The Insurgence: Bleeding Silver

A Girl Watching From A Window

When I was in third grade, my mother pulled me out of school.

The day before she pulled me out, a boy I had the biggest crush on accidentally made me fly off of a swing set and crash into the dirt and mud which ruined my perfectly white skirt and perfectly braided hair.

She pushed for this boy to be expelled... and she got her way with her notoriety within this town giving her an edge. She had yelled her way into getting me enrolled there in the first place as we live outside of the school district, tucked away on a hill in the woods. I remember his mother with her cute curly brown hair begging for them to let him stay. I remember I didn't have a voice back then either. And most of all, I remember what came next.

I went to school the next day, his seat empty, but people weren't whispering about his expulsion. They were all murmuring about how he and his sister were now missing, and how his parents were brutally murdered. It was a heavy topic in the mouths of third graders, some cried, while some others found it super cool and were discussing what the scene must've looked like. I didn't know what to think. My friend... gone.

Kids in Maine always have a habit of disappearing. We have a collection of unsolved cases, the notorious missing children of Maine. My parents had perfect timing as if they were listening in, I was given a pass to go down to the office, and there my parents were ready to take me home. That was the last time I had ever been outside. I remember thinking how weird it was that she had put up a fight to get a boy expelled just to pull me out the next day.

Now let me tell you about the day that broke an almost ten year streak of isolation. Let me tell you about the only friend I had inside the walls, Sheriff James Calvary. He was a colleague of my father's at the police department. He was a big black man with a round belly and a contagious laugh that turned into wheezing and coughing. He told the best stories, including one about the bullet that went into his right arm and the soft scar he got as a souvenir. He was my only friend, a real guardian, he kept a list of all the adventures we would have once it was, 'Safe enough for me to go.'

As I grew older, his visits became less frequent, but still had the same value to me and invoked the same childish giddiness in me. I understood why, there is always work to be done and spending time with a teenage girl was probably less fun than playing with a child. In some ways I guess I'm still a child, something's you just can't outgrow when you grow up eight to seventeen only seeing the same house.

I woke up that night to the sound of the front door opening, it's a very big and squeaky door. My parents are never home so at first I figured it was one of them. But the door never shut, and I knew the sounds the floors made depending on where you walked, whoever opened it was just standing in the front room.

My body slowly sat upright and tiptoed towards my room door, opening it slowly to see slightly over the balcony and into the front room.

Calvary stood at the front door, staring up at me.

A part of me relaxed while the other was definitely more rational in this situation. "You scared me so badly!" I laughed, rubbing my eyes with my fingers. "Hi!"

I raced down the stairs and watched his eyes silently follow me, I wanted to give him a hug but something told me not to. He wasn't talking and being friendly like always. Something was definitely wrong and for him to show up at however late it was— maybe it just wasn't the best time.

"What's wrong?" I asked, "Is it my father?"

"Do you happen to know where the missing children of Maine caseload is?" He asked.