This is a tale of how a lost girl was found. Throughout her difficult and tumultuous journey, this lost girl found love and redemption.
I'm breaking the rules, and I absolutely refuse to care.
The bell had rung thirty minutes ago, but I wasn't distraught. In truth, I was careless, so why should I be concerned? The first day of school was a waste anyway. Most of the teachers didn't mark tardies on the first day or scream at you in front of the class.
It was the last period of the day, and my mind had therefore left the building and blown over the landscape and into the wind in search of colors and inspiration. In this moment, I could feel the paintbrush in my hands.
Grudgingly, I forced my mind back to my body and raised my chest so I could make an impression as I walked into class, which was normally my goal. Mostly since I adored the attention but partly because I knew if people were intimidated by me they would leave me solitary.
Teachers left me solitary, exaggeratedly friendly girls who wanted to be BFF's left me solitary, but the guys were usually at my grasp in a heartbeat when I wanted one of them.
I dropped my cigarette to the floor and slammed my heel onto it, discarding it and whipped back my long pink quills as I entered the room. My eyes were heavily made up, and my dress was so short that sitting down was highly uncomfortable, although I'd perfected the art of slouching so it didn't show. . . too much. I cracked my gum and slid one eyebrow up disdainfully as I looked for an empty seat.
All eyes swiveled toward me as I stuttered up the center aisle and slid into the seat right in front, dead center. Damn. Being late had its downside. I took my time taking off my jacket and dropping my purse to the floor. I hadn't even designed to look in the direction of the new teacher whose voice had faded to silence at my arrival.
A few people chortled at my nonchalant display, and I snapped a poisonous scold in the general direction of the laughter. It stopped. Assuredly, I slumped into my seat and raised my eyes to the front of the classroom, sighing deeply and loudly.
"Sorry I'm late. I didn't want to come," I strummed, with another toss of my quills.
"Mr. Hedgehog" was written across the whiteboard in capital letters. My gaze shifted on him. He was staring at me with a furrowed brow and a slight smile. Cobalt quills in need of a haircut spiked above his head. It looked as if he had tried to tame it into respectability, but his mop had obviously rebelled at some point during his first day at Emerald High School.
I raised my eyebrows in amazement and tried hard not to grunt out loud. He looked like a student. In fact, if he hadn't had on a tie, knotted impulsively over a white button-up dress shirt with a pair of slacks, I would have thought he was some kind of teacher's aid.
"Hello," he offered in a gravelly voice. His tone was warm and friendly, and he seemed unbothered by my deliberate impudence. He glanced down at the roll that was sitting on a music stand to his right."You must be Amy Rose . . ." His voice trailed off a little.
"And you must be Mr. Hedgehog," I retaliated.
Laughter volumized. Mr. Hedgehog grinned. "I am. As I was telling your classmates, you can call me Sonic. Except when you are late or disrespectful, in which case I would be called the Mr. Hedgehog," he ended.
"Well in that case, I guess I'd better stick to Mr. Hedgehog then. Because I'm ordinarily late, and I'm always disrespectful." I smiled back innocently.
His goofy smile never faltered. Who the hell was this guy?
"We'll see." He stared at me for another second. The set of his forest green eyes made him look lively, like a swirly madness. He striked me as arrogant. I sighed again. I knew I didn't want to take this class. Health Education was my least favorite subject. It sounded about as bad as you could get.
"Physical Education is my favorite subject." Mr. Hedgehog eyes left my face as he launched into an introduction of the course. I squirmed myself into a mostly comfortable position and stared heartly at the young professor.
"You might wonder, then, why I'm teaching Health Ed."
I didn't think anyone cared enough to wonder, but we were all a little mesmerized by his pulchritudinous. He continued.
"Health Ed. Isn't just about the body. Does anyone know what else it's about?"
"Knowing yourself," some enthusiast called from behind me.
"Exactly." Mr. Hedgehog nodded excitedly. "And that's what Health Ed. is all about. Knowing yourself. Discovering who you are. As a boy, I discovered that I would much rather run than listen to a lecture. Running makes me feel alive. It is what makes me me, it's what makes me feel free. My job this year is to help you all see – the colors of the wind – and to help you learn about yourselves. My goal this year is to get all of you to pass and learn from this. I hate F's and I know you can all do better than that so lets all go for that D- everyone!"
