The Whispers

9: Hurt

"Why not upset the apple cart? If you don't, the apples will rot anyway." - Frank A. Clark, American lawyer and politician

Courage is the ability to do something that scares you, and it takes a great deal of it to stand up to your enemies. Your enemies can hurt you, mentally or physically, and depending on who they are then they might have something on you that you don't want others to know. They're manipulative, idiotic assholes for the most part, and I don't know anything about Malakai but I'm sure he falls into that category.

He was never friends with Maggie and never had any reason to hate her or even be annoyed with her. He's just a piece of shit.

"What happened?" I ask Maggie. She's crying and nobody in her class seems to have taken notice, or at least they don't care enough to acknowledge it. I had stopped her from scurrying away from me to go to the gym, she didn't want to see me and now I know why. She's bawling her eyes out and nobody cares.

I thought that, when Maggie told me that I could tell the principle on Malakai and promised that if anything like that were to happen again then she would tell someone herself, she had developed the admirable quality of being able to confront frightening things. I was wrong.

I'm not mad at her. It would be preposterous if I were because she hasn't done anything wrong. I'm mad that this was the outcome, furious with whoever did it, and angry with the teachers for not paying close enough attention when they should know by now that something is wrong.

Harper is next to me - his usual happy self is gone today. His face looks gaunt, his eyes sunken in, and he's hunched over like Quasimodo. I'm assuming he didn't get enough sleep last night and that's why he looks like death. I want to ask him if anything is wrong but that would be nosy and none of my business to do so.

"Malakai hurt me," she sobs. I don't see why Ms. Thompson isn't doing anything about this. It's part of her job description to protect her students or see what's wrong if they're upset. If Malakai laid a hand on her in any way then Ms. Thomas should drag him down to the office, whether she saw it happen or not, and get him suspended, or better yet expelled. Mrs. Thompson has failed in doing her part to ensure the safety and well-being of her students.

"How did he hurt you?" I ask. I try to keep my voice level, not wanting to scare her by yelling. I can barely contain myself from screaming at the top of my lungs for Ms. Thompson to get her shit together when Maggie lifts her shirt just enough so that I can see a bruise forming on her stomach.

"He hit me," she continues to cry. I can see her classmates all staring at her - you'd almost think it were out of pity but I knew it wasn't. None of them noticed before I talked to her and she was apparently vocal about being upset beforehand to Ms. Thompson and she didn't do anything about it because she didn't see anything happen. If I were a teacher I'd get rid of students like Malakai as fast as humanly possible. "He said that if I told the principal that he was bothering me again that he'd do worse."

"Why would someone hurt you?" I can't imagine someone wanting her injured, she hasn't done anything to anybody... at least nothing that I know of.

"I don't know," she sobs. "I don't know him and he hasn't told me.  I don't understand, Rosie, it's not fair!"

"I'll tell someone," I say, pulling her into a hug, careful to avoid her stomach. I don't care about Malakai's empty threat, I'll snitch and watch his world fall apart beneath him.

"You can't!" She's hysterical. It's obvious she isn't in her right mind at the moment. She's probably in pain, stressed, and fearful of her classmates. She shouldn't be here. Maybe I can look into homeschooling for her or see if any busses from other schools come to our area. "He'll hit me again!"