I Left Everything Behind

Cinderella House

     A lonely road, dense woods, silent ambiance--my daycare's field trip for today. Mrs. Garland pulls the car into the shoulder of the narrow street and her car creeps along the edge until halting. All the kids in the van push their fat noses to the window as I try to get a view of what's outside. Before us is an old, creaky house, but I swear I saw it breathe. It shudders, cold and weathered by neglect, its gray, exposed bricks crumbling into dust. The windows are empty and devoid of its purpose: to be seen out of, but I know it's in use. I shudder along with the house and grasp my arms. My eyes rest on its hollow front doorway, impossible to get to unless someone were to climb up the concrete foundation. The house has a pop of color, since nature wanted to reclaim her property and wrap her arms around it. She decorated it with years of growing vines and rising grass. I stare at the corroding home and it happily returns the look.

     Mrs. Garland says from the driver's seat, "Have you heard of the tale of Cinderella?" She turns to face all of us, crammed in her minivan. "Here's a secret: This is the house where Cinderella used to live in with her stepmother and stepsisters."

     I do not lose my gaze on the daunting place. I hear from Mrs. Garland, "Cinderella worked and worked and worked, even with her evil stepsisters hurting her and her stepmother bossing her around. When she wanted to go to the ball, her stepfamily ruined her night and she cried and cried and cried. Then, her fairy godmother came to help her get ready for the ball and Cinderella went off! She met the prince, fell in love with him, but had to leave at the stroke of midnight. She left behind her glass slipper, which the prince found and tried on every girl in the kingdom. When he found Cinderella's house, the slipper fit her, and the prince and Cinderella lived a happy life in the castle!"

     The other kids are yapping with delight, but I am still stuck on that house. I hate how it looks at me. It groans with anguish, the wind blowing the vines with it. Its last shutter falls off and breaks on the concrete. Finally, I am able to turn myself away from it. To my relief, Mrs. Garland starts the car back up and drives away, so I am left alone to think. The other kids are too busy talking to their friends, so I stay quiet, as usual. I turn my gaze to the window in morbid hope that I'll see that forsaken house, but I am met with thick forestry. I sigh softly and watch as the trees pass by. I blink rapidly, still seeing the Cinderella house in my mind's eye. Goosebumps form on my arms and legs, so I pull up my legs to my chest as I sit. I feel its icy breath on my neck and hear its heavy groans. In response, I grit my teeth and keep looking out the window. I no longer hope for the morbid; I want to see something happy after that. Going home never felt so exciting in my whole life.

     Dinner is awkward, like every night. I load my face with shoddily-made macaroni and cheese to avoid talking. My parents stare at me expectantly. I brush my blond bangs into my face to hide, but I see them staring through my strands. "I had a good day," I utter, "Mrs. Garland's was fun."

     "What did you do?" Mom says. Of course she says that.

     "Found a creepy ass house," I mutter carelessly before drawing back, placing my hand over my mouth.

     "You do not use that language in here, Kate!" she raises her voice, as she does when she's mad at me or my teachers. I stuff my face at the mentioning of my middle name. I blink at her, inactive. "Listen, girl, you know only your father and I can use that word, okay?" She huffs out angrily, scraping her dish with her fork. "Next time, it's the belt."

     I go back to eating my meal. I gnaw on overcooked pasta as I say, "It was creepy."

     "Why would she show you that?" Mom tries to urge more out of me.

     "She said it was the house Cinderella lived in," I reply, although recalling what I saw made me uncomfortable, "and it was gross and gray and weird."

     "That old house on Old National Pike?" Mom's eyes are set on her food. "That strange, little thing." She stops talking and stays silent. I look to Dad accidentally and he looks away. I could care less for a conversation going nowhere, so I keep eating my gross pasta.

     I get off the obnoxiously yellow bus and start down the dirty sidewalk. My friend walks alongside me, wearing her varsity football jersey that matched mine. Of course, none of us play football, but her brother does. He is ahead of us, pushing the other boys around and laughing with them. My friend, Lola, and I giggle at them. I go to her house to wait for her mom to get home. Tonight, we are going to the library to find new books to read for our school's book club. Luckily, her mom comes home early, so we use her car to drive there. As Lola drives, I stare out the window, as I always do. I draw my head back in shock as I notice a recurring pattern outside. The houses that were once lively and painted are now rotting alone and depressed. I say to Lola, "Hey, did everyone move out or something? Is there a plague going around?"

     "No, stupid," she jokes and smiles at me, "people just move out. That's how it is, right? You find a better, newer place and you move out."

     "How do we know if they moved out for that, though?" I question, seeing another abandoned house pass by. "What if they moved to escape something? Maybe because something was lacking, like good plumbing? Or--"

     "Maybe, Leah," she replies, keeping her focus on the road, "I guess we can't really know unless we move out one day."

     We pull up into the library's parking lot. We enter and immediately scrounge the building in search for a good read. She starts out in the fiction section, but I stay near the librarian's desk. I ask her about her day. I found out that if I'm friendly to people, I can get information out of them. The librarian says that she found some new books she likes, one of them being Brave New World by Aldous Huxley. I read that one at least three times already. She steers the conversation in a different direction, talking about the weird story she found in the archive. She shows it to me, since she is still holding onto it. It is an old newspaper article, which reads in the headline: "Woman Found Dead in Old Nat'l Pike House; Mother in Question."

     I tear the paper away from the elderly woman. My eyes wander all around it as I jump from word to word. The ones that pop out to me are lost, blood, anger, silenced, questioning, unanswered, believed and found. I slam the paper down and gasp. To the librarian, I exclaim, "I know this place!"

     The librarian puts her finger over her lips and shushes me as she bends down to my height from behind her desk. She looks around, then says to me, "We all know, Leah. What we don't know is what happened." She taps her chin. "Maybe we aren't supposed to know. It's been thirty years since the incident and we still have no idea." She is quiet for a moment as I am left with awkward silence. My eyes wander around the library until she suddenly snaps me back into focus by uttering, "I have hope that we'll find out."

     "Hope," I echo. It rings off my tongue nicely. "Hope." I pull the newspaper to myself. "Is it okay if I take this back with me?" The librarian nods and I run off with the paper in hand to search for Lola. I find her and we continue searching for new books. I pick up Brave New World.

     The sun is setting as we drive back home. I am holding all the books in my lap with the newspaper on top. Instead of looking out the window, I look down at the headline. My instinct tells me to gaze out the window. A cold sweat breaks around me as my eyes catch the Cinderella house. I gulp down the dread and breathe out, returning my eyes to the paper. "Lola," I begin, "what is hope?"

     "That's a dumb question," she retorts playfully, but is delayed to respond. "Um, hope, to me, is the feeling you get when you look forward to something or want something to be there. That's hope."

     I soak up a brief silence as I wander through my head. "Do you think that maybe people move out because of a lack of hope?"

     Lola does not respond.

     "I mean," I get out, "sometimes, when I lose hope, I want to get out. Like you said, I want something to be there. Maybe when people move away, they move to find new hope. Mom and Dad moved here when they got new jobs. That's hope, right?"

     "I guess," Lola replies mindlessly.

     I sigh and relax my sight on the car mirror. I can see the Cinderella house far behind us as it moans sadly. Silently, I move my eyes and mind away from it. As Lola drives off, she leaves hope behind.