Kindness is an excellent virtue to have, and being a nurse, Rebecca’s mum had plenty of it. She had taught her daughter everything she could about kindness, but sometimes she wondered if she had taught her a little too well.
“Don’t forget to be kind to yourself, too,” she had told Rebecca, on more than one occasion. “If you’re not careful, you won’t have enough energy to be kind to everyone in the first place!”
Rebecca thought about her mum saying this to her as she walked home from school that day. The afternoon had gone as badly as the morning had, if not worse. Mrs Hotchkiss had set her class to making paintings of Viking ships as part of their history studies, but nobody had wanted to share the paints with her. When Rebecca had asked – very politely, because she was always very polite, even to people who were rude to her in return – if she might use some brown paint, Tommy Jones had thrown a whole pallet of brown paint at her. It had hit her in the face and hair, and much of the paint ended up splattered on the carpet. Mrs Hotchkiss had not been happy, and Tommy Jones had told her that Rebecca had snatched the paint pallet out of his hand whilst he had been using. Rebecca was not able to answer for herself, as paint had landed all around her mouth. Mrs Hotchkiss had taken her by the arm to the girls’ bathroom to clean her up, grumbling all the way and scaring Rebecca senseless. When you can barely see or speak for being covered in paint, being dragged around by an unhappy adult is an intimidating experience indeed.
So Rebecca was wondering if she could let go of her kindness long enough to punch Tommy Jones right in the face tomorrow before school. It would get her into trouble, she knew, but she figured that trying to be kind to everyone at the moment was getting her into enough trouble as it was, and that if she punched him as hard as she could, he might cry instead of her for a change, and she would feel a little bit better on the inside.
She was also worried about keeping Brandon distracted long enough this evening so that she could have another bath to get all of the paint out of her hair, vacuum all the carpets, mop the kitchen floor and do the homework she should have done at the weekend. If Brandon ended up being on his own for too long, he would start crying, and Dad would start shouting. It was going to be another difficult evening, and Rebecca wasn’t looking forward to it. She walked slowly and dejectedly along the tree-lined boulevard, head down and shoulders hunched, thinking things over and over again, and missing her mum terribly.
The sound of a boy shouting, “Get its ears! Get its ears!” made Rebecca jerk her head up and out of her sad thoughts. The voice had sounded excited but mean, like her classmates did when they made her cry. She didn’t think she would be able to stand to see that happen to another person.
The sound had come from the shadowy space between the two office blocks that Rebecca had just been about to pass. She crept quietly towards the corner of the nearest block and peered around to see two boys crouched over something, making violent movements towards it with their arms. Whatever it was they had was small and unable to defend itself. The boys were hurting it!
“HEY!” Rebecca shouted. “LEAVE IT ALONE!”
The boys started, turned to see Rebecca angrily staring at them with her fists clenched, jumped up and ran off. They knew they had done wrong, and they certainly weren’t going to stick around to discover the consequences that this older girl was surely about to deliver. Like most bullies, they were very good at causing pain in others, but were deathly afraid of experiencing any kind of pain themselves.
As they disappeared around the next corner, Rebecca realised how shocked she was at herself. She’d never shouted like that before at anyone, and the shout that had erupted out of her mouth had sounded just like her dad’s voice when he shouted at her. The thought of turning into Dad – or at least the version of Dad that had appeared since Mum had left – discomforted Rebecca enormously, but all thoughts of herself vanished as she peered into the shadows to see who it was that the boys had been torturing.
