"I didn't do it!" Sean yelled, bursting in the door as his mother was cutting roots up for dinner.
"Boy, what did you do?" she asked, knowingly, before her ears perked up to the wailing of her youngest, her dear Marcus. She ran out the door where Jon was jogging up, and pulled Marcus from his arms, toting him inside to lay him upon the sofa.
Greta's stomach twisted as she saw her son's arm, bent at an angle arms ought not bend. There was no blood, but the skin was changing color and the boy was incoherent with pain.
"He fell! I didn't do it!" Sean kept insisting.
"Sean Michael, sit in the corner! I'm going for Doctor Chang, baby, it'll be ok!" Greta called as she rushed out the door and rushed down the way.
Marcus's muffled moans filled the front room, and Sean pressed his hands against his ears. He stared angrily out the window. Moments passed, what seemed like an eternity for both boys, because the good doctor lived clear on the other side of town in a big house.
The air cooled and the second sun fixed to set itself as well when a hunched-over figure hobbled, panting, to the house, following the sound of the boy's pain.
Sean glanced over, watching the girl with skin so pale that in shadow it seemed to glow with blue, as did her hair, though in sunlight the hair was gold. Her eyes were larger in the dark and bluer, and she cautiously stepped into the house to go to Marcus's side. She gazed down at him, running her fingertips across his arm as he whimpered.
A yowl sounded in an instant, subsiding to sobs. Sean stood and turned abruptly. He saw the girl's hands on his brother's arm, saw her grip loosen from the limb as she met his eyes and suddenly rushed out. Jon passed her as he came in from the porch, wondering what had happened. Sean ran to the door and watched her hobble to the barn and crawl through the board.
His mother's prattling voice announced their return with the good doctor.
Greta, face flushed with concern, and the doctor, a stout and balding man in his late 50s, stepped inside to have a look at the boy. Doctor Chang grabbed and squeezed and lifted as Marcus cried out, and when his examination was complete, he turned to Greta with a sigh. "Ma'am, your son's arm is hardly as bad a break as you claim. He's a fracture, but not a thing's out of place."
"It was, it was," Jon murmured, leaning in to see that, indeed, the arm was as it should be, if not a little swollen.
"My boy, this arm is in fine shape," the doctor replied. "The only way an arm bent so badly can look so fine is after it's been set. So then, my boy, did you set your brother's arm just now?"
Jon looked away, thinking, as Sean grew nervous.
Greta said words of thanks but did not argue, watching the doctor splint her son's arm and instruct them on proper care and bathing, that it would be fine in a month. She asked the doctor if they could pay the cost later, because they had nary the cash to do so yet.
"Fine, then, Mrs. O'Donnell. One hundred double dollars, including the cost of follow up visits. Would have been double that if it'd needed setting, my dear. Due up at the end of next month. Good day." With that, he donned his hat and bag and stepped onto the street, dreading the long walk home.
Greta turned to cradle her son, who was only quietly crying at that point. "Your mother's eyes do play tricks on her when she's upset."
Jon spoke up, shaking his head. "Mom, it WAS, it was bent all funny, something happened-"
"I didn't do it, it was Vanessa!" Sean announced, fists at his sides. "It wasn't me!"
"And WHO is this Vanessa?" she asked
"The humpback girl in the barn! She did it! She came in after you left and she grabbed his arm and she made him scream and she ran out!" Sean babbled.
"It's true," Marcus burbled between soft sobs. "She made it straight. So, can she go to school?"
Greta glanced around at her boys and grew silent.
OXO
The children found Vanessa great fun. You could throw food at her, and she'd pick it out of the sand, out of her hair, and she'd eat every bit of it. She talked funny and walked funny and sat funny. Her clothes were boy's clothes and they were torn up and dirty, and she smelled like pig poop. The girls all agreed that she was ugly as could be, that her eyes were entirely too big and her teeth were monstrous, no matter how much filing she did to them. When she lost her baby teeth for her adult teeth, the new ones came in sharp as ever, making her look so weird it was hilarious! She could hear all the things you said about her no matter how quiet you were, so there was no reason to whisper, and everyone just said whatever they wanted about her. After all, she wouldn't fight you. The O'Donnell boys (except Sean, and only sometimes Jon, and Marcus was usually too weak to win) would fight the boys that did things to her, but they wouldn't fight the girls. Vanessa was the Hunch, Ugly, PooFace, to name a few. Sure, lots of the kids in their mixed-grade school were poor, and many of them smelled and dressed like Vanessa, but they looked far more normal, and found that with Vanessa around they took far less flack than before!
