The Day the Girl Went Mad

“This is all my fault” the young girl moaned into her hands. 

Though she did not look up, she was certain that everyone around her nodded their heads in agreement. Of course, it was. She was always the misfit, the weirdo, the one who people suspected of doing strange and unnatural things. 

She looked the part. Her hair was dyed an obscene green that even she hated. Her nose was too big, her ears too small and her body too awkward to be considered beautiful. No one ever believed a beautiful person capable of fault. She was capable of it all.

Now, she sat at the scene of her rampage. Cars had flipped and sirens were wailing, drawing ever nearer. People stood about, battered and bruised and staring in awe at the small, green-haired girl who sat crying like a lost child and at all not like the maniacal psychopath who had walked down Tilney Street flipping cars, screaming obscenities, and living out every supervillain Hollywood scene. 

The girl's parents thought it was all their fault. They always knew their daughter was different and had abilities beyond the normal. They had always thought it so unbelievably unseemly to have a daughter like theirs. You see, gifts like hers were not uncommon. In fact, they were celebrated amongst some circles. But they were typically bestowed upon more worthy individuals. People with intelligence, savvy, good looks, or, ideally, money. With money they could afford to send their daughter to the Dashwood School for the Highly Gifted. But the girl's parents were middle class, rather simple, and rather plain. She had been doomed from the start. 

The girl’s teacher, watching the live action coverage on the small screen TV in her dingy apartment, thought the horror before her was all her fault. She had seen the other children torment the girl, had seen them pull her hair and draw on her notebooks. She had heard them whisper loudly to one another words like “freak” and “Creepazoid”, and names far more crude. Why hadn’t she stopped them? Why had her cheeks flushed red? Why had she held a folder up to her face so the children wouldn’t see her laughing? The teacher remembered another awkward girl, one with braces and mousy hair, one who had also earned the moniker, “freak” once upon a time. Did it feel good to finally be included by the cool kids at school, to let them win, to feel in on the joke?

The two sisters who had been following the girl home from school that day felt certain it was all their fault. If only they hadn’t stuck their feet out. Maybe she wouldn’t have tripped and skinned her knee. Maybe she wouldn’t have looked up and seen them through watery eyes. Maybe she wouldn’t have seen their cruel and twisted smiles. Maybe she wouldn’t have heard their laughter. Maybe she wouldn’t have screamed. Maybe she wouldn’t have flipped that car. 

The policeman patrolling the crosswalk felt certain maybe he was a little at fault. He had sat in his air-conditioned car, scrolling through his phone and slurping a slushie loudly through a blue jumbo straw. He had seen the sisters following the young girl and had seen them stick their legs out. He watched, impassively, as the girl in front fell to the concrete. He heard her cry out in pain. He saw her cradle her shins. The policeman thought that maybe he ought to have checked on the young girl. Perhaps he should have given the other two a stern talking too. 

“You shouldn’t pick on people” or “Two against one ain’t fair”

Either of those might have absolved him of any blame.

But he hadn’t gone to check on the young girl who had fallen, who had been walking with her head held low after a long day of torment. He hadn’t done anything. 

And then all hell had broken loose. The sad girl with the green hair, lying sprawled on the concrete with bloodied shins and a tear-stained face, had screamed. It wasn’t a petulant scream, or a startled scream of pain, but rather a deep scream full of anger, resonating with all the fury she could muster. The wind had seemed to pick up and as the policeman sat in his car, he could have sworn the wind whipped around the girl, tugging at her skirts, as if lifting her to her feet. 

She had not stopped screaming. The two sisters standing in front of her, faces pale and all traces of laughter wiped from their faces, didn’t know it was possible for someone to scream that long without taking a breath. When asked about it later, they would say they had never seen such a look on anyone’s face ever. One of them said she looked crazy, like someone from the horror movies when they get possessed at the end. The other said the girl looked triumphant, like a statue of the Greek goddess Athena she had seen at a museum once. They both had agreed she was terrifying.

The policeman, who did not have nearly the imagination nor the descriptive powers of the two sisters, added that the young girl looked “mighty upset” and was “screaming awfully loud.” He did his best to look as though he had a handle on things, tucking one hand into his pocket and placing the other on the grip of his gun. He in fact did not have a handle on things and was deeply wishing he had been anywhere other than here the day the girl went mad. 

The girl's teacher, when asked about her later, said what everyone always said about acquaintances when they did terrible things. 

“She was so quiet; I would never have thought.” 

Or something to that effect. The teacher found for the first time she was not happy to be in on the gossip. The jokes were no longer funny. 

The girl's parents, sitting at home, were wringing their hands and wondering how something so horribly unnatural could have happened to their perfectly natural family. How could they have had a daughter with such a predisposition for abnormality. The girl's mother could not stop crying. The detective handed her tissue after tissue, and she blew her too big nose over and over into them. She insisted her daughter was a very good girl. The girl’s father straightened his tie, smoothed his hair and brushed his shoulders on repeat as if he was performing some sort of strange, mimed performance. When he finally found the words to speak, he said,

“Why it must have been a fluke, an accident”

Why, of course! Everyone agreed on this wholeheartedly. Everyone loves an accident. What a terrible series of events took place. It was a perfect storm. How was anyone to know, really? Yes, everyone loves an accident. 

Because then it is no one's fault.