Ghost

0103

When I came bounding down the stairs, my father looked up from scrapping eggs onto my sister's plate to give me an exasperated look. Audrey just smirked before turning back around, continuing to ignore my existence.

"Natty, what on Earth are you wearing?”

I looked down at my outfit to find my dress the same as the day my mother had bought it for me. “What?”

“I realize you’re not happy about school, but it’s not a funeral. And I thought your mother told you to throw away those boots.”

I looked down again, this time noticing I was covered head to toe in black. Whoops. The boots were a mess of dried mud and scuff marks, and the seams were coming undone. Just the way I liked them.

I gave him a pleading look.

“Go put on your new shoes…now. Before your mother sees them.” I rolled my eyes and sighed, turning to head up the stairwell but blocked by the devil herself. She was heading downstairs, in the middle of putting on her earrings.

“Natalie, what did I tell you about all those boxes cluttering up your-,” she paused, eyes looking me up and down the way one might look upon a train wreck. They stopped short at my boots and I felt my skin prickle. She didn’t say a word, but her raised eyebrow was enough to send me hurrying up the stairs. “And if I ever see you in those again,” she called after me, her tone in a frozen state. “They will be thrown in the trash.”

Right where I belong, apparently.

When I got upstairs, I searched through my closet for the flats and grudgingly slipped them on, but not before I snuck the boots into my bag. My second attempt at leaving the house was more successful, but still not accomplished without a displeased glare from my mother. I ignored her and headed out the door before anyone could gripe at me about the importance of starting the day with a full stomach. The thought of having to spend more than one meal a day sitting in silence and anxiously waiting for the table to catch into a fiery argument was enough to send me into starvation.

The twenty-five minute walk to school wouldn’t have been so bad if my stomach hadn’t been twisting into tight little knots. I thought back to my first day at Albernathy Catholic School; in my little school uniform and short, choppy hair that I had taken the initiative to cut myself. My mother had been furious. It was weird to recall my careless attitude, sticking my tongue out at anyone who dared to stare too long or ask me if I was a boy.

But I was different now.

If someone stared at me the wrong way, I think I would have a hard time not mentally breaking down, let alone standing up for myself. I didn’t wear black to look dark and mysterious; I wore it to cast myself as a shadow.

I kept my head hung low as I entered the building, clutching my bag close to me. I didn’t know how crazy these kids could get without a tongue lashing nun and a lecture about abstinence every other Sunday mass. I had heard enough horror stories about public school kids, and I didn’t feel up to testing them. But as I headed in the direction of the front office, I found that no one even noticed me. I was a new student in the middle of the year, and there were still too many kids around to recognize a fresh face.

When I looked back at the front doors, my eyes caught Audrey walking in. She looked lost, frightened; a little doe that had wondered onto the big highway of a public school corridor. I might have called her over if she wasn’t so busy hating my supposedly heartless being. 

When I looked up a second time, she wasn't alone. In the two minutes that she had been standing there, two guys had already parted the crowd for her like shepherds to a lost sheep. I watch as they smiled; their mouths moving in enthusiastic bursts and hands pointing towards her schedule as if it was the map to her heart. How bashfully she smiled when they offered to walk her to class, while I continued standing in line for directions to mine. I guess being shy was a lot easier when you were pretty.

I sighed, long and hard.