Wendy awoke from a peaceful sleep. She felt calmer and more collected. Maybe crying had been the medicine she had needed to pull herself together. She would have to go to school and face Daniel. She wondered if she would prefer to fake a illness but decided against it. She wouldn't run away anymore. This was the last time anyone would ever made her cry again.
Apparently having woken up early, Wendy decided that maybe a warm shower would help relax her tense thoughts of school. It almost worked. As she rinsed the shampoo out of her hair and down the drain, she also washed away most of her fear. No matter what she tried to think of to distract it, the voice in the back of her head wouldn't quiet.
"Your not good enough for them. No matter what you do or what you say you will never amount to anything."
She wrapped her self in a blue fluffy towel and ringed out her long curly hair. After finally getting her hair to part on the side the way she wanted it to, she cranked the blow dryer on high.
She kept the towel wrapped around herself and tiptoed into her room to grab clothes without waking the boys. She decided she would wear something different to fit the mood. She felt different; she felt reborn. She decided to pack her favorite pair of white jeans. They fitted her perfectly, but she couldn't be seen wearing them with her father home.
Wendy's father wasn't abusive. Thank God for that. Wendy, though, wasn't so sure. She was always waiting for the day when he would snap and hit her or her mother, but that day hadn't happened so far. He scared her. He would always tell her to grow up. He would tell her that she was never good enough. He never showed his true colors to his wife or boys. Wendy didn't understand why he acted that way towards her.
Without thinking much more of it, she stuffed her clothes in her bag where she had packed her dance clothes. She would have to change in the bathroom at school. She put on her usual black skirt and a white long sleeved shirt. She slipped on her classic black flats and headed down to breakfast.
She hurried to get to school early so no one would have known she changed her clothes. She put a piece of bread in the toaster and tapped her fingernails impatiently on the counter top. She grabbed the toast as it popped up and quickly wrote a note saying she had to get to school early and ran out the door.
She always ran to school. The route that was the closes to get to school cut through a dangerous looking alley that always scared her half to death. One day she just decided that it wouldn't be so scary if she just ran and the faster the better.
Her feet tapped against the cold cobblestone making loud tapping which Wendy couldn't help to think about when she took tap dancing lessons as a child. Almost as fast as she had taken off through the alley, Wendy emerged out of it and slowed to a fast walking. She breathed out a sigh of relief and then rounded the corner to come face to face with her school.
Lance High School was all about the old gothic architecture. It had been around for eighty years. Wendy looked at the giant buildings trying to remember which one had the nearest bathroom.
Wendy tentatively walked through the empty halls and into the bathroom. She quickly slid off her skirt and dug through her bag for her white jeans. Once those were on she fished for her dark light blue blouse that made her brown eyes stand out. She put her nerdy glasses back on her walked out into the hallway toward her locker. After dumping her stuff, she stayed in the library until the bell rang.
Her stomach erupted into butterflies. She knew exactly what was going to happen. She was going to either be talked down to by everyone or Daniel was going to make a big scene of apology to save his reputation. Wendy was hoping to be talked down to. She was used to that, at least.
She walked into her English class. Daniel wasn't in this class. She was glad she didn't have to see him. If she saw him she might lose it. She saw red whenever her thoughts started to drift to him. When she walked into the classroom all eyes were on her. No one's gaze was sympathetic. All of them have already decided.
It had to be her because she's a freak.
No one else would have the guts to do that to Daniel Scott so it had to be her.
Wendy could already piece together their thoughts about her. She took her seat in the front eagerly waiting for the teacher to get here and silence them. As she sat there with her eyes closed trying not to hear there nasty comments, she tried to remember how she became the freak. Wendy didn't know. She didn't know what action branded her. She didn't know what she had done wrong. Now whatever, breathing was wrong. Smiling at jokes she wasn't apart of was wrong. Hiding in her books was wrong. Getting good grades and answering easy questions her teacher threw at her was wrong. Everything was wrong. Now she was the book worm that looked at her shoes. This is what they did to her.
The ugly thoughts Wendy was thinking was fueling The Shadow's desire of misery. She was completely unaware of its presence inside her body. She was especially unaware of its master seeing through it. They both saw the anger radiating off her aura. The master finally saw exactly how she could be dangerous. The Shadow didn't even have to see it to know his master was smirking devilishly.
