One Step Away From Freedom

Content warning: Strong language and themes of bullying, physical violence, drug use, and sexual assault.



They're always staring at me; Talking about me. Why do I always have to endure their stares and whispers? I hear what they say: making fun of my hair, saying it's long and scraggly, like a girl in a horror movie that lives down a well. Talking about my clothes, how they're “raggedy, and old”.  It's not my fault. I know how I look in these baggy, secondhand clothes. I hear it all.

Every day since it happened, walking the hall had been a nightmare for her.

***

“There she goes again with her head down,” Says Cheryl, as the strange girl walks by her and her friend, Cindy. “I feel bad for her.”

“Why?”

“Because she's obviously poor and shy. She doesn't talk to anyone.”

“Who knows...Maybe she's just weird and you know, likes that.”

“Likes what?”

“Maybe she doesn't wanna talk to anyone. Some people are like that, Cher. My older brother is like that, you know.”

“Oh get real: no one wants to be alone... Maybe we should talk to her.”

“Go ahead. No one's stopping you.”

“I just don't know what to say,” says Cheryl, leaning on her locker, hugging her textbook and binder.

“Just say 'Hey, how are you'. It's not rocket science.”

“I know it's not rocket science, you slut.”

“Don't call me a slut, you bimbo,” laughs Cindy.

“I call them like I see them, hun. The way you were ogling that picture of Mark you showed me yesterday in the bathroom....”

“Don't talk about that,” snaps Cindy.

Cheryl laughs.

“He sure does have a big one, eh? You sure you can handle that?”

“Oh, I could handle it, baby; Could if I wanted to. It would probably be too much for you though.”

Cheryl scoffs.

“I would neeeever go for him...he smokes and he hangs around all those cretins in the smoking section: smoking and spitting all over. That's all for you, hun.”

“I'll take it. I like a bad boy.”

Cheryl rolls her eyes.

“ If you say so. He seems pretty soft to me, “ she says, turning and slamming her locker shut, “Probably cries himself to sleep at night reading poetry.”

“The soft, sensitive bad boy. My dream boat”

Why do they have to look at me like that? They think I'm weird. Two boys at the front of Mrs. Sheridan's class are chatting; one is tall, lean, and good-looking, with blonde hair. His friend is shorter thick, and muscular, with long brown hair, and a nice smile. She looks at them, secretly yearning, because they are like her: they're different. They don't take to crowds and keep to themselves. She turns away when they look back at her, hiding her face under her long, unbrushed hair. They're laughing at me.

***

“Dude, would you fuck that chick?” asks the blonde-haired boy, gesturing towards her to his friends.

“Yeah, why not. She look like she's got a nice body.... but she's hiding it behind all those baggy clothes there.” In an accent imitating Arnold Schwarzenegger: “She probably goes to the gym,” responds the long haired boy, flexing his bicep as the words leave his mouth.

“You and the fucking gym.”

“Caaaame ooooon. Kiss it,” says the long-haired boy, still speaking in a Schwarzenegger accent, as he flaunts his arm under his friend's nose.

“Get that fucking thing away from,” laughs the blonde-haired boy as he pushes his friend's arm out of his face.

“You can't deny it. You know you love it,” laughs the muscular boy, still using the accent, lifting his arm up proudly.

“I think that girl back there needs some lovin', bro. Why don't you ask her out?”

“I will. I'll bring her to the gym with me, and use her as my bah-bell.” (still with accent).

“No, I'm serious, man. She actually seems like a sweet girl, but she doesn't talk to anyone.”

“Who? Her?” asks the muscular boy, using his regular voice, transforming from Arnold to plain ol' Jeffery Danukas as he gestures toward the strange girl sitting at the back of the room.

“Yeah.”

“Yeah, I don't know what's with her. I worked with her on a team project in geography and she actually seemed like a pretty cool chick.... but she was very shy.”

“So what the fucks wrong with you? You can't ask her out? Take her to the fucking...I dunno...get some ice cream or some shit.”

“I'll take her to my bedroom....(the accent returns): and give her the paaaaump.,” responds the boy, standing up and flexing both arms with a huge, shit-eating grin on his face.

Mrs. Sheridan enters the room and the class quiets.

“Jeff.... sit down, and stop flexing.”

The class laughs.

“Whoops, umm, sorry, “ says Jeff as he takes his seat, embarrassed.

She walks home in the cold, head down, wind sashaying her hair in her face, back and fourth; she occasionally brushes it away, but the wind always blows it back in her eyes and mouth, like breathable curtains that smell like expired shampoo. As she walks through the front door, of her lonely house, (the yard littered with cardboard, garbage bags, and the remains of a tricycle), her mama looks up from the coffee-stained., musty old couch, crack pipe in hand. She's a heavy woman, with short red hair, wearing a worn-out green and white striped shirt stretched over her large frame.

