To The Bridge
CW: sexual violence, eating disorders
The blanket trailed behind her as she walked, barefoot, towards the trees. She pulled the blanket around her closer, but the blanket’s end was already covered in mud and zig-zagging her path behind her. It was stupid to go out before a storm — if any of the others had done it, she would have even punished them — but here she was, the mud hardening into dirt as she went into the trees. She crossed the bridge, her favorite spot, the one where she would come to escape the others. It wasn’t that she minded being like a mother to them, but it was exhausting. Their caretaker had other business in the school to which he must attend; there had to be somebody to maintain order.
The stone on the bridge felt like the stone in the basement, though she doubted they were the same. She closed her eyes and stood still, as if she were back inside, standing outside of her bedroom door. He’d wait for her there, sometimes. Sometimes he’d already be naked, ready to pounce on her and murmur words in Russian she didn’t understand. She tried to look past him in those moments, tell herself she was helping him cope with the loss of his family, a reality that the rest of them already knew. He found peace in her body, and she —
She was walking again, closer to the trees, coming right next to them. The bark wasn’t yet soaked. She looked back and saw that the blanket had trailed more mud onto the bridge steps, and sighed.
If she’d gone to the old bathhouse, a ruins of a once beautiful building, roses creeping along the sides in the spring and summer, perhaps she’d have found more peace. The bridge was a place that he came with her; the bathhouse was her own. She’d taken Leon there, recently, she thought. She’d sat him there and told him that the roses reminded her of him. The roses had so many little buds poking out, just as he had the voices that the rest of them couldn’t see. She understood, though, and they all still loved him. There were voices that played to her as she slept, reminding her of her duty. She touched a hand to her nonexistent breasts and knocked on her sternum. She wasn’t hungry, she told herself. She had the banana three days before. It would give her energy until the morning, at least.
If Aiden came out, she would have taken him to the bathhouse too, she thought. If Aiden walked outside, with the rest of them, then —
Then maybe she wouldn’t be out here.
It was raining now. She wrapped her fingers around her wrist, and slid the circle up almost to her elbow, and back down again. The distance was longer than last time. She was pleased.
She curled up by the base of the tree, pulled the blanket tighter around her. In the morning, she would go in and tell him to apologize to her, and to Aiden, to push aside his anger and forgive them their sins. Aiden couldn’t help his love of people like him, just as she couldn’t help her role as Wendy Darling. She would make him realize that their lives weren’t his, weren’t driven by his Catholic rites, and to be one of theirs, he had to accept that.
They found her body there in the morning.
This is a flash fiction piece about a critical scene in my novel, Neverland’s Children. The book opens with the funeral, so this isn’t spoiler-y. Feel free to ask me questions. I’m still looking for representation but am lucky to have interested agents. This piece was originally written for Writer’s Weekly 24 Hour Short Story contest, Winter 2016.
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