Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

I woke up and found myself in exactly the same position in which I had fallen asleep: Curled up, my thin arms wrapped around my most precious possession, my dancing shoes. But then I realized that I was looking down at my body, somehow outside.

At first glance it seemed as if I had just fallen asleep and were to wake up any moment. But on closer inspection there was a thin layer of frost on my body, I was really pale and my lips had turned a dark purple. I was frozen to death.

I hadn’t been able to walk any further that night. I had been too tired when I had lied down on the steps in front of my school. I wore a wide t-shirt and a pair of shorts. Even though the temperature was around -10°C, I was barefoot. My sandals had torn and I wanted to wait with wearing my sneakers until there was snow, so they would keep longer. Part of the reason for my light clothing was the fact that I wasn’t affected by the cold like the other people seemed to be. But I also couldn’t afford proper winter clothing. I was 13 years old and had run away from home.

My parents argued a lot. My father especially got angry and loud really quickly. During the week I was on my way to school before they got up, but on the weekend the arguing often started with the breakfast. Sometimes I wished for my parents to break up – I just couldn’t handle it anymore. I often told them that I would run away at some point, but my father scoffed and told me that I wouldn’t be able to endure very long on the streets. He was right.

All in all, I had survived a bit more than three months, starved half to death. Getting food was hard because I still continued with school and even on the weekends I hadn’t much time – and not enough money to buy much. I shunned other relatives and acquaintances, they could have informed my parents of my whereabouts and I didn’t want to go back. I had always been thin but in the last few weeks I was only skin and bones.

School was a nightmare but still better than my life at home. There were three groups in my class: The Girls, The Boys and The Others, consisting of me. I had never been understood by anyone, or – more truthfully – no one had ever really tried to understand me. I just didn’t fit in, in school I was known as “The Freak” because I only wore summer clothes and because I was completely different: I hated celebrating birthdays, I didn’t have many friends who were my age and preferred to spend my weekends with books and science rather than going shopping. And I hated group assignments. I had a lot of trouble understanding other people’s gestures and facial expressions. I liked dancing, there was not much talking and apart from the music it was quiet.

I had chosen my secondary school because it was a small building ¹  and because I liked the nickname “Angel’s”. Officially it was known as “St. Angela’s Grammar School”.

When I was little I always imagined angels like they were painted in church: Mostly female, beautiful, golden hair, white robes, big, bright wings and sometimes playing a golden harp. When I started at “Angel’s”, we all were given a card with such a depiction of an angel. On the back was written something along the lines of “He commanded his angels to protect you”. I kept my card in my purse.

At first the new school wasn’t much of a problem for me. I didn’t need to study much to get good grades and I had managed to find some friends. But after a while I realized that my so-called friends bitched about me behind my back, and my grades got worse, no matter how much I studied. My parents didn’t believe me when I tried to assure them that I did nothing but study and put me under house arrest. That way I lost my last two friends, who weren’t in my class, because I wasn’t allowed to spend time with them anymore. ² I threw the picture of the angel away after that, I think it was in 6^th grade. I didn’t believe in angels any more.

At home there was only conflict. No matter what I did or how I behaved, my parents always found something to complain.³

One evening⁴ I decided I had enough. I had had a big argument with my mother because she tried to forbid me dancing because of my grades – but dancing was the only thing I had left and enjoyed. I packed everything I thought I would need, some clothes, a few towels, a lot of matches and candles, a flash light, my stuff for school – and my dancing shoes. My swiss army knife was in my pocket as always. ⁵

I waited until they both had gone to sleep before I went to my mother’s purse and took some money from it. After that I went away. I had debated taking my bike with me, but since I had no idea where I would end up staying I doubted that it would be very useful.

I walked around the area for almost two hours before I got to a forest, little more than thirty minutes away from the “Angel’s”.  It was uneven ground and I found an old small cellar in one of the hills – from the outside it was little more than a wooden door in front of a large boulder, but using my flashlight I saw that inside there were the remnants of a few wooden shelfs. I was dead tired and simply laid down, falling asleep almost instantly.

When I woke up the next day I looked around my den and noticed a hole in the ceiling in the back which could be used as a vent so I decided that that would become my cooking place. A bed would come in handy as well and I started with that. One of the shelfs was almost only a frame and I put it horizontal and filled it with leaves. Straw would be better but I had no clue how to get enough for it therefore the leaves had to suffice.⁶ I went outside and collected a few large stones for my cooking place.

