5-year-old Mary Sue Poots was the only child who came to school alone on the first day of kindergarten, but that fact didn't bother her in the least. She had spent years watching the older children at St. Agnes outgrow the nursery wing and start going to school. School meant backpacks and reading and math and homework and recess. School meant time away from St. Agnes, or in her case on this particular morning, time away from her foster parents.
The Lumleys weren't all bad, but in the few weeks she had been staying there, she hadn't gotten the impression that they particularly liked her all that much. Mrs. Lumley lost interest in her once she realized that Mary Sue wasn't interested in being dressed up in frilly dresses or doing dopey things like playing tea party, and Mr. Lumley was at work most of the time. When he came home, all he usually said to her was to stop running around the house like a tornado or to stop making so much noise.
Mrs. Lumley had dropped her off outside the front door of the school that morning on her way to the country club she spent most of her time at, and told her she'd see her at the end of the day.
"Try not to get sent to the office on the first day," she'd snapped, as Mary Sue unfastened the buckles on her booster seat and clambered out of the car. She wasn't really sure what Mrs. Lumley meant, but The Office didn't sound like a place she wanted to go, especially if it was anything like Sister Margaret's office. Still, she wasn't deterred by Mrs. Lumley's warning. She was going to school. She was one of the big kids now.
The front door of the school was much heavier than she had expected, and it wasn't until someone else came and opened it that she was able to get inside.
"Are you by yourself, honey?" the woman who had opened the door asked. A little boy Mary Sue's age was clutching the woman's hand, and he looked like he had been crying.
"I'm going to kindergarten," Mary Sue announced proudly.
"So is Timmy," the woman said, gesturing to the boy. "Would you like to walk with us to find your teacher?"
"No thank you," Mary Sue recited. "I can go by myself. I'm big enough."
"Well, all right then. It was nice to meet you, sweetie."
Mary Sue watched as the woman and the boy, Timmy, made their way through the rapidly filling hallway, picking past parents and teachers and kids who looked much older and bigger than Mary Sue had anticipated. She wasn't exactly sure where her classroom was, but she guessed that if Timmy was in kindergarten like her, then maybe her classroom would be in the direction he and his mother had gone.
After ducking elbows and darting around the knees of grownups, Mary Sue was able to make it to a new hallway that was filled with kids who looked more her own age. Teachers were all waiting outside of their rooms, checking students into each class and helping the teary ones, like Timmy, say goodbye to their parents.
"Are you looking for your class?" asked the teacher standing closest to Mary Sue. She was an older lady, almost as old as Sister Margaret, maybe. She had grey hair and sparkly glasses.
"I'm in Miss Avery's class," Mary Sue said, a little shyly. The teacher smiled.
"She's the one at the end of the hall," she told Mary Sue, pointing to a young woman in a polka dotted dress. "She's very lucky to have a girl like you in her class."
"Thank you." Mary Sue waved goodbye and darted down the hallway towards her teacher. Her very own teacher for her very own class. She could barely contain her excitement.
"Hi there," the teacher said, once she had finished checking in the girl in front of Mary Sue on a clipboard and had given her a nametag to stick on her shirt. She had a nice smile and friendly eyes. "I'm Miss Avery. What's your name?"
"Do I have to tell you?" she asked reluctantly. There weren't very many things in the world that she hated, but her name was almost always at the very top of the list. People only used her name when they were mad at her, or if they wanted her to stop doing something interesting, like climbing under the rotting part of the porch to see what kind of animals might be living under there. And she knew that it wasn't really her real name. Sister Beatrice had told her that they picked out the name for her when she came to St. Agnes, because they didn't know what her real name was.
"Well, I have to know what to call you," Miss Avery explained kindly. "How else will you know when I want to talk to you?"
Mary Sue thought hard about that, then offered a shrug of surrender. Her new teacher had a point, there.
"Is there a reason why you don't want to tell me your name?" wondered Miss Avery.
