Chapter 3 – Lizzie

Lizzie was fighting the urge to yawn so hard that her jaw was cramping during a long lesson about heretics in Sister Margaret's class one afternoon. They didn't like it when you yawned. It was disrespectful even though usually completely uncontrollable. But her hands hurt already from some other asinine indiscretion so she didn't want to push it.

They were reading a history lesson on Corpus Hermeticum. Witchcraft and other abominations done in the name of the church that were evil in nature. Lizzie had already read a chapter on Alchemy, but she wasn't sure if she actually retained any of it. She liked to read but if it wasn't interesting, she'd get to the end of the page and be no better off than before she started.

"People believed they could make themselves immortal through magic elixirs and substances. Only God determines who lives and who dies, it is an insult to his will," Sister Margaret said. Lizzie wasn't listening. She would drag her tennis game out as long as possible before going home, and wiggled her toes in her shoes in place of tapping her foot to pass the time. They didn't like it when you tapped your feet or bounced your knee. Nor did they like it when you played with your pen or tapped your fingers. Fidgeting was a pet peeve of all the nuns and it was all Lizzie could do to keep herself from doing it most of the time.

When she left the main entry of the school, she noticed the air was crisp for a spring day and relished in it for a few moments before heading to the locker room. There was something about the speed of the court that kept Lizzie feeling alive. The tennis season was almost over and she was one game shy of winning the singles championship. Girls at Sacred Heart were allowed to play tennis, water polo, or run track. She chose tennis because she was small, fast, and couldn't downplay how good she was at it. On off season she ran track, but it was mostly to buy a couple of hours away from home. Running helped clear her mind, she wasn't nearly as competitive about it. Something about the pop of the racket against the little ball gave her jolts of energy. She swung with a force she imagined she'd hit her uncle with if she ever had the chance or nerve to.

Lizzie didn't have many friends; she wasn't well liked no matter how hard she tried. It was a combination of the nuns making it obvious they thought she was possessed, rumors that went around about why she was kept home for noticeably long stretches of time, her aptitude for being in the wrong place at the wrong time and getting caned for it, and that she didn't have a family. Her only friend was Melody Warren, whom she had known for six years but only befriended fairly recently after her mother killed herself about a year or so prior. Lizzie seemed to be the only one who didn't shun or shame her for it, and it was enough for the little girl to look past the many assumptions made about Azalea Potter.

Melody was in her choir ensemble, something else Lizzie was good at. There was a secret part of her that hoped a nice voice or a sports medal would earn her a picture on her aunt and uncle's mantel. Maybe they would mention her in conversation with friends. Something along the lines of 'my niece is a wonderful tennis player, top of her year,' or 'the Christmas ensemble will be lovely this year, my niece is leading solo,' but she knew it was a pipe dream.

Sacred Heart Academy was a small campus with about three hundred students, spanning across ten years of education, all of the students were girls aged six through sixteen. It was a catholic school with a nun or lay teacher assigned to each year, headed by the chaplain, Father Matthew.

It had been two years since Lizzie decided she wanted out of Sacred Heart Catholic Academy for Girls, at any cost. The nuns had cracked several knuckles, the chaplain had given her more than canings, and she had seen enough teenaged girls marry middle-aged to borderline geriatric patients than she ever cared to. There were no conversations that remotely entailed a question like 'what do you want to be when you grow up?' You were going to be a wife. That's all. Nothing else. They picked who, all any of them could do was hope for the best.

Her only way out would be expulsion, and she did her best. When her uncle found out she'd been forging his signature on notes home, he strapped her every night for a week. When she got caught with a Stevie Nicks record, he made her sing hymns until she completely lost her voice. When a nun told him she turned a lay teacher's hair blue, he had Petunia cut off her pretty red wavy locks into a hideous messy boy short bob, but then lost his mind in a rage and strapped her hard at the breakfast table the following morning when it had all somehow grown back.

The school nuns blamed Lizzie immediately whenever something went wrong. When all of the bibles went missing before a Bible study, Lizzie was accused of theft without evidence and sent to the chaplain's office. It was the day before her final tennis match.

She rapped on the door lightly and stood in front of his desk with her hands clasped and eyes cast down. It was stupid to waste energy hoping he wouldn't cane her so she could still play, but she did anyway.

"What happened to our set of bibles, Azalea?" He asked evenly.

"I promise I didn't take them, sir," she said as meekly as she could muster. She wanted to say, 'how the hell should I know?' But knew better.

Sister Edith popped her head in a moment later. "We found them I the boiler room, Father, most are damaged," she said reprovingly, casting a murderous glare at Lizzie.

"I haven't left the classroom," Lizzie protested honestly. The chaplain snapped his fingers for Sister Edith and pointed to Lizzie. She felt a shove on her back and was pushed into the desk. Lizzie felt the woman tuck the hem of her skirt into the waistband and then leave the room. Father Matthew had moved behind and towered over her. She felt his hand tug down her knickers, which he wasn't technically supposed to do, and the cane came down hard, but he stopped much earlier than he usually did.