I noticed that I had no pots or similar cooking vessel. It was early in the afternoon by then and I went to buy a pot and some durable groceries. And a new lock for my den, just to be on the safe side. I didn’t want to come back one day after school to find strangers rummaging through my meagre belongings.

I used the school-free days to get to know my new surroundings better. I roamed through the forest and found a little stream, a clearing and even some edible mushrooms and a few acorns. Sometimes I caught sight of a few deer in the clearing, but they ran away as soon as they noticed me. I had to gather new leaves for my “bed” nearly every day during the holidays, because I twisted and turned so much in my sleep and the leaves crumbled as a result.

Perhaps I could cultivate a little garden next spring, it would be nice having some groceries nearby without having to buy them. But that was wishful thinking, first I had to get there. I debated whether or not to cut my hair. Short hair would be easier to keep clean, but my long hair kept my neck warm.

During this first week without my parents I was happy and optimistic – until my last friendship fell apart. We used to say that we were sisters from different mothers because we fitted together really well. One afternoon I was at her place. We had talked about a lot and I told her about my classmates bitching about me. Since we trusted each other with everything we didn’t keep any secrets. That’s why she told me without much thought that she slandered me with her other friends when I wasn’t around, but she said she would always stop before it got out of hand.

I thought there was something wrong with my ears. Had I heard her correctly? My last friend, the only person left I had any trust in, bitched about me just like anybody else? Why? And how can you decide when enough is enough while slandering someone?

I got up as soon as I could manage and ran out through the door as soon as I could manage without saying any further word. Somehow I kept my tears from running down my cheeks but I felt numb, as if I were shrinking inside. I ran and ran even though my sides ached and I shook. I felt sick from all the cookies we had eaten but I continued running.

The moment I was inside my den my grip on myself dissolved. I fell down and could only cry. My inside felt empty as if there was only a black hole left. The only positive thought I could come up with was the fact that she had told me all this before I had told her about my new living arrangement – she therefore didn’t know where I was staying and couldn’t try to visit. I never wanted to see her again.

The holidays came to an end and school occupied most of my time again.  My supplies of food dwindled alarmingly fast even though I ate only when my stomach already ached. Since I didn’t want to steal I had to beg for money on the weekends. If I got really lucky there was enough to get something warm in a local pub. The waiting staff there knew me since dancing lessons took place there and they gave me a huge discount as long as I didn’t come during rush-hour.

To keep myself from thinking about food all the time, I started telling myself stories about forbidden love and hope in times of peril. One of the stories went like this: Somewhere in Asia, a long time ago, a young, beautiful prince fell in love with a poor farmer’s daughter. They both knew right from the start that their love wasn’t allowed and they wouldn’t get to live happily ever after. As a prince he had to marry a princess from another kingdom to keep the peace, enlarge the country, increase the family’s wealth and make his parents proud. And the girl simply had not the “right” social status. They met the night before the wedding to be together one last time. When the sun rose the girl tried to say goodbye to her prince but the prince didn’t want her to leave. ⁷ He remembered that he had a small flask of poison in his sleeping chambers and the two decided to die in each other’s arms.

I thought that was a Sappy End, a mixture of sad and happy since they got to stay together, but died nontheless.

When I cooked in my den I mostly just heated some water and threw in a few berries or leaves to give it a bit of flavour. I couldn't afford buying meat and the one time I build a fish trap in the stream I only caught a fish no bigger than my index finger. Making fire became more and more difficult as well. Getting enough dry wood for it was time-consuming and I started burning invitations for non-curriculum activities the school handed out as well as any work sheet we didn’t need any more.

School became more like a kind of torture but no one seemed to notice my struggles. Some classmates noticed that I was losing weight and asked if I had finally decided to try getting “in shape”. The sniggering which accompanied those questions was the most hurting. I had troubles concentrating since I had nearly nothing left to eat. But nevertheless, I was happier now than I had been back with my parents.

My parents didn’t come looking for me, which was weird. Didn’t they miss me at least a bit? I was their only child, after all.

Doing my homework was a difficult task at first. When I had school in the afternoon, I could do them during the lunch break, but sometimes I didn’t have lessons after lunch and I didn’t want to stay longer in school than needed.

As long as the weather was dry and more or less warm, I went to the cemetery to do the homework. I had enough space and light there, and it was quiet. Sometimes people gave me funny looks, but I had grown used to that. When I was done with the homework I sometimes took a walk along the cemetery and looked at the graves. I thought about burials and how I would like to be buried. A burial by burning boat would be really nice, the kind you read about in books about Vikings. I wanted to be buried under the waves of the ocean, no matter how. That way there wouldn’t be a grave to be looked after.

