International Legends

Chapter 16 - Leo

18 years ago - Purple Mountain National Park

I remember it like it were yesterday - my time with Norma. Granted, it wasn't a ton of time, but I do remember thinking to myself that this girl was so weird and simultaneously so interesting that I would be thinking about her for a long time afterward. We were in middle school together, but I was in the class of the cool boys that went around making fun of the nerds and half-beating each other up on the side when one of us would show a side of us that made us look prissy or weak. That's because, in our society, strength was an actual grade. 

Norma, however, was completely isolated and weird. She spent a good chunk of her time kicking a soccer ball against the wall at school or sitting on the sidelines (often on top of her hands) to keep her from relentlessly picking at them. She seemed extremely OCD, making a noise with her mouth that made her sound disgusted with everyone. Pretending to be a cat. She was a weirdo and was definitely not making an outstanding score in her gym class. 

In our world, strength and prowess are a must. We were going to be sent out into the wilderness alone for an entire year come 7th grade, and already there were bets being made on who was going to survive and who wouldn't. Many parents in our country made their peace with it, knowing all too soon that we would go out to war with neighboring countries and fight in hand-to-hand combat. It was all agreed upon when we nearly fell to nuclear war 45 years ago. That we needed to go back to nature and "survival of the fittest." Even if we lost some on the way.

Norma, who was drawing extensively in her journal little characters that went along in her story on the long bus ride we took at the end of 6th grade out to the wilderness where we would spend the following year, did not seem too impressed upon me looking down upon her. Especially when so many girls in my class would have killed to get me to give one look at them, Norma instead seemed immersed in her own little world crafting character descriptions to those in her story. She hardly even looked out the window.

"Hey..." she murmured, looking down at her work. 

Not knowing what to say, I found myself bursting out with a "Why do you do that?"

"Do what?" she asks, not understanding.

"Lose yourself in that little imaginative world of yours," I say, leaning over to flip through her notebook in spite of her indignation. "When it is the real world out there demanding your attention? How do you expect yourself to survive?"

With a single tear dripping down her cheek, she admitted "I do not expect to make it through the coming year. Mom and Dad already began to treat me like it was the last time that they were ever going to see me. They gave me a cake and everything for my birthday. They sat me down and told me their favorite memories. Then they started crying."

She's soaked in tears now, and I sat down next to her to awkwardly comfort her in the best way that my pre-teen self knew how. 

"I'll protect you," I say, not knowing how to comfort her. 

"That's nice," she admits. 

Yet, it was not even too long in that wilderness before Norma ran into her doom. Getting lost in the woods, running away from a Grizzly, coming straight into the line of fire of one of its hunters. Never could one of those men have imagined that they would kill a kid. 

I remember running after the sound of her screams and then the gunshots. I fell down to the forest floor where she lay, blood pooling at her head, feeling useless and lifeless.

"I guess it's survival of the fittest huh?" she asked, eyes fluttering at the searing pain.

"Stay with me," I murmured, doing everything that I could to bandage her head and keep her from bleeding out right in front of me.