Unfortunately my outburst at the guidance counselor's office had permanently branded me as the class sociopath, the one to avoid no matter what. After arriving back to school to less than a hero's welcome, the rumors of my suicidal tendencies had been replaced with the rumors of how I tackled a guidance counselor and punched out a shrink before running down the hallway like a girl possessed. The only reason I hadn't been expelled was my mom and her on-the-ball legal team she supposedly had working on the case had put a stop any action they could take against me, which meant I could do anything I wanted in that school and they couldn't lay a hand on me.
Of course none of it was true, but when the story got back to the parents who had read the article of the suicidal girl attending their child's school most of them were stupid enough to believe it. Now, instead of getting irate phone calls from the people who supported me and wanted the bullying to stop, they were now getting irate calls from hysterical parents who didn't want me to shoot their kids. As far as they were concerned I was a live wire, likely to go off at the smallest slight. After all, what did I really suffer anyway? A couple of silly pictures, a little twist of the wrist and already I was out of control and attacking the faculty and the student body. They called for me to be institutionalized, to be immediately removed from contact with their children. Most of those kids who carried that tale back to their parents were the exact same ones who had left mean, malicious responses on that fake Facebook page. Maybe they thought they were listed on some sort of mental "hit list" I kept hidden in the hidden recesses of my mind. It gave me a sense of perverse satisfaction to think they might be sitting in their house, worried sick they're moronic actions might get them killed by a psycho like me, but truthfully all I wanted was to be left alone. If that meant living out the rest of my high school career in uneasy exile, so be it.
Astonishingly the bullying stopped. The page was taken down again, the pictures disappeared from Instagram and the other sites and nobody dared mention my name in their own posts, lest I add them to that hit list. I was still an outcast, but as long as I behaved they left me alone. Talk of my behavior in Ms. Martin's office died away, and after a couple of weeks and a resource officer eyeing me suspiciously every time I walked through the metal detectors without a suspicious "beep" things settled into a set pattern of avoidance and my life of solitude continued. Nobody talked to me, but nobody pestered me either.
And there were some good points to the rumors that surrounded me. Every morning I got a seat on the bus all to myself; I actually took to sprawling out on the seat, extending my legs across the empty space and allowing my feet to dangle off the edge. I watched as people nervously maneuvered their band instruments and their heavy book bags around my sneakers so they wouldn't accidentally bump into me. Sasha, Jennifer and Peyton took exceptional care in avoiding my gaze or coming anywhere near me when we passed in the halls or had classes together. So did Peri, but it had been so long since we spoke we were just strangers who cast sideways glances at each other, as if somewhere long ago we remembered being friends.
At home Mom was trying desperately to get that guy to speak with her again, to no avail. She took her foul mood swings out on me, which was quite often. She wouldn't let reporters interview me anymore, for fear she would forever be known as the mom who threw her kid to the wolves. Besides, if anybody dug much deeper they'd find a little report where DSS was eventually informed that my broken arm at the age of eight wasn't exactly an accident. But she blocked those reporters "because she cared about me so much." I had known her for far too long to buy that.
Aurora managed to bounce back from the fiasco quite well. She and Jessica were thick as thieves, as long as the topic of unfortunate relations never came up. Jessica most times had a total bitch for a sister and Aurora had in me a complete nutcase. In a way the girls that surrounded her admired her for facing such "adversity" with a perfect head of hair and just the right flair for fashion. But one of the things that sincerely impressed me about my sister was her uncanny ability to adapt to any situation, and having a crazy sister was no exception.
Psitharis had now become a source of comfort in my loneliness. I had only been there once or twice, mostly out of fear of falling asleep and not waking up again. In my brief moments in Psitharis I found myself at the bottom of Dream Land, back in the area that reminded me so much of steampunk and despair. I would make my way through the tunnels like a ninja, avoiding detection as much as possible, and even waking myself if I thought I had been spotted. By the third trip back I reached the hallway of the bottommost floor. No small feat considering how huge the entire underground complex was.
That night I found myself near an illuminated staircase, surveying my surroundings. I stood in the shadows, looking ahead to the only path left for me to take, right into the bowels of the mechanics that made the entire park run. I looked over to see a massive gear that was being manually turned by the slaves; one of many gears by the looks of things. There were two slave drivers, huge goons I had way too much experience with, but they seemed oblivious to my presence. I watched for a moment as the slaves worked, slowly forcing the gear round and round. Despite the obvious exhaustion the men were feeling in their bones they soldiered on, never looking up, determined to avoid the sting of their jailers and the weapons that forever loomed nearby.