Funny.
A few students chuckled at his words, I might of smiled a bit. It wasn't everyday a teacher wanted his students to cheer for a D- in their class.
"How old are you?" a girl's voice cooed flirtatiously.
"You look like a male underwear model," some guy joked from the back of the room. There were a few giggles, and Mr. Hedgehog's licked his lips, trying to hide his grin.
"Damn, that should have been my career choice. I could have been surrounded by girls instead of a bunch of... I'm just kidding. You guys are awesome!" He joked and began handing out sheets of paper. There were some groans. Paper implied work.
"Look at the page in front of you," Mr. Hedgehog instructed, as he finished distributing the sheets. He walked to the front of the classroom and leaned against the whiteboard, folding his arms. He looked at us for several seconds, making sure we were all with him. "It's blank. Nothing's been written on the page. It's a clean slate.
Kind of like the rest of your life. Blank, unknown, unwritten. But you all have a story, yes?"
A few kids nodded their heads agreeably. I looked at the clock. Half an hour until I could take off this dress.
"You all have a story. It's been written up to this point, to this very second. And I want to know that story. I want to know YOUR life. I want you to know it. For the rest of the class time I want you to tell me your story. Don't worry about being perfect.
Perfection is boring. I don't care about run-on sentences or misspelled words. That's not my purpose. I just want an honest account – whatever you are willing to express. I will collect them at the end of the period."
Desk chairs scraped, zippers were yanked opened in search of pens, and complaints were muttered as I stared down at the paper. I dragged my fingertips down it, imagining I could feel the lines that ran in horizontal blue stripes. The feel of the paper calmed me, and I thought what a waste it was to fill it with squiggles and marks. I laid my head down on the desk, on top of the paper, and closed my eyes, breathing in. The paper smelled clean, with just a hint of sawdust. I allowed my mind linger on the fragrance, imagining the paper beneath my cheek was one of my artworks, imagining I was brushing along the paper a mixture of colors, layer upon layer, creating beauty. It would be a shame to ignore it.
Just like it was a shame to ruin a perfectly good sheet of paper. I sat up and stared at the pristine page in front of me. I didn't want to tell my story. Rob O' said to really understand something you had to know its story. But he'd been speaking about a rose at the time.
Rob O' had loved archery. If painting was his gift, archery was his hobby. He had a bow and arrow, and he would often hike to high peaks where he could shoot and hit what he wanted. He said the more obstinately you try to learn how to shoot the arrow for the sake of hitting the goal, the less you will succeed in the one and the further the other will recede.
When I was very small it was hard for me to sit still. It actually still is. Archery was hard for me, so Rob O' started leaving me behind when I was old enough to remain at camp alone. I was much more responsive to painting simply because it was so physical.
I must have been seven or eight the first time I saw Rob O' get really excited about a were in the Deerwood Forest, and I remember where we were only because Rob O' remarked on it.
"What 'tis she doing in these parts?" he had marveled, his eyes fixed on a scrubby bush. I had followed his gaze to a little pink rose perched by sunlight.
Rob O' went for his binoculars, and I stayed still, watching the little rose. I didn't see anything special about it. It just looked like any other rose. Its petals were pink – no flash of color to draw the eye or brilliant markings to admire.
"Yep. That's a rose all right. There are no roses native to Mobius. Not like this girl. She's actually a Cadenza." Rob O' was back, his voice a whisper as he looked through his binoculars. "She's a long way from home."
I whispered too, mimicking Rob O' even though I didn't understand why.
"Where do roses usually grow?"
"Angel Island, Badlands, Deerwood Forest," Rob O' murmured observing the pink-petaled rose. "You can find them in Downunda and the Southern Tundra too."
"How do you know it's a she?"
"Because the males don't look like that. They aren't as pretty."
A giggle had erupted from my mouth at those words. Rob O' smiled tenderly at me and tucked his binoculars into his bag.
"Her petals are as pink as your fur," Rob O' commented, turning away from the rose that had enlivened our morning. "Maybe that's what you are . . . a little rose a long way from home."
I looked at our camper sitting in the trees. "We're not a long way from home, Rob O'," I said, confused. Home was wherever Rob O' was.
