UnderAsriel

Awakening

Kel was a failure.

She knew this because everyone said so. Her teachers said it with the Fs in the grade book. Her foster parents said it with their sideways glances and secret frowns. Her classmates said it out loud, quite plainly, whenever she was in earshot. Her original parents had said it by dying. They couldn't handle the responsibility of a girl who wasn't worth their time.

Kel didn't want to be a failure. She really tried her best. But it was hard to get homework done, hard to behave, hard to make friends, when the entire world expected you not to.

She was just twelve. Couldn't they see she was only beginning?

Yes - you'll be even more of a failure when you're twenty-six, living in a van down by the river.

That made her mad. So mad she wanted to scream.

And being mad did not help at all with being a failure.

"Give it back!!" Kel demanded. The words echoed through the trees, harsh and raw and loud. She shoved her anger into her voice, into her eyes, let it burst everything alight in flame, directing it all at the smirking boy in front of her.

 At that moment, she hated Jeffrey Anderson more than she'd ever hated anything in her life.

"Or what?" Jeffrey sneered, dangling her dad's bandana just out of reach. "You'll jump down the hole, end your pathetic existence? 'Cuz I'm afraid that wouldn't be much of a loss to anyone."

"No loss at all," agreed his friends. Like usual, they flanked him, hulking behind him like a pair of ugly trolls. She didn't know their names. To her, they were just Thug 1 and Thug 2. They lived up to those titles; they were 8th graders, heavily built, and they towered mercilessly over her.

Kel glared at them all. She hated feeling small. She hated feeling helpless.

"No," she spat.

She certainly wasn't going to jump down a hole. Especially not that hole. She knew all about that hole. It was large and dark and it went all the way through the Earth. All the way to China. 'Cept she'd never get that far, 'cuz the core would burn her all up halfway through.

But they're gonna keep on that, aren't they, she thought dismally, casting a glance at the eight-foot yawning gap in the ground just a tree or so away.

Wasn't her fault they'd caught her around it. She hadn't asked for this. She'd been up here specifically to AVOID Jeffrey and his Thugs. She climbed the mountain because the mountain was off-limits and that made it the safest place to get away from people. To make sure nobody was around. That was the whole point. The mountain was her escape. Escape from being a failure.

And part of escaping was that you couldn't climb the mountain without visiting the hole. You just couldn't. It was scary, but it was fascinating. It had a magical draw about it, like horror movies, or haunted houses. Frightening, but you couldn't help but be intrigued.  Looking down the huge black tunnel, thinking about what would happen if you accidentally slipped in...

"Come on. We all caught you thinking 'bout it," Jeffrey scoffed. "Ending it all." He tilted his head, putting on an expression of fake perplexion. "Tell us, Kelsa. Why don't you?"

"Got weak knees?" taunted Thug 1, catching on. "Is poor little Kelsie scared?"

They all broke into malicious laughter, exchanging gleeful looks like they were the funniest people in the world.

No. She wasn't scared. Kel grit her teeth as they laughed, curling her small hands into fists. She was brave enough not to, that was it. Brave enough to keep struggling, to keep hoping things might maybe get better...