The Risen (Book 2): Margaret (4 page)

CHAPTER 6

T
he loud ruckus does eventually attract the unwanted attention our teachers feared it would. Our principal emerges from the secret chamber to explore the cause for so much chaos. His pressed pants and crisp linen shirt conflicts with the joy crashing against the walls. His look reels in the small celebration in a slow silence of a wave with awareness of him. Our teachers wear an expression of relief and embarrassment with the feelings of inadequacy at needing his help with what is supposed to be their jobs. Whistle Woman just looks mad. I’d hate to be in her class, Monday or not.

“Glad to see so many of you excited for the vaccination this morning.” His voice echoes through the hallway without effort, bringing our attention to him fully. It kills the joyful mood completely.

“Since you are already lined up and ready, we will begin to file in. Go ahead and remove any jackets or extra layers of clothing. This will help speed up the process. Once you have received your shot, go ahead and find your teacher and sit in your class rows on the bleachers. We are going to hang out for a while.” He gives us the instructions with no more emotion than a fast-talking commercial for prescription medicine. Luckily, there are no reactions to the shot or we may have been here longer as the list was rambled off giving more reasons to not take the medicine than to take it.

Mrs. Lamb is wearing her confused look again. Something that he said has once again set off her alarm bells. Something that, we as kids, have not been picking up on, or maybe just ignoring. The adults in the hall exchange silent glances as each looks to another for hints on the private matter being discussed without words and I wish I had one of those decoder rings offered in the boxes of cereal to help me understand what I am missing. Mine would be purple with pink lights to read the hidden code.

That would so rock.
My smile is completely misplaced with the mood around me, but I enjoy the thought anyway.

There is no heavy metal machine set up for us to walk through, like Charlotte said. There are no people dressed in yellow plastic suits with strange hats, like Richard said. There are no men in long white lab coats with clipboards taking notes of our behavior, like Scott said. It is just the school nurse, Miss Lacey, and a plastic chair.

I guess it really is just a shot after all.
I shrug with the thought, feeling a morsel braver. A morsel so small, that not even an ant would rejoice in its discovery, but braver just the same.

There is an almost audible exhale with each child that passes through the pastel painted gym doors. The painted mascot on the floor of the gym awaits to welcome us with its smile and an over confident cheer. It is obvious with the shy looks that we are all starting to feel a little silly for so much panic and drama over this.

Our giant train is segmenting as we pass sectioned bleachers. Just as with so many other aspects of school, we are well trained as to where each grade belongs on the many slanted rows of metal benches. Today is no different. We follow without any thought process to our area and climb the metal risers. Our shoes vibrate the walls with the metal echoes of our steps. Even with our newly found courage, we still glance over our shoulders to gain a better perspective of Miss Lacey’s actions with each step we climb.

She sits among many plastic cases that appear to be filled with just as many small plastic bags. Her hands tremble some with each motion of preparing for the first class. She is having a hard time meeting the eyes of the Principal as they hold a whispered conversation. It is almost charming to know she is just as anxious about giving the shot as we are about having to receive it.

I’ve always liked Miss Lacey. She is very giving with her smiles, lollipops, and the bright colored Band Aids that are now stacked and separated in rows of matching colors. Her dark curls gleam with the overhead lights reflecting in their spiraled perfection. Her face that normally fills the room with cheer is dark and dismal with nervous energy. Her shoulders seem to sag today with a heavy weight, robbing her of the glow that normally seems to always follow her and I am not the only one that notices such a drastic change in our school nurse.

Heads pivot from the metal risers we are climbing, one class at a time, and back to her, watching her motions and trying to gauge the reasons for her new behavior. Courage evaporates like water from a boiling pot. It floats away like the hot steam, fogging the room with our reoccurring doubts and dark thoughts. It is obvious she feels the many eyes boring into her with how she adjusts her body and squirms in the hard plastic chair.

It is a pastel color, just as everything else is themed in the building. So much thought process was put into forcing cheer into every corner possible. Today, it just seems rude and mocks the true feelings of its inhabitants.

We are selected by grade level as to which classes earn the privilege of going first. Days like this is when being in kindergarten is not as much fun as people had let on. Our cuteness can only save us from so much. Adding the double whammy of Mrs. Lamb having sat on the very bottom of the many tilted benches, forcing our class to line up first, is just depressing. Being the second child in line, that is just unfair.

Why, oh why, didn’t I take the back of the line when I had the chance?
I ask myself.

Our steps are the smallest they might have ever been in our short lives as we march to the waiting principal. He stands with folded arms and no welcoming posture at all. His eyes bounce over each child and I know he is taking count of how many are lined up before him for whatever reason. His lips are pressed together so tightly that they are losing coloring from the pressure. His cold, business-like demeanor is an extreme opposite of the smiling mascot’s face he stands on that welcomed us into the room. He has never been the spokesperson of hugs and comfort, but now, he even steals the joy from nightmares.

