Winged Girl

Chapter 4

   First year of primary school went well. No more mental beasts attacked my soul. No more piercing insults thrown around like knives. No more inhumanly laughter stabbing my heart and breaking it to a trillion pieces. Life was good, and I enjoyed it. Very much indeed.
   On the first day of school, my class teacher, Ms Lenny (she preferred people calling her by the first name) told the class that it would be very nice if we would introduce ourselves and get to know each other. Yeses rang out still and clear from the students around me whereas I had to bite my tongue hard until I tasted iron blood to stop myself from screaming out loud. Tears did somersaults in my eyes as I pinched myself to stop it from rolling down my face. As the mushroom cloud of the Self-introduction Bomb swept near, I my heart leapt into my throat as I tightened my fist so that blood oozed from my fingernail-shaped cuts on my palm.
   "Ah, number 9, can you stand up and tell us your name and your favourite movie?" 
   The tears I had kept away for so long immediately saturated my face as stood up and got ready to answer her question.
   "My love! You ok?" Ms Lenny asked, concerned after I had parted my lips as if to speak although no words came out.
   "Y-yes, I'm fi-ne..."
   Heads turned to look at me with a mixture of confusion and pity in their eyes.
"Hello. My name is Maleficent," I paused. "And my favourite movie is...well... Maleficent."
   I flinched as amused looks appeared on my classmates' faces. The hand of a girl apparently named Mary's shot up and remained until the teacher told me to sit down and invited her to answer. She slowly stood up and turned towards me with a beautiful, warm smile plastered on her across her round, flat face.
   If you measured Mary's height and divided by a half, the result would probably be 10cm shorter than her hair length. Her overlong hair was plaited perfectly into two delicate, hazelnut-brown braids, complimenting her big eyes that shone like flawless emeralds that could easily make a bird black out and fall from the sky.
   Her tiny rose-red lips opened up and I braced myself to argue back to jabbing words, who knows if her smile was a sarcastic one? But to my amazement, instead, words of kindness were pronounced by her crisp, light voice that reminded me of wind chimes that waltzed in the summer breeze.
   "I wish I was named Maleficent. I loved the movie too! Oh! How great would it feel to walk around with a name of a fairy?"
   "Me too!" voiced a girl whose name I had later recalled as Violet, softly.
   "Me three!" a cute, plump girl announced.
   My face was once again dampened, this time by warm tears for even boys joined in the chorus of 'me too!'s and 'me three!'s. Oh the bright voices of my new found friends, it sounded like something even more than music to my ears, so encouraging to turn over a new leaf, and ever so calming. I wished that Ms Lenny had never calmed the class down so that she could speak, so that the melody would never cease, ever urging me to go on.