Starstruck

Chapter Four: 'Cause No One Comes For Free

By: Jondy Macmillan

From the outside, Yardale looked nice enough. Freshly trimmed lawns of green spanned the area between the gates and the main office. A hodgepodge assortment of brick buildings stood off in the distance, and even farther back I could see the beginnings of a forest. The entire campus was huge, bigger than any school I'd ever attended before, and surrounded by wrought iron gates.

When my dad pulled up in front of the headmaster's office, I let out a breath I hadn't known I was holding. For the past few weeks I hadn't been able to shake the fear I'd seen in Christophe's eyes. I'd imagined all manner of hellish scenarios, but my imagination was calmed by the unassuming façade of the school.

"I'll take you inside, get you sorted," my dad clapped a hand on my shoulder. I wanted to cling to that hand, to beg him not to leave me at this place, but I was fully aware that I'd only be shaming myself. Dad wouldn't see the display of weakness as endearing now that his decision was made. I was a criminal, one in need of structure.

Never mind the fact that my most criminal act had been giving Christophe a bloody nose that he absolutely deserved.

The headmaster was an old man, with wrinkles and creases that must have set in around the dark ages and watery blue eyes that didn't seem to see anything at all. My father spoke to him with hushed respect, like he was greeting an ancient warhorse who'd been put to pasture. I could tell the man appreciated my father's kowtowing, but the few glances he spared for me were less than heartening. I occupied myself with examining his multiple diplomas lining the beige walls and fervently hoped my classes at Yardale required limited contact with this man.

Of course I didn't know what the classes would require, but I'd envisioned lovely, tranquil young ladies with blushing cheeks, much like the women who'd taught me for most of my youth. I was almost seven, and I hadn't yet had a bad experience with an educator.

That was soon to change.

After my father had concluded his business with nary a hug for me in sight, I was left alone with the dreadful old man who was ever so slightly more nightmarish now that the comfort I'd leeched from my father had vanished. The headmaster looked me up and down, like I was a particularly strange sight, like he'd never glimpsed a little boy before.

Finally he croaked out that someone would show me to my dorm room.

Which was much, much worse than I'd expected. Spartan in nature, the only thing I'd ever seen barer than the room was a prison cell in Alcatraz. We'd taken a field trip there when I lived in San Francisco for a brief time, and the deserted prison was less desolate than a Yardale dorm room.

The second thing I noticed was that aside from the total lack of paint or furniture other than cots was that there were two. Cots, I mean.

"Your roommate's," the guide murmured, noting my confusion. Then, as if that had been introduction enough to my new way of life, he left me alone.

I threw my tiny hold-all onto the nearest cot and collapsed on top of it. I wanted nothing more than to throw a hissy fit, but what good would it be with no one around to hear it?

That's when I felt the hairs on the back of my neck prickle. It was a feeling I was barely used to getting, usually provoked by girls staring and giggling. Only here, there were no girls watching me with kewpie lashes and laughing mouths. I sat up, dangling my feet off the end of my cot to meet a pair of leonine eyes.

"You," I accused, jumping to the floor. Christophe moved from where he'd been hiding in the shambles of a closet; really, it was just a metal locker.

"I didn't want ze monitor to find me," he explained, even though I couldn't meet his gaze without seeing red. He was the one who'd destroyed my entire life. He was the reason my parents had abandoned me. I'd never known hatred before, but I felt the first spark of it stirring inside my chest.

"It's your fault I'm here!" I burst, restraining myself from full-on tackling him to the ground and pummeling his face in. I didn't want to be an animal, like my mum said.

I wanted to be good, so she'd love me again.

"Non. It is not my fault. Our muzzers," Christophe muttered, "Zey are trophy wives. Zey want to get back to being beautiful, childless."

"Take that back! My mum wants me with her!"

"Is zat so? Zen why aren't you?" Christophe's tiny mouth pursed with disdain when I didn't give him the satisfaction of an answer. He continued, "No one asked you to turn violent."

"I didn't 'turn violent'. You humiliated me. That was payback," I spat.

"Payback for what, exactly? I'll 'ave you know I did no'zing wrong."

"You told everyone I lied!"