When the weather wasn’t good enough to do the homework outside I took refuge in one of the last telephone cells still standing in the city. It was a bit crammed all in, but at least it was dry and warm.

My class was supposed to go on a trip. I wanted to go, but I couldn’t afford it – not even in a hundred years.⁸ I checked the space “I don’t go” on the form and handed it in. No one commented it, not even the teacher.

In that time I had a weird dream which became one of my favourite stories:

We are on a field trip in a unknown, big city. We are put in two groups and each group gets an underground bunker with identical, limited food and water resources. We have to survive for two months. The group dealing better with the given resources would win.

All that was told us by a young man in his late twenties, who afterwards walks away from us. I follow him out of a strange impulse and am even able to keep pace with him, also I stayed a few steps behind in order to not get noticed at once.

He seems to notice that he is being followed and flees into the main train station, which is connected to the underground station. I see him climbing the outside of the stairwell a few levels below me and am about to follow him, when I notice that I somehow ended up on the tracks way above ground level and a train is coming towards me. I turn sideways in order to escape the train and fall. I know that I will die on impact; the height is just too big.

Shortly before I crashed in my dream, I woke up and was a bit sad, because I wanted to see the ending, although it was clear that I wouldn’t be able to survive. I tried to keep the dream in memory in its entirety; I liked the morbid story and the weird set-up.

Whenever I had trouble falling asleep, I thought back to the time I still lived with my parents and especially the problems they seemed to have with me. I wasn’t like all the other girls, I hated anything pink and ruffled.

I compared my plans for the future to my older expectations during those sleepless hours, as well. When I was a little kid in preschool, I had the same dream as any other girl that age: Finding my true love and having a fairy-tale-wedding with a long white dress and girls with flowers walking ahead of us out of the church. We would drive of in a coach drawn by at least two white horses. We would have a huge house and two beautiful children, and a lot of pets, preferably horses. Everyone would be happy and we would live happily ever after. As I got older, my dream changed, especially concerning the wedding. I wanted to wear a black dress and we would ride on horseback instead of going by coach. I still wanted children, but we would adopt them. Now though, I was pretty sure I would never marry. How should another person manage to live with me and love me when I already struggled doing that myself? I didn’t want to be responsible for another human being. And I would be content with a small house, little bigger than the classic witch-house. I still wanted a garden, though.

The temperature decreased further⁹ and I sometimes yearned for a hot bath. Usually I washed myself with water from the small stream. Since I had trouble gathering enough firewood, I didn’t heat it up. My long hair took ages to dry and my throat began to sound as if I were smoking at least 30 cigarettes a day.

One evening after sitting in the city all day asking for money, I passed a church. It was really frosty and the wind didn’t help. I thought about asking whether I could warm myself inside, formulating the question and possible further conversation in my head. But in the end, I didn’t even ask. I was sure the answer would be “No” and I was too tired to deal with the feeling of rejection at that moment. Why should the answer be anything else?

I also began noticing all the things I should have brought with me. For example I hadn’t thought to take an umbrella with me. One day, it started raining cats and dogs during the first class and continued to do so after school. Since it was Friday and I needed money, I stayed in the city nonetheless. When I finally got to my den, I was completely drenched. The following day I didn’t move out of my den and stayed most of the time in bed. I tried to get warm with hot water, in which I succeeded, but my throat got worse.

I loved watching the people while sitting in the city. I didn’t watch them directly but I watched their reflections in the windows. It was less obvious and it felt more like watching television than watching real people walking past me. Some of the others begging in the streets played instruments or had signs in order to gain the attention of passers-by but I was just to drained after school to do anything but sit there.

Sometimes I stopped on front of the display windows of toy stores on my way back to my den. I imagined playing with them and felt a bit like a little kid waiting for Christmas or their birthday. It made me a bit sad but happy as well.