Vanessa was always in trouble with the teacher, Ms. Thornson. She never missed a point on an assignment or test, but she let the other children cheat from her work! And the girl wouldn't speak up, would only whisper when called on, from behind her hand. In truth, she creeped Ms. Thornson out terribly, and after the first month of classes with her, she didn't call on the girl at all. Still, Vanessa kept her arm raised at every prompt, thinking it all a wonderful game.
Stranger than the child's personality was her stature. Not only the hump, the deformities – the child of what had been guessed at ten years of age was growing at an alarming pace. Vanessa'd been grouped at the lowest grade to begin with, but sailed through it far too easily and was placed with the third graders, also ten years old. But a mere month later, the girl began puberty, and was through with puberty two months after that. In two months the scrawny thing had grown nearly two feet and towered over her 5'5" teacher! In two months she'd grown breasts (small though they be), was peppered with sudden acute acne, clothing replaced with donations constantly, voice cracked and deepened. All within two months.
Vanessa's hump and ears remained the same in size, and became somewhat less encroaching as she 'grew into them.' She could stand upright a little better, still not perfectly. All in all, the child was a terrible mess.
Ms. Thornson grew weary of worrying about this wretched thing, tired of the confusion her rapid growth made upon the class structure. She 'graduated' the girl to grade 12, the final grade, by the end of the puberty (she looked nearly that age as it was, almost a woman). The middle-aged, overworked, divorcee teacher did not want to figure out the girl's age or intellect level anymore, and knew the children were so terribly distracted by her that to have the girl graduate and be out of there would be a blessing. This would cut the total number of students down to 42 from 43 and would bring order back to the classroom. It was only fair to the students.
Overjoyed at the sight of an expected packet in the mail one Tuesday afternoon, Ms. Thornson marched straight over to Vanessa during recess (the girl sitting on the ground, looking about at the activity as the children commanded, as always). "What would you say about graduating?" she asked the girl who squinted up at her.
Her eyebrows went together in concern. "Do I have to?"
Ms. Thornson squatted down beside her, hiding disgust from the smell. "Yes, you do. Once you graduate, you can be an adult. You've already read all the textbooks, anyhow, so this is really a waste of your time. I want you to complete this special test after recess. Do your best, alright?"
Vanessa looked down at her dirty toes and said not a word. She began to cry, softly.
The children pointed and murmured about her as recess was called in and the students took their seats. "Ugly's crying!" they said to each other, shocked. They thought the girl had thick skin – she didn't cry no matter how mean they were to her. Even if she got hurt, she would only tear up a little. What could be causing this?
Bent over her desk, Vanessa's dirty, long blonde hair dangled onto the paper she was working on, bubbling in circles. Her tears fell upon the test, here and there. She did not look up from the test until she was through.
Finished, she sat there, hands tucked between her knees, waiting, uncomfortable.
Ms. Thornson handed the rest of the class their respective worksheets for the afternoon and stepped to Vanessa's desk, all eyes on them. She swiped the test out from beneath the canopy of hair and returned to the front to grade it.
The clock in the front ticked out the seconds aloud. Vanessa sniffled several times. The children and teens around her commented aloud, and a few asked (voices concerned!) what was the matter.
Ms. Thornson used to hush the students and scold them for such behavior – before Vanessa came. After she was gone, it would be that way again.
"Congratulations, Vanessa, you've graduated school!" Ms. Thornson announced from the front of the schoolhouse. "Come up and get your diploma."
Trudging slowly, she went, limply taking the stiff sheet of paper with her name written in just a moment ago. She didn't know that the teacher was supposed to shake her hand, and the teacher did not make a move to do so.
She did, however, lead the class in clapping for their fellow student.
"You don't belong in school anymore," Ms. Thornson whispered to the girl as the class clapped. "Now you can learn a trade and get a job."
In a flurry of sounds and light, Vanessa found herself outside the schoolhouse, the door shutting behind her. She thought she'd walked out, thought that was what she was supposed to do. Now, what was she supposed to do? 'Get a job'?