Poison Rising

 I couldn't dance.

I couldn't sing.

I couldn't write in cursive to save my life.

Not the best statistics for a girl of fourteen in 1892, but it was the truth. I set pen to paper, my head aching as I concentrated on trying, for the millionth time, to write the letter F.

"Ms. Isabella!"

I started, splattering my paper with speckles of black ink. "Ms. Isabella, a lady does not slouch!" I straightened myself up to an almost unnatural state, rolling my eyes when the Mistress looked away. A second later, she whipped around again and walked towards my desk, glaring like a hawk.

"Ms. Isabella, are you giving me attitude?" I said nothing. "Young lady, I just asked you a question." I sighed through clenched teeth, making a sound like a snake. I liked snakes; especially venimous ones.

"You most certainly would not like me to answer this question, Mistress." I replied, more than a smidge proud of my boldness. This pride was almost instantly burst with the slap of the Mistress's ruler against the back of my hand. I bit the inside of my lip, but still could not hold back the slight gasp.

"I cannot permit this unladylike behavior." She barked as if she expected me to be the duchess of Milan. I doubted I was a lady, but it seemed I would have to be, so I tried. The Mistress, however, was not on my side. Peering down at my paper, she inquired,

"Ms. Isabella, what are those?" I suddenly found the woodwork of my desk very intriguing.

"The letter F?" I said, almost asking if I was allowed to say it.

"No," she said, "that is most certainly not the letter F. Now watch closely." The Mistress proceeded to take my pen, dip it in my inkwell, and write her annoyingly perfect cursive Fs on my paper.

"Copy those," she said, turning a blind eye to the snickering girls in the back of the room. Reclaiming my pen and inkwell, I wrote:

FFFFF (the worst possible)

Sighing, the Mistress said,

"Ms. Isabella, you leave me no choice but to assign you extra work." I turned white as the girls continued to snicker. This no-dance no-sing no-cursive situation was surely going to ruin my life, but I just knew I had to keep trying.

When the Mistress finally called,

"Class dismissed," it took all my effort not to run out of that classroom. I held up until I reached the stairwell, but then I began to run without any control. I may have heard someone yell at me to stop running, but I ignored them. When I reached my dormitory, I jumped on my bed even though I knew it wasn't ladylike and I wasn't supposed to. I opened my writing book and sat for an hour trying to perfect that stupid letter F. When I realized I wasn't getting any better anytime soon, I flipped back to the Mistress's perfect F's and defiled them:

Fuck you. Fuck you. Fuck you. Fuck you. Fuck you.

I quickly ripped the page out: Mistress would kill me for that. I threw the book across the room and tried to sing a note, instead.

"AAAAAAAAAA..." I cringed; my worst note yet. Next I stood up and tried to dance... and banged right into my dresser.

"Ow!" I said, clutching my side. I tried again, only to trip over my own feet, crash into the dresser again, and fall face-first on the floor. I just stayed there and moaned, certain that Satan had written the word failure on my forehead. Slowly, I dragged myself back onto my bed and laid there in the darkness staring at the ceiling and wondering why I couldn't just be the perfect young landy.

This is how every following day looked. I arrived to lessons certain that I was going to succeed this time only to have my confidence shattered again and again. I didn't even give the Mistress attitude, anymore; I just sat there and said,

"Yes, Ma'am," until I wondered if that was all I could say, anymore. As the girls around me continued to laugh and the Mistress continued to scold me every passing day, my confidence and sense of worth began to ebb away. I soon forgot how to speak loudly and sunk into soft, nervous whispers, like the hissing of a viper. I dragged myself to my lessons now, with no real desire to live.

I knew I was breaking. I knew that the Mistress and those girls had won over me, had almost entirely extinguished my spark. I thought I had it in me to survive and come out a hero, but I was wrong. Everyone I knew in this hell was against me; everyone here stripped me raw of who I was. I was almost a fleeting shadow, neither dead nor alive. But deep down inside, I had a small spark of anger unknown even to myself. Until one day when I discovered it, and that was the day my life took a sharp turn: that was the day I became radioactive.

We were doing a chemistry experiment, something I was a little bit less terrible at. I liked the idea that I was playing with dangerous substances; it gave me a ghost of an illusion of power. When we were almost done, I accidentally added the wrong ingredient. Huge mistake. I watched helplessly as the acid-green liquid bubbled and exploded on my desk, sending shards of the beaker and its contents everywhere. A tiny drop splashed on my left cheek and seared there. It hurt, but not like the snickering did. I turned red and white at the same time.

"Miss Isabella, explain yourself!" Thundered the Mistress. I looked down at the chaos on my desk and began to cry in front of everyone. I had no explanation. I felt as if I was standing naked at a banquet.

"That is what I expected, you have no explanation." The Mistress said, approaching me like a hawk to its prey. Seconds later, I felt the slap on my hand. In the background, the girls were laughing more than audibly. "Ms. Isabella, I am incredibly disappointed in you! I thought you could do better! It seems that I was wrong. I will tell the cook not to serve you tomorrow. Now clean up that monstrosity this instant!" I continued to cry. I thought that my live could not possibly worsen, but it did. It was then that I decided that I couldn't put up with it, anymore. I gathered my books and headed for the door.

"Isabella!" The Mistress yelled after me. With my hand on the door knob, tears still spilling from my eyes, I let out those words I'd been holding back, words I guessed would get me expelled.

"Fuck everything!" I opened the door and ran out, no longer caring who saw me.

"Isabella M--!" The door swung shut on that devil woman. As far as I was concerned, it could stay that way. I ran all the way up to my dormitory without stopping once. Once there, I rummaged through my trunk, spewing belongings across the floor until I found it: a leather-bound journal, the last gift from my Grandfather. I pressed it to my chest for a minute before gathering pens, ink and my chemistry set.

With all these things, I escaped to the broken lavetory. Once I was inside with the door locked, I took out my chemistry set and began to experiement. I threw random ammounts of random ingredients into that beaker, causing explosion after explosion. Hour after hour I sat there, trying this that and the other thing, faling and failing over and over again. My hair began to fall from its tight bun.

I stayed in that lavetory for a week, only leaving occasionally to steal a scrap of food from the kitchens. I worked while barely thinking, moving automatically. I had burned a whole section of my face from the acid (my left cheek, half of my lips and part of my nose) and had to get a covering of fake skin from the Sister, but I was still alive. Finally, one day my experiments worked, producing fumes that nearly knocked me out. I felt a tiny spark of triumph as I reached for my journal, pen and ink. I dipped my pen in the ink and held it above my journal, poised to write the first letter. Instead, a drop of ink splashed onto the page: I couldn't write in cursive to save my life. I thought for a second and then began to write in characters no one else alive could read, another gift from my Grandfather. As I wrote, I knew that someday I would accomplish great things; someday, I knew I would make my Mistress, my classmates, the world itself get down on its knees and wish they had never, ever dared to mess with Miss Isabella Maru.