"I don't like it," she said. "It's not a good name."
"What is it?"
"Mary Sue."
Miss Avery made a thoughtful sound and made a small checkmark on the clipboard in her hand. "Sometimes people use nicknames if they don't like their full names," she suggested. "Do you have a nickname you like better?"
"Nick is a boy's name. I'm not a boy."
"No, of course not," Miss Avery chuckled. "I'm sorry, I meant nickname. That's like another name that people can call you. Something that you can pick out."
"I can pick?"
"I don't see why not," smiled Miss Avery. "I want to call you something you like."
"I like pizza. And peaches. And playing tag," Mary Sue offered. She wrinkled her nose. None of those sounded like very good names to her. Miss Avery looked like she was trying not to laugh, which only confirmed Mary Sue's suspicions.
"What are some other things you like?"
"I like the color purple. I like when the sky turns purple when the sun goes down."
"Why is that?"
"I like that it's silly," Mary Sue giggled. "The sky is supposed to be blue or sometimes grey if it's a rainy day. But for a little bit every day it gets to be purple for fun. And then after the purple it goes dark and the stars come out. I like the stars, and the moon, too. Purple sky means the stars are coming soon."
"The night sky is a beautiful thing," agreed Miss Avery.
"I could be Skye," Mary Sue said tentatively. "I like the sky." She rolled the sounds around in her brain. They sounded good. Definitely better than being called Nick or Peaches or Purple. Skye. Skye. Skye. It sounded like her, more than Mary Sue ever had. The sky was colorful and expansive and full of shiny things, just like her.
"I think Sky sounds like an excellent name." Miss Avery smiled again. "How should we spell it?"
Skye shrugged. She wasn't very good with her letters yet.
"What's the first sound?"
"Sss," intoned Skye dutifully. Miss Avery nodded.
"Sss. Do you know what letter makes the 'sss' sound?"
Skye felt her face grow warm and she shook her head. She hadn't expected school to get so hard right on the very first day.
"That's okay," Miss Avery said kindly. "That's what we come to school to learn. Sss-sky starts with an 's'."
"S," echoed Skye. She watched as Miss Avery wrote the letter on the sticky nametag in purple marker. A smile twitched across Skye's face.
Miss Avery helped her make the sounds for K and Y, and soon all three letters were written on the nametag that now bore her brand new, almost perfect name.
"I only get three letters?" Skye asked sadly. The girl in front of her had been named Isabella, and she had gotten way more than three letters in her name.
"Well, that's how sky is spelled," explained Miss Avery. "I guess if you wanted to have one more letter, you could add something like an E on the end. That way it would still say sky, just spelled a little differently. It would certainly be unique."
"Sister McKenna says I'm unique," Skye piped. "She says she's never met someone like me."
"I'm not surprised," Miss Avery said, fighting off laughter once again.
"Will you show me E?" Skye asked. She couldn't remember which letter that one was and she wanted to make sure she liked the way it looked before she added it to her name.
Miss Avery demonstrated the letter on the corner of the paper on her clipboard, and Skye decided that she appreciated its shape. It seemed to fit nicely on the end of her name.
"I have an E in my name," she declared, and to her delight, Miss Avery wasted no time in adding the fourth letter to the nametag. Skye beamed down at the word that was now stuck to her shirt, and she couldn't help but repeat it out loud, over and over again. "Skye, Skye, Skye. My name is Skye." She loved the way the word felt on her tongue and the sounds it made as it danced out into the air. She was Skye. She was full of light and colors and stars. She held clouds and the moon and all of outer space now. She was Skye and she could fly.
Our first flashback chapter of the story! This is something new I want to try in this one that's different from the first one. Hopefully the flashbacks (we'll get some for several different characters) will help echo some of the things that the characters are facing in their present day and it will all feel smooth and seamless :)
A little shorter chapter this time as well, so I'm hoping to get the next one up sooner rather than later!
