Be Careful What You Wish For

Be Careful What You Wish For

Clara stumbles into the sanctuary of the girl’s bathroom. A respite from the taunts, the bullying. Gripping the sides of the hand basin she gazes through tear-filled eyes at the image that confronts her. Hits her as hard as the spiteful, hurtful words from the other girls. The chosen ones, those with perfect skin and shiny blonde hair. Those with perky breasts, still surging into womanhood beneath the school uniform but obvious enough to those who choose to look, to notice, to ogle. She stares at the pale skin dotted with acne like tiny rose buds struggling to survive in a barren colourless desert. Her dull brown eyes, now reddened with tears stare hopelessly back at her. The metal brace around her neck holds her head in that abnormally erect position, making her appear aloof and superior to those around her.  God, the irony in that! She feels superior to no-one. She is the bottom of the pecking order, that which must be mocked and excluded. She despises them, but at the same time wants more than anything to be accepted by them. Be one of them. 

“One day it will be over” she tries to assure herself. “One day I’ll be out of this brace, and they’ll accept me.”

Weeks turn into months and finally she is freed from the restrictions of the metal brace. It has served its purpose by straightening her spine. It is the Christmas holidays now, and she eagerly awaits the resumption of the school year so surprise them without her cursed metal cage. 

“It’ll be different now” she assures herself. “Without this thing they’ll have nothing to mock me about.” 

She can envision it now - no more name calling, no more practical jokes. She will become one of them, accepted into the flock. 

She dons her school uniform for the first time since the removal of the brace. She smiles as she feels the softness of the fabric against her skin. Her blouse sitting tightly on top of her bra, the outline of her breasts showing for the first time since puberty, no longer hidden beneath the bulge of fabric pushed outwards by the metal frame. She piles her mousey brown hair onto her head in an upward sweep that shows the nape of her smooth, thin neck. Although now free of the cursed thing she sees with disappointment that it has left its mark on her. Four or five areas of patchy, pinkish skin where the metal had rubbed against her tender skin for those eighteen months. 

“Well, I guess it’s a small price to pay for finally getting rid of the thing” she thinks to herself as she runs her fingers over the abrasions. She gathers up her bag and leaves the house. Her mother waves her goodbye from the kitchen.

“As if adolescence isn’t hard enough” the mother would lament to her neighbour “without having to cope with a back brace and all that goes with that. The teasing she gets at school is merciless, and some have even taken to physically bullying her as well.”  But today the mother is as excited as the daughter. Excited for the new beginning, the restoration of confidence, the end to the emotional torment.

Clara wants this to be perfect, her re-emergence, like a butterfly from a cocoon. A moment in time that she will remember forever. She has built it up so often in her mind – she can see it, plain as day. She will wait until the class has moved into the home room before she makes her entrance. She will stand in the doorway, framed by the sun at her back, tall, straight, and proud. There will be an audible gasp from them as they appreciate this vision before them.  Realise she was in fact one of them. Realise the error of their spiteful ways of the past two years. Realise this is a new beginning.

She waits until second bell when all classes would be in their allotted rooms for roll call. Tentatively but with a rush of anticipatory elation she climbs the stairs to her home room. There it is the doorway. Symbolic for her now. The representation of past and future. Beyond it is her renaissance, that new beginning. Hesitating only for a second, she pushes open the door.

“Hey here’s Frankenstein!” shouted Debbie Klingman, her honey blonde hair bouncing as she speaks.

“Hey Franko, where’s your bolts?” laughed Veronica Ling, school captain and chief Bitch.

“Look, now she’s got a giraffe neck!” someone yelled, and they laughed.

And they laughed. Laughed as they always had. Nothing had changed. Her great renaissance had failed, fallen as flat as she had been when they pushed her over and she would struggle to regain her feet like a pathetic helpless turtle. She felt the earth shift slightly under her feet, saw the room in front of her shimmer as if in a dream. She scanned their faces for some semblance of compassion but as in a scene from a movie all that was in front of her was the taunting, laughing faces of these twenty girls. She turned and ran. Ran down the stairs and blindly back to the only place she knew offered her sanctuary – home. 

Her mother spun around from the sink where she was washing the breakfast dishes.

“What’s wrong? Why are you home?” she asked, a knife-like pain striking her heart.

