Headlines & Head Wounds

Hole

Sylvie was short.

Yes, all of them were short, of course. Sylvie was short, yes, she was just a kid, she was definitely shorter than the adults. But she was shorter than her classmates too.

They didn't really tease her about it- they didn't care about her height at all. Teasing, in fact, was pretty much indiscriminate- some of the boys had chosen particular girls that they liked to pick on more, but for the most part everyone was teased about the same amount. And no one really cared.

Mostly they called her Silly Sylvie. "Silly" because she followed the rules.

Hannah was on the swing sets, across the yard. She wasn't really paying attention to anything in particular; her eyes stayed still, moving with the plane of the swing set. For a split second, her eyes locked onto Sylvie's. Good enough for now- she'd at least be able to see what came next.

Sylvie returned her attention to the fence. A good, solid wire fence, not really meant to keep children in so much as to delineate the boundaries of the school. In the bottom of the fence, very low against the ground and half-concealed by a bush, was a torn hole about the size of a desk. Sylvie didn't know where the hole had come from. It had been there long before she'd started kindergarten.

Very deliberately, Sylvie reached down and slid her leg through the hole.

She couldn't see what anyone was thinking of her, because she didn't want to turn over; she might get her leg caught in the fence. She strained her ears. Over the cacophony of shouting children, she could hear the metallic rattling of a swing set chain. Hannah was watching.

Sylvie slid her other leg under the fence. Then, carefully, she took hold of the fence with her hands and slipped her body through. She fit, barely. But she was short, and the hole was big enough, and then she was through.

Wriggling out onto the other side of the fence, Sylvie stood up. She was now in the park- a vast expanse of land, bigger even than the schoolyard, that to her young eyes seemed to stretch on forever. No one else was in sight. She was alone.

"Oh, come on, Sylvie, come back," someone said from the other side of the fence.

Sylvie's head snapped around. Hannah- whose popularity was owed mostly to being the fastest child in Sylvie's class- was standing on the other side of the fence. In just those few seconds, she'd run all the way across the schoolyard.

"Come back, Sylvie," Hannah said again. Her eyes were wide and nervous- Sylvie couldn't tell from her face quite what she was thinking, but the tone of her voice made it clear. She didn't want to be associated with a rule-breaker.

Sylvie grinned and backed away from the fence.

Hannah looked positively frightened- even Sylvie couldn't fail to recognize that. Even Sylvie, who had serious trouble recognizing faces, knew what Hannah was feeling.

A rule-breaker, Sylvie thought to herself. She didn't dislike the idea.

She sent Hannah one last mischievous grin before slipping back under the fence and into the schoolyard. Just as she set foot on the grass once more, the bell rang.

Morning recess was fifteen minutes long. But to Sylvie and her classmates, that fifteen minutes always felt like an eternity. Enough time for a monkey bars challenge or a proper swing set battle or a game of four-square- or, in this case, enough time to duck into a hole in the fence. Sylvie wasn't a particularly athletic child, and no one had ever bothered to teach her how to play four square; she liked a good swing every now and then, but most of the time she sat on a bench and fidgeted and sometimes read a book. She didn't know whether she was supposed to be able to read yet- the teachers were sure that she couldn't read very well, but it wasn't really that hard, was it?