Everyday, as the big hand touched the four and the little hand reached and fell short of the three, the girl was able to finally breathe. The paced inhale, exhale pattern of breathing became a quick and anxious rhythm, only skewed by the change of time. Days and weeks felt long but minutes and seconds felt longer. Everyday, the girl attempted to sit quietly alone at her desk, hoping to not be noticed for once. She knew that if she raised her hand to simply ask a question, she would have been humiliated. Her almost adult sized body was shoved into a child sized desk as she waited for what she thought could be worse than death, for her teacher to talk to her.
This girl radiated charisma in her past. The people who her met her during her earlier years all had the same understanding of her wild and crazy character. Teachers and students alike fawned over her pure joy and smile through the once bright, but now dark and dreary, halls of the school. Not many classmates understood what caused the change in this poor girl’s freshly longing eyes and dispirited attitude over one short summer. Old teachers were surprised to hear of the person she had become, and they were not pleased with it. The girl was not pleased with her new self either.
Every morning the sheets of her bed seemed to try to grab her ankles and roll her back up in the short lived dream world she had wished was her reality. Although many mornings she was able to break free from the tight grip of her comforting sheets, some mornings, the idea of going back to that place was too much to handle for her still maturing mind. She continued to believe and hope that by laying tightly wound in her comforter, she would never have to have see the face of the monster she was trying to avoid again.
This monster was something she would never learn to like. She tried to forget the nasty eyes and devious, disgusting smile with white stained teeth reflecting the beam of florescent light hitting them. And the wiry red hair that sat atop its head, not able to be moved by even a gust of wind. The girl was always haunted by its hideous and terrifying face in her dreams at night. Her dreams. The place she trusted she could escape to when the monster chewed her up and spit her out was now infested with this monsters face glaring at her in her sleep. She could never escape.
Her backpack hung identical to the others. Her lunch, in a lunch box like her classmates and in the same bin as them as well. Her name written in a star reflected the look of all the others that cascaded down the one, same wooden door. To outsiders “Olivia Day” was a student, just like the rest of the children that attended Washington Elementary School everyday. But to the teacher who tortured her, for some reason she was different. As the students sat in classrooms and learned to embrace people for who they are, this girl was being beaten to death by her flaws and mistakes. Wherever she went, the monster was there and ready to attack at any moment. The girl searched for help and tried to run from the monster, although every turn she took down the long hallways seemed to all lead back to the only place she was supposed to be but couldn’t bear to go to. The girl entered the room only to find the monster waiting for her. She saw the door shut as she turned around. The last thing she could hear was the faint click of the keys locking her in the room from the outside world. That sound echoed in her mind almost as loud as the screams amongst it. She knew there was nowhere to escape, nor would there ever be.