“Hi hunny, how was school?” she asks, her voice deep from years of smoking.

“Fine, “ she says, walking through the living room; table tops covered with fast-food bags, beer bottles, and debris. She walks to her room and closes the door: a thick door that she struggles to fit in the frame every time she closes it. She sits on the edge of her bare bed---no sheet---just a worn-out blank and lumpy pillows. Reaching over to her CD player, she puts on her favourite CD, lays back, brushes the hair out of her face, and lays back with her arms spread out on her mattress, letting the music fill the room with Gothic notes and lyrics of hating life.

For dinner, she cooks herself a box of Kraft Dinner while her mama sits in the other room watching Wheel of Fortune and coughing. As the pasta thickens, she sneaks over to the fridge and reaches up on top to pull down her mama's cartoon of smokes, carefully opening the bag and slipping two into her pocket for later.

“Hunny, can you bring your mother a beer?”

She grabs a beer from the fridge and walks out to her mama, who covers her mouth with her upper arm as she lets out a phlegmy cough.

“Thanks hunny...come have a drink with me.”

She goes back into the kitchen, turns off the stove, and takes the pot off the heat: it's ready to be strained and mixed.

“Let me just mix this first.”

“Alright precious.”

She prepares herself a bowl of KD, grabs a beer, and sits beside her mother, as the woman on the TV asks for a 'P'.

“So, how have you been lately, hun?”

“I dunno...normal, I guess.”

“You don't seem too happy these days.”

She shrugs.

“Come on, tell me what's wrong.”

“I don't know.... nothings wrong.”

“You just 'tain yerself much these days. Remember when yous was young and we'd laugh and play that monster game wheres you would slither on the floor?”

“Mom! I'm not a kid anymore.”

“I know, I know...It's just...I just...I don't know. What's wrong with you girl?”

“Nothing's wrong with me. What do I appear like...like some fucking weirdo to you?” she asks, as she takes a big swig of beer.

“Now you watch your mouth, young lady. I don't need none of that lip, sister. If yous don't twant to talk that's fine by me. I'm happy as can be here watching my programs.”

She gets up and goes to her bedroom with her bowl of KD and beer, opens the window, and sits on the edge of her bed, smoking one of the cigarettes she'd stolen from her Mama.

The next day, she walks to school in a sweater much too thin for the chilling breeze that tells her frail body of the impending winter. In front of the school, students hang out in groups: the jocks, the sluts, the good girls, the bad boys, the kids whose lives revolve around playing videos games, the dirty, kempt kids who sweat too much in gym class and refuse to shower, the 9th and 10th grade girls so developed they get hit on by seniors. She walks into the school alone. Past the cool kids; past Matt: tall, handsome, muscular. Built like a man since his first day of high school and dominant in sports ever since, winning athlete of the year the past two years in a row. Every girl likes him: except her. He looks at her as she walks by, but she pays no attention. Through the front door and to her right, she walks down the hall towards a stairwell that rarely sees any foot traffic: a stairwell she always takes to avoid everyone. A stairwell she still takes even since the incident....the door clatters loudly behind her, echoing throughout the three-story stairwell, with its light pink bubble-gum colored walls: the only walls in the whole school that colour. Her footsteps echo as she ascends the stairs, and as she reaches the top landing, the door she entered opens again. She hears it opening but keeps on walking, back into the main hallway on the third floor. She doesn't have to look back or even take a guess at who entered the stairwell: she knows who it is and what they want.

“Matt is so hot, I swear I'm going to like put date rape in his drink or something at Cindy's Friday,” says a fat girl with short hair and caked-on makeup.

“I'll join in,” laughs another girl.

She hears it as she walks past. She stops and looks over for a second, but keeps on walking, out the door, to go where she always goes every day at lunchtime: her secret tree, at the back of the park, where she sits and feeds the squirrels as they run around, scrambling for the crumbs she throws. A calm comes over her anytime she feeds her furry little friends: it's an escape from reality. She pulls a crack pipe out of her pocket, and a rock that she stole from her Mama, loads it, lights it, inhales, and holds in the smoke. She lets out the smoke, clouding her view of the squirrels as they fight over the crusts of the sandwich she picked up from St. Andrew's Church Outreach Program on the way to school that morning. One of the squirrels stops and stares at her; she takes another quick hit, leans forward towards the furry little creature, and breathes the smoke in its face. It wiggles its face and its eyes widen, before it scampers off, quick and erratic. She leans back against the tree and looks out over the field, with its dying grass, under the cloudless sky, of grey and dreary Wednesday afternoon.

In the stairwell after lunch: the stairwell where it happened. She walks.

“Hey,” says a voice behind her. She spins around and sees him. It's Matt. Emerging from under the landing, like a creep laying in wait.“How you doin', girl?”