For ten long minutes, she could not speak. Her words stymied by the strangling sobs that racked her thin body. Her mother held her, terrified that some dreadful incident had befallen her only daughter. What on earth could have happened in this short time between home and school? And today, this day of renewal and new beginnings for her. The mother held her until the sobs that shook her finally abated, as mothers often do.

On the other side of town, he looks solemnly at his reflection in the mirror. It’s been two years since he left school but still the stares continue. Strangers, turning their necks to sneak another side eye look at his deformed face. Three separate plastic surgeries but still the scars remain, defining both himself and his life forevermore. Forever the freak, the outcast, the curiosity. How he hated them at school, the bullies. Especially the girls.  No-one to defend him, support him; no-one to say quietly “it’s alright, just ignore them”. Years of resentment building up to this moment. This moment in time where he will assert his dominance. At times he still wonders what it would be like to touch a girl. One of those princesses from school, the long limbed, tanned and blonde ponytailed teenage goddesses who seem to know they are envied by others. Those girls who would throw their heads back and laugh with the boys who mocked him. He thinks about touching their long tan legs, the curve of their breasts, running his fingers through the blonde hair and releasing the ponytail from its bondage. Golden hair cascading over her shoulders she would look at him and bring her lips closer, closer to his. They would kiss passionately, and he would draw her closer until their bodies were one and he could feel his manhood inside of her. This vision in his head, so typical yet so out of reach for him. Never to be realised. He stands back from the mirror and steels himself. He will have his revenge. It will be swift, and it will be just. He closes the door and walks to his car in search of his prey.

“You must try not to let it bother you.” Her mother’s words sounded empty even to herself, but what else could she offer? Her daughter’s pain at the rejection of her peers was a sharp for her as it was for Clara.

“I know I’m not pretty like them, but now I’m out of the brace I can get my hair done and some treatments for my skin which will make me look better, surely?”

“Its not about how you look, darling. You could be Miss Universe and they would still find a reason to mock you, to put you down. It’s actually not even about YOU, it’s about them feeling powerful. Girls have been like that since time immemorial, its just part of their make-up, especially when in groups. Just be yourself and anyone with an ounce of character will see how beautiful you are inside.”

“I don’t want to be beautiful on the inside Mum! I HATE that expression! That’s what they say to ugly people” she cried.

“Don’t you understand? I want to be beautiful on the outside! Its how the world is, it IS about how you look!” 

“Oh, darlin,” sighs her mother, “be careful what you wish for.”

“Look, how about we have a girl’s day out together next week and we spoil ourselves? Get the works done. Real makeover stuff! It can be a celebration of coming out of the brace”.  She picks up the phone and makes an appointment for them both at a beauty spa - facial, spray tan and, most importantly for Clara, hair colour and style. Her mother is in no doubt she will choose a shade of blonde to match that of her peers, those from whom she so desperately seeks acceptance.

Six months later the three girls chat happily as they walk the short distance home from the movies. Typical teenage girl banter – boys, fashion, Instagram, the Kardashians. They hold no fear walking home, after all there is safety in numbers.

It happens in a microsecond. The car that has been slowly following them suddenly accelerates. They barely have time to turn around in response when the vehicle strikes the girl walking on the outside, catapulting her in the air and onto the windshield. The motion of the car carries her along until, out of sight of the others, he stops suddenly, and she falls to the ground. He picks her up, blood matting her golden blonde hair tied in its usual ponytail. He throws her in the back of the car and swiftly ties her hands and feet with the rope he’d brought along for the purpose. The car, this metal cage in which she is now trapped speeds along the darkened streets until it comes to a deserted area behind a factory. He stops. He opens the back door and looks into her wide, terrified eyes as she lies bound on the backseat. Her blonde hair fascinates him. He leans over her, curls it in his fingers, smooths it around her blood-stained face, his excitement growing. The ponytail. It reminds him of the girls who mocked him in school. Girls who teased and laughed at his physical deformity. Snickering behind their hands as they gleefully tossed their blonde ponytails and skipped off with their friends, carefree and confident. The girls he now despises and seeks vengeance upon.

 He strokes her long neck and lithe, tanned limbs. She attempts to kick him away, but his strength overcomes her. He holds her bound hands above her head with one hand and with the other he slowly tightens his grip around the long, thin neck. Tighter. Tighter still until the light finally dims in her tear-filled brown eyes. Lifeless now, he removes his hand from her neck and notices for the first time the four or five patches of rough pinkish skin, vestiges of a time before when she, for the first time, struggled to be free of a metal cage. 

-END-