"Roses aren't as expressive as others like cherry blossoms and dahlias and other flowers that are open. But they don't give up their secrets easily. They want us to figure them out. We have to earn their wisdom."
"How do we earn it?" I wrinkled my nose up at him, baffled.
"We have to learn their story."
"But it's a rose. How can we learn its story? Roses can't talk." I was literal in the way all kids are literal. I would have really liked it if the rose could tell me its story. I would keep it as a pet, and it could tell me stories all day. I begged for stories from Rob O'.
"First you have to really want to know." Rob O' looked down at me. "Then you have to watch. You have to listen. And after a while, you'll get to know her. You'll start to understand her. And she'll tell you her story."
I took out a pencil and spun it around my fingers. I wrote, "Once Upon a Time" across the top of my sheet, just to be a smart ass. I smirked at the line. As if my story was a fairytale. My smile faded.
"Once upon a time . . . there was a tiny rose," I wrote. I stared at the page. ". . . stepped on, undesirable."
Images gathered in my head. Long white quills. Reddened lips. That was all I could remember of my mother. I replaced the reddened lips with a gently smiling face. An absolutely different face. Rob O's face. That face brought a twinge of pain. I moved my inner eye to his hands. Peach hands covered in paint. Paintings piled on the floor at his feet where I sat, watching them explode into magnificence.
The paint dripped down onto my head, and I closed my eyes and imagined that they were tiny pixies coming to play with me. These were the things I liked to remember. The memory of the first time he had held my smaller hand in his and helped me strip away the plain sheet from an old stump rose in my mind like a welcome friend. He was talking softly about the image beneath the surface.
As I listened to the memory of his voice, I let my mind travel back across the desert and up into the hills, remembering the twig I had found the day before. It had been so alike a paint brush, fluffy, perfect to brush strikes on paper. My fingers yearned to press it into paint and onto paper. I had an idea about it. A picture was forming in my head. I tapped my feet and curled my fingers against the paper, daydreaming about what I could create.
The bell rang. The noise level in the room heightened as if a switch had been flipped, and I jolted from my reverie and glared down at my page. My commiserable story was in need for enhancement.
"Turn your papers in. And make sure your name is at the top! I can't give you credit for your autobiography if I don't know that it's yours!"
The room was vacant in about ten seconds flat. Mr. Hedgehog attempted to align the stack of papers that had been shoved in his hands as students exuberantly vacated his classroom, keen for other things. The first day of school was officially over. He perceived me still sitting and raised an eyebrow.
"Miss . . . um . . . tardy-girl-whose-name-I-forgot?"
I stood precipitously and reached for my paper. I fragmented it into a ball and tossed it toward the trashcan beneath the white board. It didn't entirely make it, but I didn't retrieve it. Alternatively, I clutched my purse and the jacket that was utterly nonessential in the 110 degree heat that anticipated me outside the school. I didn't glance at my new teacher as I paced to the back of the room and swung my purse over my shoulder.
"See you tomorrow, Sonic," I called out, not even turning my head. "And its Amy Rose!"
Jacques was anticipating me by my truck when I arrived at the student parking lot, and seeing him there made me growl. Jacques D'Coolette, was a resident in my apartment complex. He and his younger sister had selected me. They were like the stray chaos that would never leave you alone and chao beseechingly for days on end until you finally gave up and fed them. And when you did feed them, it was over. They were officially your chaos.
So it was with Jacques and Belle. They just kept bothering me until I decided to take compassion on them. As of now they both believed they were mine, and I had no idea how to get them off my back. Jacques was sixteen and Belle was fourteen. Both were thin-boned and fine-featured, and both were fabulously sweet and bothersome. Just like chaos.
There was a bus that went to the complex, and I had made sure Jacques's mother was ware of it and even assisted her in getting Jacques and Belle registered to ride it. I really thought this year would be dissimilar now that Belle was a ninth grader and would be riding the high school bus too. Seems things take a turn. Jacques was waiting for me with a big smile and an armful of books.
"Bonjour, chéri! How was your first day? Big senior year, Poupée! I'm positif you shall be homecoming queen this year. The most beautiful girl in ze school shoud be homecoming queen, and you are definitely ze most beautiful girl!" Very sweet, very bothersome. Jacques spoke in one breath with a slight French accent and just a hint of a lisp, which most likely was the accent but was more precisely just Jacques.
