Jessie's Angel
A young red haired girl walked dejectedly to school. It had been one year since her mother had left one day and never came back. It hurt every time to see other girl's hugging their mothers as they were sent off to school. And not only that but things have gotten really hard since then, especially at home. She pulled her old tattered jacket tighter around her frail body and hurried so she wouldn't be late.
She walks to school with the lunch she packed,
Nobody knows what she's holding back,
Wearing the same dress she wore yesterday,
She hides the bruises with the linen and lace.
She sat the small wooden desk in the middle of her classroom. The students don't pay much attention to her and the teacher acts as if she doesn't exist. Her mother taught her to hold her composure and bear things with a smile, even if you were crying on the inside. She tries her best to follow her mother's advice, it's one thing she can do to respect her dear mother's memory.
The teacher wonders but she doesn't ask,
It's hard to see the pain behind the mask,
Bearing the burden of a secret storm,
Sometimes she wishes she was never born.
It's hard, this isolation she feels from everybody. Sometimes she wishes she was never born, her mother wouldn't had to work so hard and wouldn't have gone on that fateful mission that spelled her end. And maybe her father wouldn't be so angry all the time, maybe he wouldn't drink that bottle so much. Maybe the world the would have been better off without her.
She sat down on the bench in middle of her school staring at her feet, trying to think up ways to go unnoticed tonight, so she wouldn't make him so angry.
"Hi!"
She looked up and saw a short blue haired boy in front of her, smiling a sheepishly cute grin.
"Hi..." she muttered back, staring back down at her feet.
"What's your name?" he asked in a happy tone children of their age should always possess.
"Jessie, why are you talking to me?" she asked, her eyes began to glaze over with tears as she said the words. She didn't believe she deserved friends, if she did she would have them.
"I'm James, because your very pretty and you seem sad," he said, tipping her chin up. "You should smile, I think you would be even more pretty."
She tried her best to smile at him, "Thank you, James, and I think your pretty too."
"You do? Most kids think I look girly, they don't like me much," he told her looking down.
"They're stupid idiots," she responded, "tell me who they are, I'll beat them up," she finished, clenching her tiny fist.
His eyes brightened at her suggestion. "Really?"
"Oh wait, I can't, I'm not allowed to get in trouble, or else..."
"It's okay, just playing with you would be enough where do you live?"
"143 Fifth Street."
"Wow! I live with my aunt and uncle next door, at 141 Fifth Street! We're neighbors!"
That's funny she didn't remember seeing him there or at the school ever before, she dismissed the thought immediately and continued to chat with her new found friend.
Through the wind and the rain she stands hard as a stone,
In a world that she can't rise above,
But her dreams give her wings and she flies to a place where she's loved,
Concrete Angel.
"James," she whispered at the window across from hers, "are you awake?"
"Yea," he whispered back.
"I just wanted to ask if you wanted to walk to school with me tomorrow?"
Somebody cries in the middle of the night,
The neighbors hear but they turn out their light,
A fragile soul caught in the hands of fate,
When mornin' comes it'll be too late.
Before he could answer, a door slammed open behind his new friend, and loud gruff voice could be heard, "What are you doing up, I told you to go to bed goddamn it!" The man came towards Jessie purposefully, and slapped her hard across the face, knocking her to the floor where James couldn't see her anymore. "I'll teach you to disobey me!" James watched with tears rolling down his face as the man hit and kicked Jessie for several minutes until she screamed one last time and all was silent.
Through the wind and the rain she stands hard as a stone,
In a world that she can't rise above,
But her dreams give her wings and she flies to a place where she's loved,
Concrete Angel.
The paramedics wheeled the tiny black body bag out of the house. The sheriff shook his head sadly as all were affected by the death on one so young. James watched with his head hung low, hands in the pockets of his jacket, from behind the yellow police tape.
A statue stands in a shaded place,
An angel girl with an upturned face,
A name is written on a polished rock,
A broken heart that the world forgot.
He stood in a cemetery before the small flat tombstone with a sleeping angel statue on it in the middle of autumn. One tears slips down his cheek as he reads the stone, "Here lies Jessica M. Lillis, an angel lost."
Through the wind and the rain she stands hard as a stone,
In a world that she can't rise above,
But her dreams give her wings and she flies to a place where she's loved,
Concrete Angel.
He turns and walks through the small crowd, light gathers around his body as he passes through one of the family members. What meets him on the other side is the smiling girl who died that fateful night. "Come on, James, let's go play," Jessie says to him light-heartedly, she hugs him tightly and grabs the hand of her guardian angel and pulling him along to go play forever with no hurt or pain. She is forever happy just being with her new friend.
AN: The song is Martina Mcbride's Concrete Angel, it's a wonderful song that will definitely make you cry.