Run Rabbit Run

The kidnapper had been thoughtful. Tucking the child's favorite stuffed animal with her under the covers, gently around her chin. It was no wonder that her parents hadn't noticed anything wrong until the following morning.

It was only after her mother tried unsuccessfully to wake her daughter up that she noticed the soft hair of her daughter was tangled together like cheap nylon fishing line. Her skin, always china fair, had turned hard, becoming porcelain, cracked at one edge. The crack gave the doll a wicked look as if someone had cut her pretty cheek, sliding her smile into her bones. Clutching the hideous mockery of her daughter, the mother screamed.

So why hadn't the babysitter?

6 months later

"Yo, loserette, you coming?"

Lara looked up. Closing her book, she wiped a pale brown hair from her forehead, tucking it behind her ear. "Umm hmm," she mumbled, "just give me a minute."

Her friend bounced up and down on her feet impatiently. Except, Lara thought, she wasn't her friend. She was just someone to walk down the hallway with. "Come on," the girl urged. "You know what a pain Cummings is if you're late to class."
Did Lara ever. Trig class pretty much blew on every level. The mounds of homework, not to mention the squinty-eyed joy of a teacher who loved above all else to embarrass his students. Each student was arranged alphabetically. No chance of sitting next to a friend for even a bit of comfort in Cummings class. No, he ran his class the way he wanted to. And what he loved above all else was handing back tests. He would arrange the tests in order of best to worse, then with a joy that was sickening to behold, he would return them in that manner. Starting first with words of praise for his top students, progressing to slow sighs and outright exclamations of disgust as he reached the bottom of his pile. By the time, he was done, everyone knew exactly what each other had gotten. It was humiliating on every level. And Lara, as his last recipient more than once, dreaded every time she had to go to class.

But if you were late, Cummings always made sure to call on you as many times as possible, so she picked up her books and ran out of study hall after her sorta friend. Already she was looking forward to the end of class.

The bell rang just as she reached her seat. Still gasping from her run from first floor to fourth and around the corner, Lara pulled out her Trigonometry book. Her homework wasn't neat, but it was done. She laid it next to her book and waited.

Mr. Cummings looked over the class without saying a word. Heading towards the door, he went to pull it shut, sealing them in his math dungeon. But to his surprise it was pulled back the other way. He yanked harder and a girl slid through the crack.

"Who are you?" he demanded, almost slamming the door in his annoyance, "and why are you interrupting my class?"

"Is this Trigonometry?" the girl asked. She was small, but her face was arresting. At six feet 3, Mr. Cummings could intimidate most people, but her dark blue eyes held his stare and shot it back at him. "I'm supposed to be here then. My name is Ivy. Ivy Mitchell. I just transferred." She handed him a piece of paper.

The class perked up, whispering among themselves. A newbie was always fodder for fun. The girls made note of her outfit, her hair. "Can't be natural," they whispered behind their hands. "No one has hair that color. It looks like it's on fire, gotta be from a bottle." But the guys only saw the smoke and flames below the neck. One whistled softly, "Hottie in heat alert." Mr. Cummings ignored him.

"Fine, take that seat in the back. Next to Miss Jenkins. It's the only one open." He didn't bother to mention that the seat was open because the girl who used to sit next to Lara had dissolved in tears so often from his class that her parents had demanded a new teacher.