She says nothing

“Listen, I hope you not getting any idea about telling anywo....you know, about what happened.”

She squints her eyes and sneers.

“I'm serious...if you do...if you...Nothing goods going to come of it. You hear me? Bad things will happen.”

She smirks a cocky grin.

“You really think I fucking care, asshole? You really think there's anything you can do to me?”

He grabs her by the throat and pushes her up against the wall as she sticks her tongue out and licks her top lip provocatively, back and fourth, as she moans.

“Ouuuu yeah, I like it when you're rough with me”

“Listen bitch, you say anything, and I'll come to that little shit-shack where you and that fat pig live...and then..then... we'll see if you have a smart mouth then. You don't want me coming over there, I know that.”

“Big tough guy, eh? Threatening a little girl...you know, I hear all the girls talk about you in the halls, how they think your sooooooo hot; wouldn't it be just a shame if they knew how tiny your little dick really is.”

He flings her sideways powerfully and she lands on her hands and knees, hair dangling in front of her face down to the floor.

“Your little, little secret...you can't get off without hurting someone smaller than you, because all you got is that little, little dick and you're afraid to show it to anyone.”

“You're out of your fucking mind, bitch!”

She rolls over on her back and spreads her legs.

“Come on, big boy...you want to do it again? Rape me again, tough guy, rape me like your little doll. Go ahead! I don't care...I barely even felt it the first time with that little prick of yours.”

“Just...just shut your fucking mouth. Don't say a word or else.”

She rolls over on her side and watches him storm off, smiling because she knows she's hit a nerve and feels something she can't remember the last time she felt: confidence.

She sits in the bathroom, on a toilet lid in the last stale, taking small hits from her crack pipe. If a teacher or anyone with any authority were to walk in, she knows she'd be expelled. But she doesn't care. She hears the door open and three girls walk in.

“What's that smell?” says one.

“Smells like battery acid.”

“Probably some smelly, poor bitch or something.”

The three girls laugh.

“So your parents are actually going to buy you Taylor Swift tickets?”

“That's what they said.....They fucking better.”

“Well who you going to take?”

“I don't know yet...I guess you two bitches will have to compete to see whose the better friend.”

“Take me, she doesn't even like Taylor Swift.”

“Yes I do! I'm your best friend Brooke, you should take me.”

She listens from the stale, deep in thought, but jittery from the crack. Her leg is twitching, moving a thousand miles a minute, toe on the ground, thigh shaking. She coughs and hears a break in the conversation.

“What was that?”

She tries to hold in a second cough, but it's no use.: They know she's in there. Their conversation stops.

“Hello?” one of them asks.

She walks out of the stall with her head down, walking past the three of them as they stare. She stops and looks back at Jeanine: hot, blonde, wearing a Taylor Swift shirt.

“What do you want?”

She screams like a mental patient and charges at Jeanine, punching her in the face and knocking her on the hard tile floor. The other two girl's jaws drop as Jeanine wipes blood from her nose.

“Fuck Taylor Swift!” she says, flipping off all three of them, before running out the bathroom door.

Room 133. Room. 133. Frantically, like someone possessed, she rushes through the halls in a near run, her long hair flowing behind her. She reaches her destination and barges through the door of room 133. A chemistry class full of students stares at her, and a horseshoe-bald teacher with white hair tufts and glass stops lecturing.

“MATT HAS A TINY DICK!” she yells, pointing at Matt.

Silence. The shock causes a long, awkward lull before Matt's friend, Jeremy, starts laughing. Slowly, the other students follow until the whole class is laughing hysterically; the bald teacher's face shocked.

“What the fuck is this shit!” says Matt as he stands up from his seat, the class in tears from laughter all around him. “Get this crazy bitch out of here!”

“That's right, you fucking rapist,” she says confidently stepping into the classroom. “You have a tiny dick and I want everyone to know it. You don't scare me anyone, you big fucking jerk!”

“I'll kill you, you stupid cunt!” says Matt as he charges towards the door. Her eyes widen; she spins around and runs out of the room, out into the hall with Matt in pursuit. The teacher's feeble attempt to get in the way of the football star is no good: he gets body checked and his small frame bounces off a nearby table and onto the floor.

The chase was on. He was hot on her heels, but it didn't matter. She didn't care if he caught up to her, what could he even do? Hit her in front of everyone? Teachers were coming out into the hallways now, to watch the commotion, but that didn't matter either. Her target was set in her mind: the front door.

“I'll get you, you bitch!”

She hears his empty threats; his verbal nonsense; fake bravado. She didn't care if she ever came back to school. All she had to do was get out that front door: out into the bleak, mid-afternoon air. Out into freedom. Every step she took was taking her closer. In a few moments, she'd be out the front door, down the big, concrete stairs, and one step away from freedom. Freedom from her secret nightmare: once and for all.