About three weeks after I had run away, a group of adults approached me while I was begging, a woman at the forefront. They positioned themselves in a loose half circle and stared at me, which made me extremely nervous, and the woman came even closer. The smell of her perfume made me gag and when she started to speak, her voice felt like it was scratching deep in my ears. She asked for my name, my age and the reason why I was sitting on the street as if I were begging. I told her to mind her own business and she replied that some “concerned residents” had informed the youth welfare service and that she was here to help me. I didn’t believe her, especially the part about wanting to help me. They would just return me to my parents, which wouldn’t help me at all. I would just run away again, further this time, to the north, leaving everything behind, trying to reach the ocean. She came a step closer and moved her hand as if to stroke my head¹⁰ and I jumped away. Since her co-workers ¹¹ didn’t pay much attention, I managed to slip past them and accelerated. ¹² I kept weaving through the bystanders, nearly falling over a leash at one point, but managing to jump over it, until I heard a quiet whistling sound. I looked for the source and saw a tween with a guitar. I knew her a bit and she gave me some food from time to time. ¹³ She was standing at an open car trunk and motioned me to climb inside. I hesitated but then I heard the people from the youth welfare office coming closer and threw myself inside. She put an old blanket over me to hide me, closed the trunk and started the car. I had completely lost my orientation by the time the car stopped again. She opened the trunk and told me that I could come out now. We stood at the end of a field not too far from “my” forest. She gave me a piece of bread and warned me to be more careful next time before she left. The office-people, as I called them in my mind, kept looking for me for the rest of the week, but I hid behind bins as soon as I spotted them every time and the next week I didn’t see them anymore. Perhaps they thought I had escaped to another city and were looking for me somewhere else. I didn’t mind as long as they kept away and let me be.

I realized that as long as I had lived with my parents, I had never been really hungry, only peckish – at most. But now that I had nearly nothing to eat, I learned what hunger was: a pain in your stomach like a fist gripping your insides and squeezing constantly, so hard that you can’t concentrate on anything else and making you feel nauseous. It also seemed to only get worse when I ate something.

But I found some coping-mechanisms. I drank large amounts of water to fill my stomach and I started eating anything really slowly, chewing as long as possible. When there was nothing else I sometimes took single hairs and bit them into small pieces. It occupied my jaws and seemed to help, but small pieces of hair sometimes got stuck in my gums and it was always hard extracting them again.

Being hungry nearly constantly made me really tired and I had to fidget in order to keep awake during class.  When we had some free time between lessons I occasionally found an empty class room and curled up on the floor. I never slept deep enough for it to be refreshing but it helped getting me through the day.

Not everything in my new life was bad: the entire city turned into my personal playgrounds. There were always some repairs on old buildings in some street and the scaffolds were ideal monkey bars as soon as it was dark. Officially it was forbidden to climb there and the scaffolds were “secured”, but that only meant that there was no ladder to the first platform. Since the horizontal bars started at approximated chest height, it wasn’t difficult to get up. It was extreme fun and I climbed to the uppermost platform every time – it was a perfect spot for stargazing. Since it was turning to winter my favourite constellations were visible alongside the usual ones. I couldn’t name every constellation, but I knew enough to orientate myself.

The best day for sitting in the city was the first of November. There were sweets lying on the ground everywhere and I ate so much chocolate that I nearly was sick. I noticed that I felt warmer the more chocolate I ate and deduced that it had something to do with the sugar in it. Therefore I got some small packs of sugar from a café ¹⁴ to be able to recreate that feeling again.

Shortly after the holidays, my sandals gave out on me. The soles ripped and the straps tore of as well. I had sneakers in my den, but I wanted to save them for really bad weather ¹⁵, so I started walking barefoot. I also put half of my “earned” money to buy either old car tires or bits of leather to make me some new shoes.

School had turned into pure never-ending nightmare. I only continued to go there because I had given up. My body was there but in my mind I was roaming through the forest. My peers treated me as if I were invisible. I felt like I was in a bubble surrounded by one-way mirrors. I saw everyone but no one noticed me. On rare occasions they did notice me ¹⁶ they stared at me as if I were a strange, new creature at the zoo.

The only subject I still enjoyed was art. I even tried to get the teacher’s attention about my current life. ¹⁷ So I tried to paint something in connection with death, no matter the original subject: When we were tasked to paint a garden I painted a graveyard. When we were tasked to paint something in connection with school, I painted a lone small figure without a face, surrounded by a puddle of crimson insults, which seemed to bleed out of the figure. In the background I painted a hallway similar to those at “Angel’s”. The result was an E every time, since I “missed the mark” but still handed in a painting.

I remembered that in our very first week at “Angel’s”, the teachers gave us some hand-outs with advise about how to handle bullying. ¹⁸ The first advice was to talk with the bully. I thought about it now, but I doubted they would even listen since they never interacted with me outside of talking behind my back. The second advice was “Talk with your guidance teacher”. I didn’t know who that was supposed to be and I couldn’t remember them telling us back then. No wonder there was no bullying – everyone tried their best to ignore any sign of it.

