walked. "She didn't deserve that to happen to her. She was a nice girl. She and I used to be friends, but ever since that happened, it's like no one can even get close to her. At least without feeling a rush of coldness go through their veins. But… I get how she feels. As if an ice cold barrier will protect her," Oliver's voice was distant, as if the only way he could understand it, was to say it. His voice was soft and scratchier than it had been earlier, but still seemed as if it were meant to be a sign from heaven.
Owen's face could be seen from a crack behind the bleachers. He was doing something with paper, but it was most likely his math homework. He usually did it during first period anyways, but this time, it seemed much more different. As if, without Owen to be there, sitting next to John during class, there would be a sort of emptiness. The kind of emptiness John was afraid of. Like he was the only person that was able to fix what was wrong.
Worst part of that problem, was that John didn't know what it was. Then John looked back up at the girl in the bleachers. Her eyes were a bright blue that had an icy tint. But when she looked at John, they seemed to be softened. Her mouth moved and she whispered.
Only John seemed to hear it. "It all started… with a whisper… the whisper you didn't hear," her voice was quiet and mysterious, but it seemed to know more than anything else did. John's eyes went wide with a fear that seemed almost inhuman.
As he realized this fear, was the fear of being dropped from the puppeteer's hands as he gave up on trying controlling every action. Falling from the cliff that the puppeteer had held him above, his entire fear of falling broke free. He didn't feel any pain, but he felt as if no one was going to catch him, or help him. Oliver was gone in his own life, Owen was too. The people John had become friends with, were ignoring him.
John blinked and then looked up at the girl. Her eyes looked at him with curiosity and no longer had that cold tint to them. She stood up straight and offered John a hand as she pulled some of her stray hair from her face. "You fainted… I don't know why," Her voice seemed to betray the look on her face. She knew, but before John could say anything, she walked away, before John could even take her offer of helping him up.
The coach didn't notice. But, he wasn't even there. John stared at the landscape. It was different than that of anything he was used to. The grass was soft against his legs and feet. Right then he realized his feet were bare, but he realized that the girl was walking around. She wore a skirt, a long purple one that looked like a sarong. She wore a t-shirt that was navy blue with a golden stitched number 8.
"What do you think, of being off the ground, and on your own?" Her voice seemed to be able to reach to John, no matter how far away she was.
Then he saw another girl. She wore a pink sarong, with a light blue tank top. Her black hair had a little bit of light brown. Her brown eyes were bright and full of life, as she walked towards John. The blonde had taken to wading in the shallow water that was a little bit of a walk off.
"Jenni… who is this?" The darker haired girl asked in a light voice that traveled very little from where she stood.
"Don’t worry Elena. He's fallen from his puppeteer too," Jenni answered. Elena looked at Jenni curiously for a moment as she thought over the sentence. Once she understood it, she nodded her head gently.
John stood straight. He didn’t understand it. Then Elena poked John in the head and he found himself on the soccer field. Jenni was there, and still holding out her hand. The coldness in her eyes seemed to circulate through John's body. He suddenly realized how long he had been out of it.
"Having fun sleeping, aren't you?" Jenni said in a teasing voice. John didn't take Jenni's hand. He wanted to go back to the place where everything seemed a little better. Green as the grass was on the soccer field, it wasn't as soft as the grass in the other place. Jenni gave John a look that seemed to read what his mind was thinking. What was that place? "It's called Wonderland… at least that's what we named it," Jenni whispered as John was passing by her.
John looked back at Jenni as she walked up the bleachers. She wore that purple sarong and a navy blue collared shirt with silver designs on the back. Then he looked for Elena, but didn't see her.
The rest of first period went by slowly. John continuously looked for anything that represented the Wonderland that he had been to, but nothing reflected it.
Wondering what had happened that made everything change as much as it did, John was on a constant search. He was searching for Jenni, and the way she acted every day. He looked at the way she treated people, but he looked more at the way people treated her.
Several more people than anyone expected, were Jenni's friends. But there was something funny about it all. The people that were her friends had this invisible string that John could see in the darkness, but not without its aid. There was another blonde boy, whose strings were next to impossible to see, even in the darkness that would fill the sky when it rained. His eyes were a pale green and seemed to look upon everything with a certain degree of quietness that made him invisible in classes.
As the week wore on, John saw Jenni in the hallways with her friends, but mainly with Elena and Oliver. At lunch, the three of them would sit together. Most of the time Elena and Jenni had packed an extra sandwich and extra food, and Oliver would eat it. By this time, John saw how skinny and weak Oliver looked underneath his baggy clothes. Elena and Jenni were the only ones that cared about him enough to bring him food that he wouldn't get at home.
The friend that was Jenni's friend seemed to have fallen one day. Most people said that he got even more silenced, if that was possible. His parents got in a car crash and were in extreme critical condition. Unusual as it sounded, everyone pointed the blame towards Jenni. She seemed to be the one causing these things to happen. Every time she walked past big crowds of people, she must've felt herself fall from the sky again, because she had this look of free falling in to oblivion look on her face.
Elena was the one that made people shut up though. She was louder than most people, and was often found saying hi to people she didn't know. One day, she had seemed to have enough of the pointing fingers. With her hair back in a loose bun and her green collared shirt, over a red one, and her blue skirt, she looked as little as threatening as possible. It was Jenni that looked like she was going to put up a fight out of the two.
Jenni had her hair just falling. It seemed to be that there was something wrong. The way she stood was as if she couldn't stand straight, or it would hurt, but she still had a look of defiance. But her eyes told the truth. How much it hurt just to stand. How much she could put up with. Her skirt was black and her red and white shoes went up to her knees. She had loose red bracelets on her arm. She wore a thin red sweater over a white shirt that the collar was written on with black ink.
What had scared everyone, though, was during chapel, Elena went up on the stage, and sat down on the steps. Looking like she was waiting for everyone to challenge her. The teachers just thought that she was going to make an announcement. She was, but when Jenni joined her, everyone just watched.
Jenni's walking was even more unsteady. John remembered Oliver giving Jenni a piggy back ride the rest of the way. But Jenni still looked at everyone expectantly. The blonde boy followed them, and so did John.
What John wouldn't be able to forget, was what it was like to be stared at. By everyone. They all knew that there was something going on, and John could feel the way they squirmed as he walked past. He had seen Oliver shiver when he picked up Jenni, and when he sat behind her, he felt an indefinite coldness.
"I knew you'd come," Jenni's voice was eerie. Almost an angelic or out of the current time. Then it happened. Elena watched Jenni as she leaned back in to the next step up.
When John looked back at her again, she wasn't there. Elena followed Jenni's actions and did the same. Oliver followed, the blonde boy did, and John did too.
 m.ikstar · Sun May 27, 2007 @ 01:26am · 0 Comments |
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