As Wendy was trying to pull it together, hell walked through the door. Hell as in Daniel Scott. That was Wendy's personal hell. He looked around the room and spotted her and smiled a small easy-going smile that, just yesterday, might have had her blushing. Now, she felt nauseous and the room started to spin a little. The class became silent as they looked between Daniel and then back at Wendy.
Wendy knew that if she looked at her shoes, she would give him power. Power he didn't deserve over her. She met his gaze with hard and unforgiving brown eyes. For an instant, he showed fear in his eyes.The next second they were cool and collected hoping that Wendy had not noticed. Unfortunately, for him, she was very observant. She almost smiled to know that she was being fear by the most popular boy in school. So much for his everlasting ego. He smiled and made a motion with his hand to follow him. When Wendy did not move he spoke to her.
"Wendy, I would like to apologize. It was unfair for me to blame you. I am very sorry that I embarrassed you. Please say you'll forgive me. We could even be friends?" Wendy wasn't surprised. She knew that she should have been. She needed to act surprised and accept his offer to redeem herself to her peers. She would have done that yesterday. She would have gracefully accepted and would have been thankful. That was before she had cried so hard in a pillow the night before. Before she had see Daniel Scott's true colors. Before she had utterly snapped.
"Thank you for believing me," She answered in a monotone voice as she tried not to bark at this guy again in front of her class. "I accept your apology, but I do not wish to be your friend." She said this as slowly as possible. She wanted to let the whole room hear her feelings. She wanted them to understand. No one crosses her and gets away with it.
It took the opposite effect.
"What a cold, self-centered bitch!" One if the girls, Wendy thought her name was Maggie, yelled over the hushed whispers. She was pretty. She had straight red hair with ice blue eyes. She had all the guys rapped around her finger. She had them all in her spiderweb. All except Daniel. Wendy knew she just wanted to steal him.
"Can't you see he's trying to be nice? He's doing what no one else would do, be your FRIEND!" Wendy didn't flinch like Maggie thought she would. She laughed. She laughed a dark humorous laugh. Wendy's classmates looked at her as if she lost it. She probably did.
"I don't want to have a friend just so they look good befriending me. I want a friend that loves me for me. I don't want a egomaniac as my friend." Wendy turned to look at Daniel's shocked expression.
"I'm sorry, Daniel, but I just want you and your friends to leave me alone. Luckily, we will never have to speak to each other again." She sat down in her seat and opened Peter Pan and pretended the whole event was over and done with.
"If that is what you want...?" His voice held a note of true disappointment. Wendy hesitated not sure what to make of it. She never looked up from the word PETER in her novel. She stared at it. It seemed to tell her what she needed. She nodded sharply at Daniel's question and waited till he walked away.
The whole class went up in chaos. They all surrounded Wendy's desk yelling and shouting at her. Wendy was suddenly very scared. All of her cool washed away with the tide and now she was one minute away from breaking down and crying.
At her rescue, Mr. Harris walked into his classroom fifteen minutes late with a sheepish smile on his face. When he saw them surrounding her, he told them all to go back to their seats. The reluctantly listened and went back to their desks, but Wendy could feel all of their eyes boring into the back of her head.
The school day seemed to painfully drag along. Wendy didn't know why time was against her. She kept telling herself that it would all get better. The realization was that that had only been first period out of seven. With every new class came harsher stares. Wendy did her best to ignore it. She almost succeeded until Biology.
As soon as Wendy walked into the room evey one grew silent. A pin could have dropped and it would have boomed with noise. She didn't understand why they were alienating her like this. So she yelled at Daniel. People yell don't they? I've seen one of his ex-girlfriends yelling at him when he broke up with her. What made her different?
Mrs. Smith had a rough day so she told every one to work on a lab with the people near them and have to done by the end of class. Wendy slipped in her earbuds to block out the kid's teasing. It worked and she suddenly felt the urge to kick herself for not thinking about it sooner.
The music drowned out their stares and their yells. She was about to start reading her book when it was suddenly grabbed from her hand. Daniel stood over her reading the title.
"Who reads Peter Pan anymore? Are you eight?" He laughed harshly looking over his shoulder breifly to make sure everyone couldn't hear him. Wendy glared at him.
"I thought we agreed to stay away from each other," She never lifted her gaze from the book in his hand. Daniel smirked knowing he was getting under her skin.
"You agreed, I did not," His tone was light and teasing. It made Wendy want to hit him.
"Give me my book back."
"Your wish, my command," He said to her curtly. He dropped the book on her desk. He chuckled at the dirty look she was giving him. She wasn't so ugly to look at when she was mad, Daniel thought.