As I watched I noticed one of the men was strangely out of place. The other men were large and muscular from years of hard work at the wheel. This man, though appearing very fit, was still relatively smaller than the others and visibly unaccustomed to this life of weary toil. It was very difficult to see without exposing myself to the light of the stairwell, but I strained forward to see his face. Almost as if someone had read my mind, the place lit up as some of the old electrical wires exploded over our heads, bathing the entire room in light from the sparks. It was such a common occurrence the slaves didn't even look up, but it allowed me to see exactly what I wanted to see. There, among the burly slaves and the hideous goons was...Roland! No longer in the uniform an officer's position allowed him, he was dressed in the rags given to the lowest of the low, the bowel workers. There were striations all over his back, indicative of someone who had received several lashes from some form of whip. And since the slave drivers held a cattle prod in one hand and a cat o'nine tails in the other, it didn't take me long to figure out where he had gotten them.
Any fear that had forced me forward on my long and slow trek through this dark, dungeon-like structure left me immediately. I was as pissed off as I had been back in Ms. Martin's office when they were trying to buy my silence with pop psychiatry and condescension. They locked the guy up after they knocked him out, and Calperal lied to me when he said he didn't know what happened to him. When I got my hands around that little snake's neck... I had to find a weapon so I could attack the goons and buy us enough time to escape. I searched desperately, stepping back into the shadows so my eyes could adjust and I could search for a heavy object with which to club a couple of bald heads. Almost as if it had appeared before my eyes, I spied a lead pipe under one of the machines nearby. I was beginning to understand. I had been gone so long when I first got here, so everything was screwed up and I had no power here. But now that I had spent time back in Psitharis and had taken up the cause to fix this place, my imagination was beginning to fight back. It explained how I, who had never had a ballet lesson in my life, could suddenly dance like a ballerina. And it also explained how this heavy metal pipe just presented itself to me; in pristine, head-bashing condition.
I picked up the pipe carefully, so I wouldn't make any noise and alert the guard. The pipe was as long as a yardstick and very heavy, yet I could wield it without any problems. I waited until one of the guards was on the other side of the wheel and the one nearest to me had his back turned. I stepped out, tiptoed toward the massive back and WHAM! He went down like a shot. Not having time to think about my next move, I ran up to the other guard and let out a battle cry that wound up sounding like a wounded cat. I made contact with his head just as he turned to see what was coming his way. I got him square on the top of the head. He fell to his knees, looking at me with the accusatory look of a five-year-old who just got slapped by a classmate. I dodged as he fell from his knees onto his stomach, the protrusion of his massive gut protecting him from slamming his face against the concrete floor.
I ran over to where Roland continued to work, oblivious of what just happened to the men who guarded him and the others. "Come on," I jerked his arm and pulled him out of the line, "we're leaving."
He looked at me for a moment, with a glazed, confused look on his face. "Who are you?" He asked, staring at me as if he'd never seen me before. Then it hit me. I had spent such a long time skulking through the facility I had forgotten what I was wearing. I was wearing the rest outfit of one of the Exceptionals, but I still had most of my hair up in the elaborate hairdo created by the fitter himself. My make-up, thought slightly worn from the sweat of being down here so long, still looked pretty elaborate.
"Roland, we don't have time for this." I pleaded, pulling him forward toward the staircase. "It's me, the criminal. Look at me!" He stared for a moment, squinting his eyes to get a good look at me. When he recognized my face, he snapped out of the trance he had been in for the past month and started looking around to see who might have seen what I had just done.
"We better move quickly." He agreed. We didn't bother to convince the others to run. If we had we might have subjected them to a fate worse than death. The only lives we were willing to risk at that moment were our own. We made a break for the stairs and made it up three flights before the sound of descending footfalls forced us to exit through the doors, to the floor right below the dorms where the Exceptionals lived, and where I had witnessed my first brutal murder. What I wouldn't have given to go one more floor up to check on the others, but I didn't dare. I would have gotten them into trouble, even if they had survived. And I couldn't risk Jake's life for my own selfish reasons.
We closed the door quietly to keep the soldiers who were on the other side from hearing our departure and trying to follow us. We snuck down a fairly bright hallway to a series of doors which had different labels over each. One was labeled "Character dressing" and the next said "vendor prep"; the others were marked as storage rooms. We stepped into the first unlocked storage room and barred the door behind us. Roland did a cursory scan of our surroundings: it was all pretzel mix, funnel cake mix and powdered sugar as far as the eye could see. We were alone. We were safe.