"Non. I did no such zing. Your moronic lies are none of my business, Gregory."

The way he said my name irked me, for reasons I couldn't identify. Greg-go-ry. Not Greg-ry, like all the Americans.

"Fine. If you didn't tell, who did?"

"My best guess would be someone oz'er zan me," he retorted impetuously, chestnut hair falling into his eyes.

"You promise it wasn't you?" I demanded, incredulous, because of course it had to have been him, "Swear?"

Meeting my eyes evenly, Christophe held up his hand and replied, "Pinky promise."

I watched him, suspicious. Up until that point, he'd given me nothing but grief. Still, at six-but-almost-seven, a pinky promise was like law. He couldn't be lying if he was willing to offer that kind of vow. I linked my finger around his bony one.

"Fine," I crossed my arms when we were done, trying to keep all my body parts far away from him. Pinky promises didn't mean he suddenly had my trust, or anything, "Um…so what's wrong with this place?"

"Wrong?" Christophe's eyes narrowed, and if he'd been a dog, his ears would have flattened against his head.

"You don't like it here," I stated bluntly.

"…yeah. I don't like it 'ere," he caved, slumping down on one of the cots, "It's not a good place."

"Why?"

"Zey will run you ragged. Zey will beat you if you do some'zing wrong. Zey will make you 'urt."

"I don't believe you. My parents wouldn't have sent me here if that was true," I gulped back my terror, convinced he was attempting to trick me again.

But he wasn't joking. With all seriousness, he said, "It is, and zey did, but believe what you like."

"I will," I crossed my arms even more tightly, like if I squeezed hard enough then maybe it'd stop me from shivering. Even if I didn't really believe him, Christophe's words had gotten to me.

Imagine how I felt when I found out they were true.

It happened the next day. I'd harbored my suspicions later that night, when Christophe had escorted me to the mess hall, which was the quietest cafeteria I'd ever seen. The kids inside, from the ones younger than I was to the oldest of the teenagers were sullen and tight lipped. I tried to greet a few, but they refused to even meet my eyes. I wasn't sure if they were unfriendly or if the behavior was enforced, and it made me nervous. Some of them darted looks at my companion, throwing him pained glances, like they'd met him before and felt sorry that they were seeing him again.

I ended up eating what passed as food next to Christophe, who I couldn't get a single word out of, before retiring to bed in silence.

The following morning when I woke, Christophe had already evacuated our room. I donned the uniform they'd left me; khaki slacks and a black polo that fit too snugly, along with a pair of boots that I barely got laced. I'd only just begun wearing shoes without Velcro, and the complicated knots my mother had always tied for me were beyond my skill set.

I ended up weaving the laces in and out of the eyeholes until I thought maybe they'd stay.

It was hard, finding the classroom. Despite the huge campus, Yardale's actual elementary school was a small place connected to the dorms. Even so, on my first real day there, it seemed labyrinthine in nature. I must have stumbled into three different classrooms full of mean-faced students before I found one with kids who looked about my age, one with Christophe seated in the back row.

"S-sorry," I trembled a little, nervous as could be, "I, um, got lost."

The teacher was standard military issue; that is to say, he had no recognizable features at all. In a crowd, he would stand out because of his height and musculature, but had that crowd been composed of Marines, well, he would have blended from his flat top crew cut to his polished black boots. Also, he didn't appear to be all that sympathetic to my plight. Instead of telling me it was okay, he peered down his nose at my quivering form and grunted, "You'll make it up later."

I had no idea what that meant.

It sounded like a threat.

When I went to find a desk to sit at, there were only two empty. One was by Christophe. I started toward it and he glared at me, so intensely that I did a full reverse and chose the other, near the front of the classroom.

I'd barely been sitting for two seconds when the teacher began lecturing on the history of something we'd never quite covered in any of my classes; war. I was halfway through first grade, well before my education on the American Revolution and the Civil War was set to begin.

Most kids my age weren't even all that sure what 'war' was, except for how it related to their GI Joe figurines.

And he wasn't even discussing the so called 'great' battles of our nation. No, he was talking about a civil revolt in a country I hadn't even heard of.