There are no more words. No more speeches. No warnings of what is to come. There is just his sharp voice asking our names and marking it from the many crisp white pages on his clipboard. We are to stand beside him as the child before us sits in a chair beside Miss Lacey to receive their vaccine until his pen points us forward. At least that was the plan in his head. Teddy has a different plan in his head.

“Name?” His eyes do not even glance at Teddy, but prepare to play hunt the name on the sheets. The game never starts though.

“Name?” He calls again. This time his eyes do look over the clipboard, but they are still waiting to play. “Son, what is your name?”

Teddy’s voice and legs are locked as he watches the shot being pulled from its plastic prison. The smell of the awaiting alcohol wipe already perfumes the air with a stomach-turning scent. The class clown is now the class leader and he is not finding any of it funny.

Fearing the reaction of our principal’s “no nonsense” attitude, Mrs. Lamb rushes to the front of the line. Her shoes click against the gym floor in her haste to save Teddy from the cold words that may fall upon his already frayed nerves at any moment. She whispers soft words into his ear from a kneeling position that stir minor reactions from him, but he is still not moving forward or offering his name.

His fingers drum against his pants leg as he debates her words. There is no way out of what is ahead of him, but his face shows he is thinking of his options of what to do anyway. His wide eyes show he is in no hurry to believe whatever is being whispered into his ear and the principal’s tapping toe shows that he has no patience for the delay. With an adjustment to the clipboard and his posture, I know that Teddy has run out of time. That is when I hear something I never thought I would. Ever.

“Margaret Erikson.” I hear my voice betray me. “My name is Margaret Erikson.”

I never really offered to go first, but with a brisk swipe of a pen, I am pointed forward. With a gentle reassuring squeeze of my shoulders, I am motioned forward. With a drop of my stomach, I walk forward. I don’t think my brain really thought this whole plan out at all.

Teddy owes me his cookies. For real.
Is the pout-filled thought that fills my head.

We are always told to “not look”. Don’t look at the wreck outside the car window. Don’t look at the TV when the music gets scary. Don’t look under the bed at night. Don’t look in the closet after the lights are turned off. Basically, don’t look at the monsters. Now the monster is a capped, pointed metal cylinder and I can’t stop looking at it.

“It helps if you don’t look.” Miss Lacey’s voice hovers over my panic, repeating the very words I was just mentally debating.

“That’s what they say.” I reply, backing up her words with my small voice. But, I’m still looking anyway.

“That was a very brave and kind thing you did for Teddy, Margaret.” She is roughly rubbing a spot on my arm with the cold, wet wipe. It smells like dread.

“I’m not feeling so brave now.” My white-knuckle grasp on my jean jacket proves the truth of my words.

“It will be over before you know it.” She winks at me but I don’t feel the smile. “Look at your shoes, Margaret, and tell me your favorite color three times.”

“Blue.” I feel the pinch of the skin to make a steady place for the needle.

“Blue.” The sharp tip presses into my skin making my toes curl with the sudden pain.

“Blue.” My arm burns like wild fire and I can’t hold back the tears that invade my eyes.

“All done.” She whispers it, rubbing the spot of the torment. The pain trickles through my arm, making me clench a tight fist as if it can prevent the fire from spreading. She places a blue band aid on my arm, but it brings me no joy as I thought it would. In fact, I am too scared to look up and allow my tears to make me a point of ridicule.

“Teddy is lucky to have such a good friend, Margaret. You were very brave.” Miss Lacey rubs my back with more of a forward motion than a comforting gesture. It is the nicest way I have ever been told to move before.

….both cookies.
I tell myself as I stand.

I glance backwards, over my shoulder to see if Teddy is finally moving into the seat I just left now that the tension has been broken by my going first. We lock eyes as Miss Lacey beings to repeat the same process with him that I just endured. Our eyes stay with one another until my neck hurts from holding such an extreme position while walking away. I am glad to glance away before the needle is placed into his tender flesh. A girl is only so brave for so long. At least this girl anyway.

CHAPTER 7

I
was the first to sit in the plastic chair of pastel pain and I am the first to sit back on the cold metal bleachers of boredom. That is what they become as we sit and watch each class lined along the center of the gym. It is what they embody as we watch each child call out their name and walk forward, repeating the same process over and over again and our irrational anger grows rapidly. It bubbled inside me almost as soon as I sat down. Now, with most of my class behind me, toes tap in solidarity of an emotion we can’t explain the cause of, but something just doesn’t feel “right”.