"Okay, bye now," Wendy made a shooing motion with her hand and started to fish through the pages trying to find her spot.
"You know I'm starting to figure you out, Wendy." This got her attention. Wendy looked at him with hard eyes. He simply smiled and stared back with an amused look on his face.
"Oh?" Wendy invited him to continue. She dared him. At the same time she braced herself for impact. This was either a really bad thing or a good thing.
"Lets just pretend you don't hate me for a moment. You would still be that shy girl that always spoke in a whisper, right?" There was cleverness in his voice that scared her. Wendy didn't know where this was going.
"Well, I don't like you. Not anymore," This seemed to please him.
"Oh you know you do. Why not just admit it?"
"What's your game?" Wendy asked. She was tires of running in circles when it came to Daniel.
"It's not a game. This is serious, well, somewhat serious. The question in my head is this: Does she really even hate me?" He waited for her to show a reaction. Wendy knew it was what he wanted but couldn't help herself. Was this what she was feeling? Was the reason she hated him because she had liked him so much? Did she still like him? Wendy knew the answer.
"I KNEW IT! WENDY DOES LIKE ME!" Daniel shouted so loud the whole class went silent.
And then it began. Complete chaos. All of the girls shrieked with disbelief and started making their way towards her. The boys whistled loudly in between bellows of laughter. Wendy had never wanted to disappear so much in her life. She grabbed her stuff and ran out of the classroom. The teacher yelled at her students to calm down and then at Wendy to come back. She didn't. She opened her locker and grabbed her dance duffle bag and ran as fast as she could out of the building before anyone could stop her.
She realized as she was running, she didn't know where she wanted to go. She glanced at her reflection in a coffee shop window. Her dirty blond hair was frizzy and sticking up in weird places. Her cheeks were bright red from running. Tears had streamed themselves lazily down her face.
The one thing she did when she needed to calm down was dance. She looked at the street sign and carefully navigated herself to the empty dance studio her mom owned. She took the key out of her duffle and opened the squeaky door.
She was welcomed by a small empty room with cherry wood floors and a bar by the large floor-length mirror. The room smelled of dust and the scent of the rose perfume her mom always wore.
Wendy didn't hesitate as she did the night before. She threw her bags against the wall and sunk to the ground. Her sobs vibrated against the walls. When she remembered her promise to never cry over Daniel Scott again, she went into a round of hysterics.
She knew Daniel had been right. She did like him. A lot. That was why it had hurt her so much to be laughed at by him. Why it made her so enraged when he called her a witch. It was what made her answer his fake pleas of apology.
Wendy must have cried for about an hour. When she ran out of school, she was only thirty minutes shy of the final bell. It was now almost five o'clock. She was expected to be home by seven.
She got up and went into the back to change into her usual sports bra and silver spandex. She got her stereo out of the closet in the corner of the room and plugged in her iPod. She started to dance the new routine her mom gave her last week.
She let her body sway to the beats of the music. Wendy straitened her legs and leaped into the air. She would flip and tumble at all the right times. By the hour's end, she had mastered the choreography.
After changing into her normal clothes, she locked up the studio. Wendy's mind was somewhere else. She wasn't very observant when her thoughts were disconnected to her actions.
She was thinking about school. She couldn't even think of showing her face there again. Not now. Not ever. She was way past the laughing stock of her whole school. She knew London. She knew that once the rich kids attended their rich parent's parties that would be all they could talk about. How the Darling family is such an embarrassment. What would Mr. Darling do to Wendy?
So caught up in her thoughts, Wendy didn't notice the small movement behind her. She didn't notice their shadows on either of the brick walls as she made her way through the alley way.
"Hey, I think that's little Wendy," a voice snickered joined by two others. No one would not be able to hear that. Wendy snapped her head around. They were there. She recognized them. They were on Daniel's football team. One was named Trevor. He had red hair and freckles. He was a weird one. Everyone felt uncomfortable around him.
He leaned against the wall with one arm while being flaked by two other boys. One had sandy colored hair and was almost Wendy's height, just a inch shorter. The other one had brown hair and stood tall and lean. He had a boney looking figure. He was almost scarier than Trevor. Trevor beat him to it by a hair.
"What? To shy to speak to me? You know you can always stare at your shoes if you want to." Trevor spat at her. The boney one smiled wider while shorty erupted in giggles.
"Leave me alone." Wendy was about to crack. She was tired of every one treating her like a bug they could just squish under their shoe.
