Once again, this is all very rough work. I hardly read this over before posting it, and there are a lot of parts I would change, but I've got to get back to my other book, so here's chapter 5 of the book I'm writing with my daughter.
Chapter 5
The rest
of that school day seemed to go on forever.
Rachel had missed her Angelology,
and Predatory classes, but she felt confident that she knew enough about those
two guilds that she wouldn’t really be behind.
She walked in halfway through her Math Class, but the teacher didn’t say
a word. Rachel figured that the teacher
had probably heard the gossip about the Co-Leaders of the Angel Guild showing
up, and didn’t want to have any part of that trouble. Math was easy, and this class seemed to be
review compared to her private tutelage.
The new student’s assembly and orientation was next on her
schedule. Rachel wondered if the
principal had had enough time to compose herself after the encounter with her
parents. She would find out soon enough.
The entire school met in the
gymnasium for the assembly. The second
year kids were singing the school anthem when Rachel and the rest of the first
year students arrived. The gymnasium was
enormous. Rachel found herself lost in awe,
temporarily forgetting her misery. She
and the rest of the first year students filed in, most with only a ball of fur
in tow. The second year students had a
wide variety of spirit beasts. Some were
fully developed, but stayed at Undecided’s Intermediate because they didn’t
want to switch schools half-way through.
Most, though, only had partially developed beasts. Balls of fur with lion’s faces, or legs and
no face, or goat heads, or arms, were all hooting and howling at the new
students. The gym was noise in a box.
There were cheerleaders on the
basketball court rallying the crowd.
There was a mascot of a dragon, which was the school’s mascot because it
was a legendary beast that nobody had had for thousands of years, dancing around
the court. It must have taken three or
four students to operate the enormous costume.
Rachel smiled, in spite of her horrible day.
Once all the students were seated
the principal took the pulpit and everyone quieted down. Principal Winehart looked to be put back
together as she welcomed the new students to Undecided’s Intermediate
School. She was halfway through her
welcome speech when someone yelled, “Principal Whiner Baby.” The rest of the school burst out in
laughter. Rachel’s cheeks burned. The Principal looked to have been physically
knocked back a step, and Rachel thought she saw her bottom lip quiver.
Principal Winehart smoothed her
grey skirt down at her hips and took a step back up to the microphone. A deep scowl settled on her face as she
scanned the student body. Most of the
kids quieted down. A few of the older
boys were chanting, “Whiner Baby,” but eventually that too died out. The Principal found Rachel in the crowd, and
held up her hand to quiet the rest of the students. All of the other students raised their hands
and shut their mouths. Rachel figured it
must have been a sign to be quiet in the school. They never needed such tactics in the Angel’s
Elementary School she attended. She
shyly raised her hand and looked down at her feet to avoid eye contact with the
principal.
“Rachel Sie,” the principal said in
a commanding voice. “Come to the pulpit
at once!”
The students all around Rachel
looked at her. She felt her ears
burning. She didn’t want to, but felt
herself stand up and start walking towards the pulpit, just the same. She never took her eyes from her feet, but
she knew that everyone was looking at her.
A few of the children whispered things to one another, but mostly the
gym was dead silent. Rachel could hear
her heart beating in her ears with a loud whooshing sound. After what seemed like the longest walk in
her entire life, she found herself standing in front of the pulpit at the
center of the gymnasium.
Principal Winehart covered the
microphone with her hand and leaned around the pulpit towards Rachel. “Been talking about what happened in my
office, have we?”
Rachel looked up in shock, shaking
her head, “No, I swe…”
“Hush,” the principal cut her
off. “I’ll have no lies to save your
hide.”
Rachel had thought the principal
looked pleasant, and even beautiful in her own way, before. Now, she looked mean. And she wore a scowl that looked to be easily
brought forth. Her cat was sitting at
her heels with the hair on its back raised.
A low moan resonating from the cat made Rachel sick with worry about
what Principal Winehart had in store for her.
The principal took her hand from
the microphone and looked back towards the students gathered at the
assembly. “This is Rachel Sie, daughter
of Saul Sie and Claudia Sie, the Co-Leaders of the Angel Guild.” She motioned to one of the other teachers,
and he brought a sawhorse looking stand in front of the pulpit. “Bend over it, Miss Sie.”
Rachel didn’t know what the
sawhorse stand was, but she knew she didn’t want to bend over it. Once again, she felt herself walking over to
it anyway. She felt numb. She bent over the sawhorse with her face a
bright red hue. The principal walked
around the pulpit and behind her.
Suddenly, Rachel felt a sharp pain on her rear-end. She cried out, instinctively, and stood up
slightly. The male teacher pushed her
shoulders back down over the sawhorse just as she received another thrashing on
her rear-end. Rachel tried to cover her
bottom with her hands, but the rod struck her hands instead, causing even
greater pain than her bottom, so she quickly moved them. Principal Winehart struck her ten times in
total. By the sixth lash, Rachel was
bawling. The lashings hurt, but more
than anything she was humiliated. She
had never been spanked growing up. The
Angel Guild’s elementary schools would never dream of striking a child. Physical violence was considered barbaric to
all in the Angel Guild, but here, they obviously had different ideas about it.
