The Safe Place (Bridge To Terabithia) || ✓

Ch. 8 - Homeschooled

     It didn't even take one week before everyone knew about Jess and Leslie's take on the roles of the highly anticipated high budget film that was expected to have similar success to another fantasy series, Harry Potter. Thanks to May Belle's big mouth, the abuse they received in school became much worse. If Jess thought that the last six years of his life in the school was horrible, the treatment he was receiving now was even worse. He would constantly be pushed, shoved, berated whenever one was given a chance. He tried to follow Leslie's advice of 'ignoring and avoiding it' but he found it frustrating at times of how the others could be such hypocrites just like what Leslie described them to be.

     The treatment for Leslie was similar to Jess, except there wasn't much physical contact because she was a girl but rather was more emotionally stressed than Jess was even though she wasn't showing it. She was basically the sole target for girls, led by Wanda Kay of course. That girl didn't let Leslie even take one minute to have her privacy. Whenever Leslie would come back from recess or even the restroom, she'd find one of her things gone and would find it somewhere at the back of the room. She would also be called names like 'freak', 'loser', 'nerd', 'ugly'— that sort of stuff which didn't really get to her until the notes came.

Both Jess and Leslie would see notes under their desks and find it to be scribbled with horrible messages. Most of them were notes such as 'jump off a building', or 'I hope you die', to which was very alarming to both of them. Leslie's books and Jess's drawings would also get torn whenever they would go for their recess which was tremendously horrible for Jess who loved drawing and for Leslie who was a bookworm.

     This lasted for at least two months.

Jess was used to the physical contact from other kids in school. He would get tripped, pushed down, sometimes even throws book at him but those times he could either defend or catch himself. This time however, he couldn't because he was going up the bus at the time.

"Move it, loser." The 9th grader, Billy Morris, hissed at him and then roughly shoved him aside as he went up the bus.

Leslie was just right behind him when it happened but she couldn't catch him when he fell because she had been holding three books with her. Jess, unable to catch his fall, hit his face on the stairs. He momentarily got up, rubbing his nose and his lips bruised.

"Jess!" She gasped when she saw the blood visible on his knuckle when Jess had removed his hand. "Your nose!" She told him in a worried tone. She instructed him to just keep his head forward and pinch his nose before bringing him back to the school to have him treated.

     Eventually, Leslie decided to call her father to have him pick them up since their bus had drove off. They were in the office for an hour with Jess pressing an ice pack on his nose and cheeks and Leslie just reading her books. Sometimes she would keep the pressure on him just because she was bored. When Bill came to pick them up, he expressed concern over their safety and asked what had happened with Jess. But just as Leslie was about to tell him, Jess shot her a look which told her not to say the truth so she merely said that he had tripped.

     Bill, having known his daughter's behavior whenever she would be lying, instantly saw through her lie but did not press for anymore details. At night when he walked by his daughter's open room while she was downstairs, he walked in and found lots of crumpled paper in the bin. When he opened them, it shocked him. He put all the pieces together and then recalled what happened with Jess. He figured that Jess must've said the same thing to Jack back in the car when he returned back home with tissues in his nose, so when he and Jack went for their usual bar night, he brought it up.

     "Jack, the kids need to be homeschooled."

     "You do realize that my family can barely afford what we have now, right?"