"Hey, Jacques. What happened to riding the bus?"
Jacques's smile faltered slightly, and I felt regrettable for asking. He waved my question away and shrugged.
"I know, I know. I told Bunnie I would take ze bus, and I made sure Belle had caught it . . . but I wanted to ride home with you on the first day. Did you see ze new history teacher? I have him for first period, and I can tell he's going to be ze best teacher I've ever had . . . and ze cutest too!"
Jacques had recently begun referring to his mother as Bunnie. I wasn't sure why. I also considered telling him he might want to reconsider calling Mr. Hedgehog cute. I assumed that was who he was talking about. I wasn't aware of any new history teachers.
"J'adore his physique. I barely listened to anything he had spoken in the class time!" Jacques slithered elegantly into the passenger seat when I unlocked my truck. I was concerned about the boy. He was more feminine than I was.
"I wonder what he is doing in Emerald Hill? Melody and Pearly are sure he is, how do you say? MI-6 or something." Jacques had a handful of girlfriends. More precisely, the girls all loved him because he was so non-threatening and fun, which made me ponder again as to why he wouldn't ride the bus. It wasn't like he didn't have friends.
"What the hell is MI-6?" I wondered, trying to veer through the mass of vehicles leaving the school. I hit my brakes as someone cut me off and then showed me his middle finger out the window as if I was the one who pulled out in front of him. Jacques reached over my arm and slammed on the horn.
"Jacques! Stop! I'm the one driving, okay?" I commanded, shoving his hand away. It didn't even faze him.
"You don't know what MI-6 is? Putain James Bond? Mon amie, you need to get out more!"
"What would someone from MI-6 be doing at Emerald Hill High School?" I laughed.
"Je ne sais pas, but he's fantastique, he's beau, and he's young." Jacques tracked his reasoning on graceful fingers. "What else coud it be?"
"You really think he's handsome?" I questioned doubtfully.
"Oh, definitely. In a very naughty librarian kind of way."
"Oh, sick, Jacques. That only works when the librarian is female."
"Fine, a naughty professor then. He has sexy eyes and wild quills and his forearms are very well-developed. He's a hottie in disguise. Defiantly MI-6. Do you have to work tonight?" Jacques switched to a new subject, having clearly proven the new Mr. Hedgehog must be a spy.
"It's Wednesday. Wednesday means work, Jacques." I knew what he was inting for and resisted. "Stop feeding the chaos," I reminded myself sternly.
"I could sure go for some of Vanilla's Buckwheat Crêpes right now. I am one hungry Frenchie." Jacques laid the accent on thick. He only referred to his ethnicity when he talked about food. "I sure hope Bunnie remembered to go shopping before she left for work. Otherwise, me and baby sister are dining Pot-au-feu once more," Jacques sighed, anguished.
The baby sister line was too much, but I found myself taking pity. Jacques was the man of the house, and that meant providing for Belle, which he did with enthousiasme, even if providing meant asking me to provide. I worked at Vanilla's Cafe several nights a week, and without fail I brought home dinner for Jacques and Belle at least once during the week.
"Fine. I will bring you and Belle some Buckwheat Crêpes. But this is the last time, Jacques. It cuts into my paycheck," I snapped. Jacques smiled brilliantly at me and clapped his hands like children do when their excited.
"I will ze if my grandfather has any more paint zhat you can have," Jacques agreed, and I nodded and stuck out my hand to shake on it.
"Deal."
Jacques's Grandfather Armand worked as a house painter. He'd frequently had masses of his paint and brushes and kept the leftovers in perfect condition. Last time Armand had come through for me, I had enough paint to last me two months of serious artwork. I drooled at the thought.
"Of course, that means you will owe me, Poupée," Jacques suggested sweetly. "Dinners for at least a month of Wednesdays, oui?"
I just snickered at his negotiating skills. He already owed me for two months of Wednesdays. But we both knew I would agree. I always did.
Thank you for reading.
Honestly, I am aware that this story is starting out slow but please don't give up on me just yet. ESPECIALLY if you're into heartfelt stories.I promise that the story will start to pick up from here on out and the juice parts will commence!
Will be posting every Friday and maybe Wednesdays for this story.
Have a wonderful day!