The worst subject was PE. I was glad that I kept my clothes in my locker, otherwise I would be subject to a tirade about how I dared to come to class unprepared every time. Nearly every week there was some sort of team-sports, mostly dodgeball. Every time, I ended up as the last one to be picked and sat starring on the floor until the PE teacher forced a team to pick me. Nobody wanted to pick me, but not because I was bad at sports. I was pretty fast and could dodge most of the balls thrown my way – but would someone voluntarily pick me for their team they would be turned into outcasts just like me. It was as if I had leprosy or a similarly easily transmitted disease.

The isolation took its toll, I started feeling really lonely. So I invented Diёgo to keep me company. In my mind, Diёgo was a mix between Wolf and Labrador and had beautiful black fur, grey around the eyes. I imagined entire philosophical debates with him. He was always at my side and I imagined feeling his warm body beside me when I lay shivering in my bed. It was nice to have someone to talk to, even if that someone was only in my mind.

My shoulder blades started to itch whenever I reached the top of the scaffolds. It felt as if I had wings wanting to break free as soon as I felt a slight breeze standing so high above ground.¹⁹ I tried scratching, but this only resulted in my back bleeding and the itch still there – after a few days the itch was accompanied by the itching of the scratches healing...

I yearned to be able to forget everything around me – the hunger, the bullying, the hopelessness I so often felt. But the most effective way had always been reading my books and I hadn’t been able to take them with me when I had run away. I hadn’t the time to go to the public library, since I was either at school, begging in the city to afford something to eat or roaming through the forest to gather wood and get anything edible.

Sometimes during music lessons the teacher would make us meditate, as a contrast to the usual stress of school. We would sit on soft pillows on the ground and there would be calm background music.

In November we got one such lesson again, so I sat down on the floor²⁰ and closed my eyes – but as soon as the visual orientation was gone I had the feeling of shrinking and y arms and legs started tingling and I had the distinct feeling that some important part of me wanted to escape my body, but got caught somewhere in the brain. It made me sad because I knew where it wanted to go. I had started building an imaginary land in my head and had told myself that I had originally come from there and would return there when I died. It felt like I really wanted to go there but the link to my physical body seemed to be too strong.

Somehow I managed not to burst into tears during the meditation and since the other pupils had their eyes closed I had time to get myself back under control. I imagined Diёgo softly licking my cheeks and nudging me, whining quietly in order to calm me down. I succeeded in stuffing this to the other feelings and memories I didn’t want to examine in public to avoid crying.

1. compared to the other secondary schools in my town ^{[ ▲ ]}
2. “Your grades don’t allow dilly-dallying on your part!” My parents would exclaim whenever I asked for two hours to spend with my friends. ^{[ ▲ ]}
3. strange how they worked together in bashing me when they weren’t able to agree on anything else ^{[ ▲ ]}
4. the autumn holidays would start in a few days ^{[ ▲ ]}
5. I never went anywhere without it, it gave me a feeling of security even though I was able to defend myself quiet well without it ^{[ ▲ ]}
6. I had taken an old sheet with me which could be used as a blanket ^{[ ▲ ]}
7. he also didn’t want her to become his secret mistress – he wanted to marry her ^{[ ▲ ]}
8. I could obtain funding through the school board, but in order to get that I would need to tell them that I had run away. And then they would for sure try to put me back to my parents or under foster care, since I was under-aged – but I liked my new-found freedom ^{[ ▲ ]}
9. autumn was ending, after all ^{[ ▲ ]}
10. a touch I hated ^{[ ▲ ]}
11. or whoever the other adults were ^{[ ▲ ]}
12. It looked like being chased every day in the playgrounds at school had its uses after all. ^{[ ▲ ]}
13. a small lump of bread or something similar ^{[ ▲ ]}
14. after I asked for permission to do so from the waiting staff. They seemed to be very confused by the question ^{[ ▲ ]}
15. read: snow ^{[ ▲ ]}
16. when I was the only one with the right answer to a question or a problem put to us by the teacher ^{[ ▲ ]}
17. I don’t know why I did that, perhaps I just wanted to be noticed without being the but-end of a joke for once ^{[ ▲ ]}
18. the teachers assured us that there was no bullying at “Angel’s” ^{[ ▲ ]}
19. I was glad people had stopped calling me “a little angel” a while ago. Otherwise I might have been tempted to test whether or not I could fly. I knew I couldn’t but you start to believe things when you are told them repeatedly. Learning, after all, is repetition ^{[ ▲ ]}
20. with lots of space to the next person ^{[ ▲ ]}