"Don't move," he ordered when he saw her fidget. She heard him put the cane away and hope soared because she surely had a good enough pain tolerance to still play after that. Lizzie heard the door lock and he pulled off his black jacket. She instinctively reached for her knickers and moved to stand but a firm hand pushed hard down on her back. "I said not to move," he said coldly.

He was standing close behind her and her body went rigid. She wasn't naive, she knew it was wrong, nobody had ever successfully convinced her it was God's will or that she needed to repent this way. She also knew doing anything about it was a lost cause. Her uncle wouldn't care, he probably gave him permission. They married you off after graduation when you were too young to men who didn't care. Besides, nobody gave two damns about the Dursley's niece. No consequences always equated to worse measures.

Lizzie could feel her eyes die behind the sockets. The girls she knew who had protective dads still had relatively bright eyes. The same couldn't be said for the rest of them. He fixed her skirt roughly several minutes later and pushed her into a chair as he patted his forehead dry.

"If I didn't know better, I'd say you were trying to land yourself in here," he sneered. If it was possible to light someone on fire with a stare, the look Lizzie shot him would have set him ablaze.

"No?" He asked and a laughed a little at her expression.

"Well, in any event I'll be telling Sister Edith to send you in every day at 2 o'clock until next Friday. You'll work in the lunch hall scrubbing floors during your free period until you earn enough money to replace the damaged books. Not sure where you'll earn the money, so I imagine the floors will stay rather clean..." he said.

The note she was supposed to bring back to her uncle was supposedly some sort of consideration in her favor. The chaplain said he would tell her uncle to hold on any punishment until after the game. It wasn't. She couldn't hold a racket or walk evenly the next day, and shamefully handed in her racket. The coach was displeased and Heather Coldwater yelled over to her, "Thanks, Azalea... owe you one," in a snide haughty tone for handing her the win.

Sometimes Lizzie thought it was pathetic how much she just wanted a tennis medal. It always got robbed. Vernon shut her up in the cupboard the first year she played. She had the nerve to ask if they wanted to go watch and cried involuntarily when they laughed at her. Last year even though she gritted her teeth and tried to play through raging welts, she was called off the court for something having to do with a flooded lavatory. They didn't rule her out of the blame until after her hands were strapped and racket kept falling from her grip. She forfeited and Coldwater won, Coldwater always won.

Lizzie supposed it was best she didn't play on the teams, nobody picked her for teams anyway. Didn't ever find herself letting anyone down at least. Melody was good at getting Heather in trouble for something. Heather had a terrible nail-biting problem and Melody watched her like a hawk to tip off one of the nuns. Not a chaplain's office worthy offense, Lizzie wouldn't wish that on anyone, but it did always get you bruised knuckles. Even she had to admit she was a little vindictive, but most of the girls were, it was ultimately a survival game at the end of the day.

In terms if her marks, Lizzie was really smart. She loved to read and write; her difficulties were in keeping her mind from wandering. To her dismay, the fact that she couldn't knit or embroider worth a damn came at a bigger detriment.

School, choir, tennis, home, chores... Lizzie detested chores. Cleaning wasn't her gripe; it was the fact that her cousin never did a single one. Her aunt only handled the laundry at this point. Her uncle didn't lift a finger, complained too much about being tired from work.

Petunia usually cooked dinner, but Lizzie prepped everything for her to easily do so. They moved around the kitchen together not saying a word, then Lizzie would make the plates, set the table, pour the drinks, and wait in the kitchen silently until someone wanted something. Whatever was left unserved, she could eat after she was done clearing and cleaning the table. But that was a best-case scenario. If she received a note home from school, or upset either of them to any degree, Vernon took sick satisfaction in watching her throw away the rest of the food, knowing it would be at least a couple days or more before she could eat anything.

She hated mass most. It was as though the priest at confession read a script from her uncle about not being an ungrateful burden. To honor those who were kind enough to take you. To honor the Lord for sparing you. To repay them in any way you could for their kindness and generosity.

But communion... her first communion made her vomit. She couldn't understand why, it was just a little bit of bread and wine. Their reaction to it was the most sinister. It rather broke her. Vernon insisted it was God's way of punishing her, of letting her know he was displeased. If she had a good week, or rather if he was satisfied with her that week, they wouldn't add the tiny bit of rat poison to the wine they gave her. If it wasn't a good week, they would, and the repercussions were insidious. She always knew they were doing something to it... it just took her awhile to figure out what.

Vernon had thoroughly made her believe that she was either crazy or possessed. He did everything from getting her anti-psychotic medication to calling in a priest. Both made things worse.

It was true, she saw things, weird things... snakes, dead (but not dead) versions of herself in small places, she had nightmares of bright green lights, people sprawled out on the floor, a dead dear being eaten by a rat, and she couldn't sleep worth a damn because she felt there was something, or someone, in the tiny little cupboard with her, though she hardly fit in it herself anymore. Day-to-day distractions such as school and like kept her mostly sane by most standards, but the days they kept her in the cupboard at a time unraveled her mind quickly.

Lizzie hated pretty much everything about her life at this point. The things she liked even she had to admit were piddle shit in the scope of things. She often wondered what her parents were like, and never once believed her uncle when he said she was better off without them.

They couldn't be worse than you, she thought. Nobody could be worse than you...