"What are you doing here?" He rounded on me so quickly I nearly fell over a large box of pretzel salt. I stumbled and he reached out to catch me. We wound up in one of those clichéd Hollywood embraces, except Cary Grant looked like he wanted to kill me and not kiss me.
"Well, it looks like I'm risking my ass to save yours!" I snapped, pushing him away from me.
He backed off, looking as angry as I did. "Well, I almost had my escape all planned out. I didn't need your help."
I laughed, which made him angrier. "Oh, yeah! I could really see how close you were to getting out of there! What was your brilliant plan, work until one of those idiots had a heart attack or something, then wait for the other one to have a stroke?" He looked like he could knock my teeth down my throat, but suddenly he smiled, and his smile turned into a laugh.
He put his arm on my shoulder. "You're right. I owe you my freedom, and that will not be forgotten. But for now we need to figure out how to get out of here. If we stay in this room we are dead anyway. We need to flee." He had almost turned to face the door, but something made him look back and look at my face in a way that made my cheeks burn with crimson. "What happened to you? You look...different."
How did I explain to him the past month? "Let's just say we've both been prisoners. My prison was just a lot more pristine. And then the queen spotted me and..."
Roland grimaced. I didn't have to tell him the rest. I was once again on the run, the fugitive he was commissioned to return to the palace. But his mission was the last thing on our agenda. Escape from this park of horrors was first priority now. "Well, let's see if we can get out of here. We'll sort our situation out later."
I nodded, but remembering my penchant for suddenly disappearing, I stopped him from bolting out the door. "Hold on for just a second. We need to have a quick discussion." He looked anxious, staring at the door, but he stopped to listen to me. "You can't rely on me to get out with you." He cocked his head the way a curious puppy would if he had heard a foreign sound that puzzled him. "Okay. Do you remember how I pulled my disappearing act?"
He nodded, waiting for me to continue.
"Well, that's going to happen again. So run as if you're the only person you have to worry about. I'll catch up with you eventually. I can't really control when I'm here and when I'm not."
Roland was still in disbelief. "Even if what you say is true, you realize that you are still a fugitive from justice. I will still have to take you to the queen once we are free."
I rolled my eyes. "Are you still stuck on that? Okay, all right, when we are both free you can take me directly to the queen. It's probably the best thing we can do right now. I need to find out what's going on here, and going to the palace is the only way I'll get the answers I need. So, remember what I said. Keep going. I'll find you. I swear."
We each stood on either end of the door. Roland stuck his head out the door first, clutching my lead pipe. He motioned me to come out. We started down the hall toward the only other steps we knew were located on that floor. As we approached the door that would lead up to the stairs and our freedom we heard commotion coming from the far end of the hall. "THERE THEY ARE!" I heard a loud voice boom from the other end. Roland started running, following my directions. I was right behind him. Suddenly the door to our escape slammed open, and out poured five goons. Roland, following his training, made very fast work of the goons in front of us, running to the middle of the herd, pipe landing almost simultaneous blows to two burly shins as he passed. Two of our potential captors went down in a heap, clutching their legs. With moves I could barely make out he twisted and turned like an acrobat, landing three blows across their heads and sending them sprawling into unconsciousness.
"Holy crap, that was impressive!" I marveled out loud, still running closely behind him.
"If I'm not getting sucker punched by a behemoth you'll find I'm pretty proficient at what I do." Roland called back, never breaking stride. We burst through the door leading to the stairs. We started up, taking two or three steps at a time. By the time we started up the last flight of stairs leading past the Exceptionals hallway, we heard the door open to that floor as well. I looked down for only a moment; it was Calperal.
"STOP YOU TWO!" He was furious. Now we were being chased by the people below, Caperal, and his two guards. Roland flung open the door that led to the park with me following right on his heels. I decided to deploy a new tactic. As Roland kept running, I paused at the exit, waiting for Calperal to come out. When he appeared, I decided to taunt him by flipping him the bird.
"Hey Calperal! You can take that ballet costume and shove it!" I turned to run. I knew it wouldn't be long before they caught me. It didn't matter, because I had given Roland the opportunity to escape. I darted in and out among the patrons, Roland having long disappeared. Just as it seemed my capture was inevitable and I was going to have a very unpleasant rendezvous with the cattle prod or something much worse, I could hear my mother's voice crying out, "Medora, get up! You're going to be late for school! You'd better wake up this time!" I could feel the sensation that comes with rejoining the real world. I stopped, allowing Calperal to catch up with me. And as he reached out to grab me, I brought my hand up to my lips, put a kiss on my fingertips and blew it to him, smiling my best smartass smile as my molecules dispersed from that world and returned to the land of the living.