He was teaching a group of six year olds about the military strategy used to suppress what was destined to become a violent coup, and why that strategy failed. In retrospect, it was gruesome, and even then I knew this wasn't the kind of thing a child learns when they've barely passed addition and subtraction.

On the other hand, my father had always been one for war stories, and this- well, it was interesting.

Not everyone thought so. At the end of the lecture, the teacher dove upon those few poor, unsuspecting students who'd found the shapes of clouds and their own imaginations more enlightening than his monotone voice with a fervor more suited to a rabid jungle cat.

He didn't just ask them questions about the subject matter; he interrogated them.

And when they got it wrong, he announced we were going outside.

I didn't understand why walking out into the bright, cheerful daylight would be construed as a punishment. Even when I saw the gargantuan obstacle course set in the woods behind the school, I wasn't concerned. I'd always been good at PE, even though I'd never partaken in any team sports.

My family never stuck around in one place long enough for joining a team to be worth it.

The course resembled what I'd seen my dad train on; climbing walls and nets to crawl beneath, hurdles and monkey bars, but all on a smaller scale. In the distance, toward the other side of the school, I could see an adult sized version. Both courses bordered the woods that had looked peaceful from the entrance of the school but now seemed near impenetrable and filled with darkness.

"Get going!" the teacher barked, spittle flying with each word. He was like a mad dog, right down to his somewhat droopy jowls and bared fangs.

The other kids hung back a little, fearful; even Christophe, who I'd always thought of as even more athletic than me because our inch or two height difference.

I liked to think of myself as brave, as daring, even though I wasn't. I was just stupid, and I thought that there was no risk. I thought it was a normal obstacle course, all metal and rope and nothing more. So I dutifully climbed up the ladder to the monkey bars, aware of the eyes boring into me and uneasy shuffling of my peers.

Even though it was the pint size version of what my father had endured, once I was dangling from my hands the bars seemed high as skyscrapers. My breath left my body in a whoosh, and I had to focus, to concentrate with all my might to keep from falling, even as my palms got clammy, sweat slicking the metal.

Behind me, I heard another student climbing the ladder, felt the skeletal frame of the bars quake with his weight. I forged onward, swinging from hand to hand until I was right in the middle, and my fingers closed around something pointed and sharp.

Immediately I let go, falling hard to the ground, sprawled out on my back. The impact jolted up my spine, and I cried out, surprised. My palm was welling with blood, and when I looked up I could see Christophe dangling above and peering down at me, avoiding the jagged metal. Which now that I looked closely, I could tell ringed many of the bars.

It was inhuman. It was sick. But back then, all I could think of was that I'd been hurt on purpose.

I began to cry, and the teacher smirked, taking horrific pleasure in my pain. He commanded, "Do it again."

When I didn't stand, only whimpered and began to sob in earnest, he growled, "Do it again. Make it across."

Christophe, uninjured, had already climbed down the ladder on the opposite end and was about to enter another part of the course. But he wasn't really moving toward the hurdles; he was staring straight at me, pitying.

"Do. It. Again," the teacher ordered, face turning red with the effort of not hurtling at me in some kind of berserker rage. I was frightened of him, in a way I'd never been of any adult, "Do. It. Again."

I wouldn't. I couldn't. My palm ached, blood running down my wrist now. The last time I'd bled so much was when I'd fallen off my skateboard the year before and badly skinned my knee. My father had carried me home on his shoulders, and my mother had kissed my wounds 'til the ache stopped mattering.

My father and mother weren't there now. They'd left me in Yardale, in the most horrible place in the world. It was hell, like Christophe had said. I didn't know much about hell, other than what I'd only just begun learning in bits and pieces at Sunday School, but I couldn't imagine a place worse than this.

One of the kids, smaller and scrawnier even than I was laughed, his eyes mean, "Do it again!"

He kicked me in the side, his boot digging into my abdomen. It was brutal, the look in his eyes. I'd never had anyone look at me that way. I'd never experienced such cruelty.

Another boy joined in. Then another.

I folded over, clutching at my belly, trying to fend off their kicks with my hands.

It could have been worse. The kids pounding their frustration into me were weak, and I could tell. They weren't athletes; they were the kids who would get picked on in any other school. The nerds with their glasses and the tiny, pale loners. They worked off their frustration, on me.