"There's that dark side Daniel was talking about! Wow he was right, totally hot." Wendy recoiled away from them. Trevor advanced slowly at first, but then took two long strides and grabbed her by the wrist. She tried to yank free, but she was too weak against him. The other boys laughed at her struggles and stayed back to watch the fun.
He pushed Wendy up against the brick wall. She whimpered from how it knocked her head back hard. He leaned to whisper in her ear. "You're not Danny's tease anymore. You're our play thing now." He had pulled back to look at her scared expression. That was his mistake, for Wendy didn't have such an expression. She took her fist and hit him in the jaw. The shock of the impact caused him to fall backwards. The whooping of the other two boys stopped.
Wendy took that opportunity and ran. She ran as fast as she could. She could almost see the light at the end of the alley. If she could get there, she could call out for help. The people would hear her. Just as she had the thought, the boney one grabbed her shoulder and threw her to the ground. She yelped in pain and tried to crawl away. Trevor bent down and grabbed her by the ankles and started dragging her back into the shadows of the alley.
"HELP! HELP ME!" Wendy screamed at the top of her lungs.
"Hey, shut up!" Trevor said angrily. From the corner of her eye she saw Shorty look toward the light as if waiting for them to get caught. Wendy kept screaming as if her life depended on it. She smelled the alcohol on all of their breaths and had no idea what they were capable of.
"HELP ME! THEY'RE GOING TO KILL ME! RAPE! RAPE! HELP! STOP THEM PLEAS-"
Wendy was cut of by Trevor dropping her ankles and kicked her in the gut. She didn't have the breath to scream. All of the air in her lungs had been kicked out of her. All she could do was curl up into a ball and wait for the next round of kicks.
"Trevor, this isn't fun anymore." Shorty's worried voice said. Wendy wanted to open her eyes to look at him, but couldn't. She knew if she did, the tears would come and the boys wouldn't stop. They would never stop.
"Are you backing out, Connor?" There was a pause. A very wise pause.
"What are you planning to do with her? Sure you have fun with her, but she will tell someone." A cold chill went through her body as the boney kid spoke. No. They could not be thinking what she thought they were thinking.
"Relax Freddie, Connor. We'll have are fun and then...we kill her." All the blood drained from Wendy's face. No. No no no no no. She had to get out of there. They couldn't do that! So what if she was a freak? It didn't make her killing worthy! How intoxicated were they!
"Woah, dude that's insane! You can't kill her!" Connor yelled at Trevor.
"If it makes you feel better, we'll desert her. We'll take her somewhere far away in the middle of nowhere and leave her for dead," Trevor was out of his fucking mind. They all were out of their minds. Crazy. Wendy had laid eyes on actual crazy people.
She didn't move. She had thought to herself to run, limp, whatever.
You could make it. They are distracted. Just go!
The only problem with that was the fact that her body was going into shock. Her mind was telling her she was dead. She wouldn't make it. Her breathing became laboring pants. She wouldn't get anywhere like this.
"Fine, but I'm out. This is so fucked up, man. I won't tattle on myself, so don't worry. I don't want to see her face." And he left just like that. Each step he took away from her was another step towards her death.
"So now where were we, little Wendy?"
"Get the fuck away from me!" Wendy screamed with as much venom in her voice as she could muster.
"Aww look the kitten has claws."
"Let me go, I'm not your toy. I'm not anyone's property." Wendy's voice trembled.
"Oh, but aren't you. This goes deeper than you just being head over heels for my rival. The Darling family has always been a disgrace to Scott Banking. Your father is a horrible banker. He lacks social status. He doesn't belong. You don't. Maybe if we get rid of you all of you will leave. Face it Wendy, the Darlings do not belong in London. Never had,
never will."
Wendy kicked him hard in the shin. She all but forgotten Freddie still there with her blinding rage. Her grabbed her by the shoulder once again. He raised his fist and hit her.
Her nose bled, she was pretty sure he broke it. Trevor took the opportunity to straddle her stomach and raised his fist again.
Wendy covered her face with her arms and waited. Nothing happened. The weight on her stomach vanished. The alley was silent. Wendy peeked from behind her elbow and then lifted her hands away from her face.
They were gone. Trevor and Freddie vanished. They were gone and there was no trace left of them.
Wendy got up and ran to her house. As she raced there she thought to herself one thing:
I will always be cold and alone.
And in that moment she felt okay with that.