Some names we remark over whose older brother or sister that is. Some names we remark over their clothing choices as our anger mounts. Some names there are no remarks for at all with no knowledge or memory of them. Mostly, each name is just another brisk swipe of a pen on a hidden tally secured to a clipboard. Each mark, one more student down and the tapping grows louder as another joins in.

I don’t know exactly when it started or when the pain from my arm reaches my head with lightening bright stabs dulling the noises around me. It is so intense that my eyes reactively close with each puncture of the pain. I almost swoon from the sudden heat that rips through my body. My mouth grows dry with it as if the heat has evaporated all water from my body with the burning fire. I am not the only one showing signs of distress. Reactions creep up the rows behind me as if on a timer, colliding into each child with a punch.

Teddy sits beside me shaking his head slowly back and forth in his misery. His breathing is hastened with his pain. He pants, unable to slow his breathing, and I watch him fall to the ground. Mrs. Lamb seems miles away from us. The gym’s floor appears to stretch to impossible lengths, pulling her further away from us than it should be possible. I blink, trying to correct my vision, but the corners of the room start to grow black. So, I do the only thing I can think of to signal to our teacher that we need her. I scream.

I scream so loudly that I stand with the force from it. I stand against the pain that seems to be shredding my brain and against the fire that is roasting inside me. I stand, watching Teddy bounce on the floor beside me with his body’s jerking movements. I stand watching my friends fall like a deck of cards, floating slowly in the air one by one before they crumple to the floor. I stood to scream for help for those that are around me, but now I am screaming from the terror that is surrounding me.

Taking an unsteady step backwards, away from what is happening on the bleachers, my ankle twists, unable to support me with my body’s growing unease. The pain is sharp and almost refreshing as it blocks the pain in my head for a short span of a second. When the second is over, the pain rushes back, stronger than before and I collapse from it. I fall to the cool floor of the gym and stare out at what is happening around me, unable to move anymore.

Like a crowd rolling reverse game of The Wave, bleachers empty from sitting children to be filled with crumpled children. Small bodies jerk in various speeds, banging against the metal of the bleachers or the hard floor of the gym. Skin is splitting and wounds are forming from such a rapid, repeated abuse upon fragile bodies. Red flows down the metal risers like a shiny slinky, pooling at the bottom of the steps in thick puddles.

One puddle forms around me and I want to scream my terror at watching it grow as it encircles me, but I cannot. My vision bounces with my own motions, splashing the thick red blood into a film on my body. It applies a jerking effect to the running teachers through a red haze of my vision as if they are sharing in our suffering, but they aren’t.

The gym is now divided into two sections. One section is full with the screams of teachers unable to move to help their students with their own fears riding them to immobility and the small amount of remaining students that did not receive their vaccine. Those students are being shoved behind adult bodies to protect them from seeing what is happening across the room. They are saved from watching the other section of the gym filling with their friends and siblings beating their bodies to a ruin with jerking convulsions and skull smashing seizures. They scream for them none the less.

There are too many breaking bodies. There are not enough teachers to help us. They have no knowledge of what to do to stop any of it, or what is causing it, even if there were. My body feels bruised from the repeated collisions against the hard floor. The heat is cooking me, I know it is. It is too hot to do anything less. Sharp, invisible fingers are tearing my head apart with razor-tipped, pointed nails. I almost hope it will break open from the heat and pain so that it can all escape to the floor to swirl with the blood that coats it. Through all of this, I have no control over my body. I can’t scream with the pain. I can’t blink away the tears that fill my eyes. I am being forced to stare out blankly at so many eyes that are staring right back at me.

Like the wave that started it, the same motion ends it. The metallic sound slowly fades away as children grow still. Some of the blank stares retreat behind closed eyelids. Some stay open as the color dims from bright shades to dull, glass reflections with life leaving them.

The screams retreat in pitches also with the slowing of time as breaths are held in confusion and fear. The only sounds now filling the room are the thick dripping of the red rivers that flow from the shining metal steps into growing pools of darker coloring. A pool in which I now lie, coating one side of my body with a warm gel feeling.

The last sensation I feel before the room fades from my vision is a sudden explosion of pain in my head. Instead of the white-hot lights that pain sometimes causes, it strips my world of all color. The room becomes shades of gray all around me. The grays become darker and darker as the heat over takes me until there is nothing but blackness surrounding me. I know that my eyes are still open with the raw feeling of needing to blink, but I can see nothing now.

The last sound I hear is Miss Lacey calling my name. She sounds so far away and so sad as she rushes to me, her brave little girl. As I fade into the darkness, I am happy to escape the pain. I am defeated with it.

The pain dissipates as achingly slowly as it built inside me. A part of me whispers that I am dying now, but I don’t feel any sadness with that knowledge. I am only saddened that I never got my good-bye hug. I never was able to say good-bye. I was forgotten.