The strong ones, the ones who could really hurt, who were bigger and broader and taller than the rest stood off to the side, or continued down the obstacle course, content to pretend I wasn't being beaten into the dust.

If they'd been kicking me, I'm certain I would have cracked a rib. But they didn't, not wanting to partake in the wicked assault, but not doing anything to stop it, either.

Christophe was one of them. At some point, my eyes locked on his, fierce and golden, and shame-ridden. He made no move to help me, but I could tell he didn't like what was happening. I think it was fear that stopped him from moving, from extending a hand.

At least, I like to think it was now. Back then, all I could do was scream, and my only thoughts involved making it all stop.

Eventually the teacher lazily whistled and called off his dogs with a sharp bark, "Enough!"

When he was sure he'd gotten everyone's attention, he announced, "Get back to the course."

The kids who'd been beating me obediently climbed up the ladder, crossed the bars, and began the hurdles. I was still crippled with pain, staring at Christophe.

The teacher snarled, "Get your ass up there. I won't ask again."

It was a definitely a threat, and I was very, very scared. But then I felt defiance surge through me. It was a strange feeling, one I'd never experienced. But I wanted to show him. I wanted to show everybody that I could be strong. My parents, the teacher- and Christophe too. Even though I'd never been abused like that before, even though my body was a bruise, I scrambled to my knees, and then to my feet. I wiped my bleeding hand on my shirt, actually managing to glare at the teacher, and crossed the monkey bars, although I fell at least three different times from my slippery, crimson hand.

When I'd reached the other end, I began the hurdles. Running was something I was good at, from soccer to tag football to simple cross country. Only, I'd forgotten about my shoes. The first barrier I met lead to me falling, flat on my face. And this time, it took everything I had left to lift myself up. The teacher watched me in disgust and then marched to where the other students were standing, to observe them.

It took me nearly an hour to complete the course. I'd never felt so exhausted in my entire life. I'd fallen, I'd crashed, and I'd possibly twisted one of my wrists. To my great shock, I wasn't the last one to finish; that honor fell to one of the cowards who'd kicked me.

I thought we were done for the day. I thought I could fall back into my bed and curl up in the fetal position and never move again. Mostly, I just wanted to call my mum and cry my eyes out.

"Laps," the teacher announced, obviously displeased, "I want to see all of you at the other end of the woods in less than half an hour."

He stalked off into the foliage. Everyone who'd been audience to my downfall raced off after him.

Everyone except for Christophe. With a critical eye, he watched me limp toward the trees, wincing as my wounds twinged, brushing grass and dirt off my clothes. I must have had tear tracks staining my cheeks, but I glared at him, insolent, "Why didn't you help?"

He shrugged, "I couldn't. I would 'ave gotten punished as well."

I wanted to scream at him, to yell 'so?' so loudly that the whole world would hear it. But I didn't. I couldn't, because if these were the kinds of punishments Yardale meted out, I wouldn't have wished it on anyone, not even Christophe.

"Your laces are untied," he observed.

"I don't know how to do it right," I explained, the sounds of my classmates disappearing into the distance. I wanted to be mortified by the admission, especially since it was to Christophe, but I didn't have any energy left. Right then, he wasn't the enemy. He was just a kid, going through the same torture as me.

He kneeled before me, right there, in the dirt. He began fiddling with my shoes while I watched.

When he was done, I had two perfectly laced boots.

"Zere," he said, satisfied, "Much better."

"I- uh, thank you," I choked out, feeling like a complete bastard for hating him so much up until that moment. My abdomen ached with what felt like a thousand bruises, and I could feel one of my eyes already beginning to swell, but somehow, I felt warm.

"Yeah, yeah," he was embarrassed, and he kicked at the ground and stared at one of the many trees, "We should do ze laps now."

I didn't want to do laps. The forest was dark and terrifying. The teacher and his monstrous students even more so. I wanted to run away from this horrid place, as fast as my tiny legs would carry me.

But with Christophe there, I somehow felt braver.

I braced myself as best I could and breathed, "Okay."

A/N: This chapter was just- impossible. I'm sorry it took so long to get out, and I hope it's not terribly boring. Please review!