When the ordeal was over, the
principal courtly said, “Stop your blubbering and return to your seat.” Rachel tried to stifle her crying, but
couldn’t seem to stop. Her breath came
in racking sobs as she tried with all her might to stop crying. A few of the kids snickered at her, but most
sat upright in fear of the horror they had just witnessed. Obviously, some of them weren’t use to
physical discipline either. When she
reached her seat, she sat down quickly, trying to hide from the thousands of
eyes watching her. The moment her bottom
hit the seat she cried out in shock from the painful welts on her bottom.
Principal Winehart slowly walked
back behind the pulpit and stood staring at Rachel until she looked up. She was still holding the thin rod she had
used to lash Rachel’s bottom. Rachel
felt angry, humiliated, and scared all
at once. The principal held her gaze for
a while before a self-satisfied smile crossed her lips.
She looked around at the rest of
the student body and said, “She has the most powerful and influential parents
among you, but she is not above me in my own school. Just the rest of you think about that the
next time you think to open your mouths.”
The gym was silent. Even the
second-year students were sobered by what they had witnessed. The principal finished her speech and sat
down. Several other faculty members
spoke to the students, but Rachel didn’t hear a word of what was said. She sat in her seat in a daze. Sometime the students would clap. Sometimes they would laugh, but Rachel just
stared at her feet, wishing the day would end.
After the assembly the students
returned to their classes. Rachel
noticed that they studiously ignored her.
Some went so far as to turn their heads away from her as they walked
past. Rachel filed out of the gym with
the rest of the students, and into the hall.
She had no idea where her next class was, nor did she care. She just started walking down the hall with
the flow of students leaving the gym.
David found her and asked her
something. His voice sounded like it was
coming from the opening of a deep well.
She turned to him and asked, “What?”
David smiled his goofy smile, and
took her notebook from her hand, opening it up to her schedule. “Ah, economics. I know where that is, I’ll walk you.”
Rachel nodded numbly, and walked
with David to her next class. He was
jabbering on about how he was sorry the principal had done that to her and how
he knew she wasn’t use to that kind of punishment. She hardly heard a word of what he was
saying. When they got to her economics
class, David said his goodbyes and left her standing in the doorway. Rachel could see the kids inside pointing and
whispering to one another. Tears filled
her eyes, and she turned and ran down the hall.
She bumped into several students
along the way, they yelled at her, but she didn’t stop nor did she hear a word
of what they were saying. She ran until
she was at the front entrance of the school.
She saw the light of day beaming in through the glass doors of the large
entryway, and ran for them. Before she
knew it, she was halfway home, and her lungs were burning with the effort to
keep her panting. She had a painful
stitch in her side, and had to stop to catch her breath. Her heaving panting turned into sobs, and she
fell to her hands and knees, half crying and half gasping for air.
She cried for a long while before
she ran out of tears. Once she was able
to stop, she felt something deep within her.
It wasn’t anger, or hurt, or sadness, but it was a powerful
feeling. It was a feeling of determination
and strength. She had never felt the
likes of this before. She knew, without
a shadow of a doubt, that she would never cry again. She wiped her nose on the back of her hand
and picked herself up. With shaky arms,
she wiped away the streams of tears from her face. Some had already dried to salty streaks, but
she didn’t care anymore.
Her parents were the cause of all
of this, she was certain. She wanted
nothing more to do with the politics of the Angel Guild. She marched the rest of the way home, knowing
nobody would be there. When she got
home, she went to her room and started packing her things. She didn’t really have any idea where she was
going, but she knew she didn’t want to be there anymore. Once she had a bag full of clothes, she went
to the kitchen, and got some bread, and peanut butter and jelly. She stuffed them in with her clothes and
zipped the bag closed. She didn’t want
there to be any question as to where she went, so she decided to leave a
note. She wanted her parents to know
that they had brought this on themselves.
She wanted them to hurt like she hurt, know that they had driven her
away.
She put the pen to the paper and
started to write:
Dear Mom and Dad,
I cannot bear to live with the
Angel Guild’s dictates anymore. They
seem to be constantly contradicting themselves, and I’m tired of hearing them
all the time. I can’t do anything right!
I’m tired of feeling smothered all the time, so I’m running away.
You ruined my life today when
you came to my school and threatened my principal. She struck me ten times with a rod in front
of the entire school. I have never been
so humiliated in all of my life, and it’s all your fault. I can never forgive you. This is just the last thing in a long line of
horrible things I’ve had to endure because I’m the daughter of the Angel Guild
leaders. The Angel Guild is full of
hypocrites and so are its leaders.
Don’t bother coming to look for
me. I’m never coming home, and I don’t
want to have anything to do with this
family, or this guild ever again.
Rachel
Rachel
read the letter over several times, thinking about changing different parts,
but finally decided to just keep it the way she wrote it. She picked up her bag and walked to the door. Her stomach gave a little flurry when she
opened the door and looked back into her house for the last time. She took a deep breath, and closed the door
behind her.
