Hell Mary

Chapter Fifteen

She opened the bag, which had the brand name pasted in a bold font across it and lifted first a black gown which she had grown used to. It had feathery hairy tufts sticking out from the under and felt silky. It was the previous year's Christmas dress she wore selectively to church. She hurriedly dug out the other silver dress and the left leg of a silver heel fell out. The dress had strips of shimmery thread glisten under the fluorescent glow in class. She heard footsteps approaching and impulsively dunked the clothes into the bag she drew it from. When the figure intercepted towards the class, she hissed on realization of who it was.

"Big head," she had started, "you scared me."

"So you're now calling me big head? Interesting," Kelvin said, marching towards his desk with a smile forming on his once expressionless face.

"I know you don't know fashion, but which of these gowns should I wear for the dinner party?" She asked, letting the two dresses up with both hands. He stared at one and then seriously into the other. The silver dress.

"The Ash," he said.

"You mean the silver?" She asked and he nodded. "Why? My mum likes it too though, but why? Why is it better?" She asked again.

"I don't know, maybe it's because your name is Ashley? It's only normal you wear the one befitting for your name," he had said and she smiled, revealing a dimple he hadn't noticed before.

Her mother handed over the bags while she had finished a full plate of jollof rice with carrot toppings and green peas scattered evenly about the mix. She had handed Mary a plate also and so Mary glued herself to the seat feeling distant, feeling left out of the chats while scooping the jollof into her mouth. She wanted to talk as well but drowned her words with the repeated glasses of water she drank.

"Do you think Martins would like it too?" Ashley asked, running her fingers around the polished ends of her wooden desk.

Kelvin stood from his seat at the far end and walked leisurely towards her, his red checked shirt seeming blazingly hot. "Are you more worried about what Martins would think?"

"It would be nice to know I looked good to him at least," she said. Her eyes seemed dewy like it would rain out tears, but she didn't or rather wasn't going to. Kelvin wanted to say something about not letting other people's opinion design her choices, but he didn't. He knew he would love to look good for Mary as well.

"Can I borrow the black gown?" Kelvin asked in an ill fashioned manner that seemed entirely out of place. Ashley first let out a look of surprise and then suddenly straightened the folds her forehead caused when she realized what he wanted it for.

"You guys want to do another dare involving wearing a girl's cloth?" Ashley asked, a faint tinge of memory sweeping in, in her thoughts.

"No," Kelvin laughed, feeling the silky gown by the sides. "It's for Mary. Can you please give it to her?"

Ashley nodded slowly, unsure why she had agreed to something she knew ordinarily she wouldn't have. Perhaps it was the pleading look in his face or the illusion she created to make it look so. Her walk towards the hostel felt endless and it didn't help that she had eaten a lot that pulled her weary self down. The night preps during visiting was cancelled and everyone prepared for the next morning, a Sunday morning, for morning mass.

Piles of used up packs of provisions lined up at the hostel's middle and endless chats about home, the latest release of movies and all that could be absorbed within the short frame of the visiting hours filled the air. Sometimes the girls stopped to laugh in an uncontrolled hysteria or argued in raised voices that caused strains to their lungs, enunciating quite intensely over a particular subject.

Mary was seated on the flattened mattress that rested on her bunked bed. Her fingers scribbling helplessly on her diary as her eyes grew sore. She held her throat and coughed, feeling suffocated. She could die and no one would ever know. Everyone seemed to be interwoven at the other end of the hostel and sewn into a tasty story that she had no particular interest in. In between rapid writing and light sobs, she started to bleed on the open sheet. It trickled from her nostrils and then she closed up a hole with her finger, running outside.

Ashley stepped into the hostel almost immediately and dropped the bags on her bed. The feathery end of the black gown peeked out and she released an exasperated sigh turning towards Mary's bed but missing the lean figure on it. She turned towards Stella who sat keenly on her spring bed, absorbed in the conversation that soon blossomed into a budding war. Her eyes met with the two girls that had torn themselves apart from the crowd and fixed their index fingers at each other in a high pitched word exchange. It was supposed to be an argument about which actor in a movie looked more handsome.

"Stella, have you seen Mary please?" She asked and Stella shook her head, in a graceful disdain. Her fingers stitching up the broken threads in her bright yellow gown.

Ashley walked into the bathroom and into the boxroom, calling out for Mary while she did. She exchanged a short smile with Thelma in the boxroom, who was occupied with stuffing up her box with the newest toiletries she received that day. Ashley poked her head and glanced about all the girls lost in their small talk right there in the tiny room where they clogged their boxes in a file. She shrugged and retired back to her bed. She had toured the entire hostel and would see Mary the next day to hand over the dress. Inwardly, she patted herself on her back for her generosity. It seemed noteworthy that she intended handing over a dress she considered wearing to Mary for the dinner party.

Thelma drew herself from the locked boxes and into her dormitory with an ironed uniform and a polished pair of black shoes. She placed them carefully on her top mattress beside Ashley's and turned to keep the shoes underneath her bunk when she sighted the book Mary wrote into half eaten by the pillow at the edge. It didn't seem to trigger any curiosity at first, until she sighted blood stains. The red thickened circles that had spread out and it had a smear of blood stains at the edge. She pulled it out and ran her eyes over the words written in a blue ink.

"Oh my God! A suicide note," she muttered, her hands feeling cold.