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Kicked out, and once again, I’m a homeless fourteen year old.
I deserve what came of me, I guess. Based on what the Aurora Academy headmistress had to say about my behaviors, I probably could just be on my own for a bit now. That was the case only if not having that godawful child protection agency try to put me in another boarding school, misbehaving girl’s home, or worse; I could get put into an orphanage.
I’m not an orphan, though. I have two very loving parents. It’s just the love wasn’t meant for me so much as for my two brothers, James and Pop. (Pop- a name James and one of James’ friends gave my brother Samuel after he stole a firecracker and nearly burned down the school.) This was immediately blamed onto me- starting my mean streak of pyromania, hallucinations, and inevitably drugs.
When you looked at me, the first thing you’d notice was my ugly, disproportionate face. A long, jagged scar etched into my face, crossing from just below my left eyebrow steeply diagonal to the bottom of my top lip on the same side of my face. This was from my mom having an outburst of postpartum anger after my sister- or the baby who would have been my sister, died a stillborn.
My mom was always a bit bonkers, if you ask any of us. Though I was butchered and battered, I had never once seen a cut worse than a paper-slice on any of my brothers’ fingers. For me, I had started a delightfully painful routine of punching the dirty exterior red brick wall of the gymnasium to frighten the teachers at the school my brothers’ and I went- Feldcrest Academy.
I hated Feldcrest Academy, I hate Feldcrest Academy now, and I always will hate that sad excuse for a so called ‘portal of education’. The professors there sucked, having seemingly zero experience around children of the welfare system. The headmistress had it out for specifically me for some reason, and the worst person I knew was there: Lena. Fucking. Arlen. Arlen was my least favorite person in the world- at least my enemies I had known on a personal basis. Arlen stole my radio from my room, which I had locked. The bastard used a hairpin and broke her way in, because that’s the kind of person she was. A thief. Greedy. Maniacally arrogant. I always told her so, too.
”You’re one of a kind you know?” I’d start. “Most bitches are bred from similar breeds or at least for some good traits, but the mutts who had the shameful pleasure of you didn’t think of what would come from their inbreeding.”
Truthfully, I was amazing at hurting her feelings, but Arlen was the kind to start those things. She’d spat on a first year wearing a star of david and called them a “Nagetier”, a pest. This is when I’d pull out the you-look-like-a-plastic-mannequin type of insults.
It was June, warm, and the sun was spattering on my face through the leaves of the tree I rested on. I could barely focus on my book, the relentless moan and bucking of branches on the tree wouldn’t silence. The wind causing such a disturbance had also seemed to swipe long, blonde strings of hair intentionally into my eyes. Having had the most pale gray eyes that struggled to focus when the sky wasn’t overcast was a nick in my back at this time of year. I was so off-put by my attempts at reading being ceaselessly bothered that I slammed the leather covered book bounding to my left downwards. This tree I was sitting at seemed to stare over the numerous humps of hill in the landscape. The crème white, freshly cleaned shirt I had on was drenched sticky with sap on the back without my knowledge, as I was putting more attention into getting this reading done. I had no reason to attempt this, for I wasn’t even enrolled in school now.
Elizabeth Chaffen [shay-fun], my dearest friend, was the only one in my newly-assigned orphanage who seemed to be able to do any sort of action without being distracted from the wind or small movements from insects in the long grass as I had been. She did, however, say the oddest things.
“Sigourney Katz-Wright! You’ve got to be kidding me, it’s only a miniscule bug! I don’t believe that this is what’s keeping you from your coursework!” Elizabeth would say as she grifted through the library, groping around for another book to force me to read.
“Well, Chaffen, not everyone was gifted with your indifference to the world.” I’d reply, and she’d be stricken mad, try to fight me, then I’d make some dirty joke to make all alright. I’d never reveal to anyone my secret about Chaffen; I actually enjoyed when she forced me to learn because I had no true want to excel on my own.
School started in six and a half weeks.
Hell. All I could think about going to a school was that it was hell, probably the undermost circle. My last school year ended abruptly in March after I head-butted a different third year for calling me an axis-snogging gorilla. I hated being called that. I for sure had muscle, but that was out of necessity, most definitely not for my nature.
Now I was heading to a school in Northeastern France, just near belgium. With the recent war efforts, I had told off my parents many times of it being a death-wish to choose to go to a place like that. They simply wouldn’t see that the people in Belgium were pushovers, that there’d be an annex obviously planned around France’s defenses. Being a born German, sent to live in Britain, and now moving to war-strained france was being stuck like a fly in a cobweb- you could for sure move, but when you pulled too hard, you’d catch the oppressor’s fancy then get eaten. I was not keen on being eaten.
School rolled around as surprisingly quick as it had done every year. I was lucky to have Chaffen with me, she was well-liked no matter where she went. Unlike myself, she actually was an orphan. Whispers from other ill-tempered children in the orphanage would say she saw them die, which gave much reason to the permanent eyebags and restlessness at night she experienced. She made me swear upon my tongue and teeth that I wouldn’t let slip to anyone, no matter how close, about the origins of Sigourney Katz-Wright and Elizabeth Chaffen.