Chapter Text
Maybe it’s a superpower: Nancy can send her mind away from her body. That little hunched-over girl in her pastel dress in the corner, the one that Mr. Kreuger is hurting? That isn’t her. She isn’t there anymore. Instead she counts all the bricks in the walls, traces the spill of light through spiderwebs. The air in the underground cellar is cold. She doesn’t feel it against her skin. She is a ghost watching herself from far away, and ghosts don’t cry.
The horrible grownup dresses her like a doll; the thing that is her body raises her limbs as commanded. Maybe she won’t be back in her body until she gets to the classroom. The classroom is safe. Her teacher is there, and so are Kris and Dean and Quentin. Even at naptime, when they are supposed to be quiet and still, there are so many other people around that there’s nothing Mr. Krueger can do.
Except her cotton numbness doesn’t last that long.
It starts with her fingertips, her toes in her Mary Janes, the air in her nostrils as she breathes. and then she is back in her body, feeling all the aches and pains that make walking tough like trying to roller-skate uphill.
This is the bargain she’s been offered, because she’s his favorite: whatever she does, Quentin doesn’t have to.
Quentin is hers in a way she can’t explain to grownups yet. He’s one of the youngest kids in her grade, small for a boy. He likes things most boys don’t. Dress-up, and playing pretend that’s not superheroes or Transformers, and reading corner. Sometimes he sits and watches her draw and it makes her feel like the most important person in the world. Someday she wants to be able to draw him just right. To have a picture she can show to everyone else and say: this is Quentin. Not the way you see him, the way he is.
When they get back to the playground, Quentin is standing by the fence with his hands in his pockets. Shoulders hunched. Waiting. She can tell he’s been waiting for the gardener to show up and carry him underground.
“Here’s your friend, kiddo,” Mr. Krueger tells him, pushing her forward just a little too hard. She stumbles.
At once Quentin is beside her on the ground, his relief turning to concern like sunset into night.
“It wasn’t that bad,” she says, before he can ask anything. “I’m not hurt that bad- he didn’t have to carry me. I can take tomorrow, too.”
“I don’t want you to,” Quentin whispers back harshly, his sea-blue eyes wide. “It’s not fair.”
She just shrugs, her jaw set. The other kids need to rest, too. “Life isn’t fair,” she tells him, maybe a little meaner than she meant. After all, Mr. Krueger says their parents know everything. That they all deserve it for being bad kids.
She’s sure she hasn’t done anything that bad. Sure, she punched a first-grader in the face for pulling Kris’s shiny blonde hair, and she boils with anger whenever someone tries to make her share the easel. But every kid does stuff like that. Right?
“I’m just saying. You should get a break. Maybe if someone distracted him and got him to leave you alone…”
“Nuh-uh. No.” Not you, is what she means. Not any of you, not if there’s anything I can give up to protect you, even for a single day.
He offers his hand, and she takes it, squeezes; he squeezes back. It’s the one touch she doesn’t mind feeling.
Even if all the grownups in the world are against them, they’ll still protect each other. They’ll find mats next to each other at naptime so they can watch for grownups, back to back. They’ll run away together, take a rumbly bus to a different town where they’ve never been in trouble. They’ll get all the other kids out, too.
Until then, her body is a sculpture, and she isn’t inside.