From the Little the Much is Known

Part Two - Wet Fuel will Burn but Stones Won't

Jennifer dropped her backpack at the door and limped to the bathroom. After flicking on the light, she rummaged in the cupboard above the toilet until she found a box of Band-Aids and a tube of ointment. Taking both, she placed them on the sink and looked at herself in the mirror. Her short dark curls, falling just below her ears, were matted with grass, a few thorns, and leaves. Her face, a dusky Mediterranean hue from her mother's Greek blood, had a scrape near the chin from the rocks, and a thin slash across her nose from a blackberry thorn. Her eyes, a piercing blue from her father, were red from her earlier tears while the skin around them was puffy. Sighing, she dabbed ointment on the scrape and cut on her face, and then proceeded to wash her arms and hands to remove the dried blood and dirt. After cleaning her legs and applying a few Band-Aids to the crisscross of gashes on her legs and her skinned knee, she changed her clothes and made her way to the kitchen for a snack.

The basement suite was empty – her mother wouldn't be home from her job as a legal assistant until at least 5:30 p.m., so she had an hour and a half to do homework and prepare supper. Listening to music on her iPod, she made short work of her math and science homework, then she started preparations for a pan of spaghetti sauce and a pot of pasta for supper. She set the table for two, then went into her tiny bedroom – barely larger than a closet – which contained her bed and a small dresser. She folded a basket of laundry then sat on the edge of her bed and fought the sudden rush of tears.

Brian Howard and his friends had terrified her. What would he have done had the dog not shown up? She wondered as she wrung her hands. Wiping her eyes with her sleeve, she looked up to the ceiling in an effort to compose herself. Her mother would be home soon and she hardly felt like talking to her about this. Would those boys have hurt her? Would they have done...worse? Brian had been furious, truly out of control. Could she have become another Reena Virk? That girl who had been killed by other teens so many years before under the Craigflower Bridge? She began to shake as fear overwhelmed her. How could she go back to school with those boys there ready to do... what? Hurt her? Kill her?

No, Jennifer shook her head. It couldn't come to that. The boys might have punched and kicked her, but they wouldn't have done anything else – at least not in the park, not in the glare of day. At night though, she mused wretchedly as she reached for a tissue to blow her nose, what about then? She decided she needed to concentrate on avoiding Brian and his friends both within school and without. It would be difficult, however, unless she brought Ms. Burbank into her confidence, but telling on Brian would make a bad situation so much worse. A line had been crossed this time – she knew deep down that the bullying by this boy had been nothing compared to what was to come. She had seen it in his eyes – a real hatred, a real threat of violence that he could no longer control. Yes, she realized as new tears formed, had that dog not come along, she would have been hurt.

Badly.

Wiping her face, Jennifer fought to control her overwhelming emotions. Her shaking hands, her pounding heart, and the sick feeling in her stomach belied her hopeless efforts and she allowed herself to fall back onto her bed and weep. All control disappeared and her shoulders shuddered with great wracking sobs as she pulled herself foetal and hugged herself. The shadowy memories – the red ball, the eyes in the rear view mirror, and the truck grill – all flooded back upon her. A great roiling wave of abject despondency grasped her and enfolded her in a blanket of mournful misery and only great tears and gulping wails could assuage the anguish holding her. Slowly, like the fury of a gale, the wretched torment passed, and Jennifer quieted. Reaching for more tissue, she dabbed her swollen eyes and blew her nose. A glance at the clock said she had less than fifteen minutes before her mother returned and she would need that time to acquit herself of the emotions tearing her apart.