Of Gods and Men

The List of Mysteries

‘Morning Pete,’ she grumbled sleepily, as she made her way into the kitchen. Peter smiled warmly at her over his shoulder as he stirred a large pot of porridge.

Suddenly, his face changed, ‘Grace,’ he exclaimed, ‘what happened to your face?’ He immediately stepped towards her, and pushed her head to the right to examine the purpling bruises on her cheek. Grace cursed herself silently; she knew she should have put on some foundation before she came downstairs.

She hovered slightly, she needed to be nimble. No- one could know about the girls at school, no- one. ‘I- ,’ she paused, hoping an idea would take her by surprise, ‘I-.’

Peter tapped his foot expectantly, ‘I’m going to get Miss Lee,’ he said making a move for the door.

‘No!’ Grace cried, her face full of alarm, ‘It was my fault, I was just too embarrassed to tell any of you earlier,’ she glanced quickly to the right, looking for inspiration.

‘Too embarrassed to tell me what?’ Peter’s face was creased with concern, it made Grace smile slightly he looked really cute when he did that. She shook her head; this was not a time to be checking out her social worker.

She blinked rapidly, spotting the door in the left hand corner of the room, ‘I-, I walked into a door,’ she tested uncertainly, she saw Peter raise his eye brows and continued at a furious pace, ‘Yeah, funny business really, it was quite a shock, I hit the door full on, and I was too embarrassed to tell you and Miss Lee,’ grace’s voice trailed off and she quickly bolted upstairs.

She rested against the door her heart pounding, that had been too close. She hastily, shut the door behind her and begun to get changed. She caked on her foundation, so her bruise was something of a ‘relic.’ Overall, she hated the effect; she looked like a sun- tanned doll. The foundation hung loosely in thick little clumps; it looked as if someone had tried to paint her with semolina. Despite, the fake results, the foundation did what it said on the tin, and hid her bruise from sight.

***

After breakfast, Grace was eager to head to school, as today was her English class which she was looking forwards to. Grace loved English. She loved analysing her texts, and highlighting it all in different colours. Currently, they were studying the Iliad by Homer which was perfect in all respects.

She slung on her satchel and slipped her mythology book, complete with golden leaf paper mark, into her bag and waited for the bus to come. Unfortunately, according to the sign, the bus was on maintenance duty which would mean she would have to walk. Butterflies squirmed in her stomach at the thought of embracing the road alone. She prayed desperately that Mellissa and her cronies would have forgotten about her, but she knew they would be waiting.

As she approached the end of her road, silhouetted against the rising sun were Mellissa and her lot. Except this time something was different. Mellissa’s boyfriend Max was with them and his smile didn’t look too friendly. She kept her head down and focused on her breathing, in, out, in out, she told herself. She would not panic. She would not panic.

‘Grace,’ Max beamed, ‘it’s so lovely of you to show up.’ He put particular emphasis on the word ‘lovely’ and pounced off the wall which they were sitting on, so that he intercepted Grace’s route of escape. She kept her head down, and remained silent.

‘I said,’ he took a step towards her so that she could smell his foul cigarette breath, ‘I said, hello, now be polite.’ He then brought his hand sharply across her already maimed cheek, it stung horribly.

Grace blinked away tears and stared at him blankly, ‘hello Max,’ she repeated dimly, letting herself feel nothing.

‘Now that’s better,’ Max hissed, ‘I don’t want to see any more of your attitude,’ he pushed a lock of her hair behind her ear, almost tenderly, Grace shrank backwards.