Chapter Seven: Regret
The office was dark.
The fluorescent overhead lights were off, and the blinds over the windows were tightly closed, refusing to let the glorious sunshine outside bleed in. The telephone on the desk had been taken off of the hook... the framed pictures and degrees which adorned the walls were shrouded in darkness. A few plants also decorated the room, casting long silhouettes on the walls and floor. Principle Sheppard was sitting wearily at his desk, weathered and high-strung.
In his hand was a small leather-bound diary and across the room, his television screen was blaring the channel five news.
Joyce Kinney and Tom Tucker were both live on the air, as they always were each morning... but today, he was sitting frozen in shock since a familiar face was plastered on the top right corner of the screen, a school photo of a gentle-eyed girl with soft brown hair and a pink beanie... a girl with high cheekbones, a heart-shaped face, full lips, and an awkward smile.
"—nd according to witnesses, the accident happened on Spooner street, right in front of the victim's home," Tom was in the middle of saying. "According to reports she was in critical condition and was taken to Quahog Hospital, where she was wheeled off to urgent care."
"What exactly caused the accident, Tom?" the blonde woman sitting in the news studio asked, staring at the screen. "Is there any news on the victim's condition?"
"Yes, Joyce," Tom said, then looked at the camera and said, "we now go live to Asian reporter Trisha Takanawa for a look at how the family and locals are handling this grave situation. Trisha."
Sheppard leaned forward and covered his mouth, tensing as the screen swapped to a familiar Chinese woman with a microphone held at the ready.
His stomach dropped through the floor when he saw the family standing behind her: a familiar overweight man in a white shirt and green slacks was giving a stupid-looking childish wave at the camera while the redhead beside him visibly fumed and tried her hardest to make him stop without making a scene. In her arms was a rather dazed looking little boy in red overalls, and behind both of them was a crying blonde boy in a blue shirt, wearing a baseball cap.
"No..." Sheppard whispered, squeezing his own mouth in horror. "Please don't tell me..."
"Tom, I'm standing here in front of Quahog's Emergency room with the family of the victim of the terrible car accident," Trisha said in her usual nasal drone, then turned and walked over to Peter Griffin and held the microphone out. "Peter Griffin, is it true that your daughter was struck by the car while attempting to save her four-year-old little brother, who was playing in the road?"
"Nah, it wasn't really Stewie," Peter flippantly said, then grinned widely, "it was just a prank doll I used to pull a trick on her."
"So your daughter was a victim of a prank gone wrong?" Trisha asked, holding the microphone out; Lois glowered, mouth tight, but Peter merely nodded with a huge smirk on his face. Sheppard felt his insides boil, wondering how this man could smile when his daughter had been crushed by a speeding vehicle thanks to something he'd stupidly, foolishly done.
"Yeah, and I caught the whole thing on camera, too!" he boasted, then deflated a little. "One of them reporters who showed up earlier asked for the video, so I can't show it to ya right now, but I did. Too bad she got hit. It would have been funny as-"
"It was a stupid decision," Lois interrupted, stepping forward with a torn expression on her face. "I tried to convince him not to go through with it."
"Oh, come on, Lois, you were the one who told me I could prank her!"
"Peter, you insufferable... shut up!"
"It seems that tensions are on a high right now, Tom," Trisha said, looking at the screen. "Back to you."
The screen changed, revealing a set of shocked faces.
"Thank you, Trisha," Tom said, blinking once. "So the accident was actually caused because of a prank gone wrong... by the victim's own father, to boot!"
"It's so unfortunate," Joyce said softly. "The Griffins are very well known in Quahog, so for such a thing to happen to their daughter... such a shame. Do we have any information on the footage from the video?"
"We have more than information, Joyce... we have video itself," Tom replied, then looked at the screen. "We've been told that the footage you're about to see is not appropriate for children. Be warned: what you're about to watch may shock and disturb you."
When the news studio cut out and a video began to play, Sheppard watched with furrowed brows.
It was a video taken from a home camcorder.
"Nyahahaha... I can't wait," Peter's familiar voice whispered, accented by his obnoxious laugh. "Maybe Meg will even wet herself! That'd be perfect!"
On screen, the camera showed two hands ushering Stewie into the road, and Meg... sitting on her front porch, looking tired and exhausted. Arms around her knees and chin planted on them, she sat with her shoulder-length hair drifting off to one side, obscuring her face and glasses. The camera shifted when she abruptly stood up and ran over to her little brother, following her every movement when she pulled him out of the way.
Peter snickered when she set him down and waggled a finger.
"Stewie, listen... playing in the middle of the road is very, very dangerous. There are cars going past that could hurt you. It's not safe, so don't do it, okay?"
The little boy glared, then kicked her in the shin and walked away, and Peter snickered again when Meg's eyes lowered to the ground.
"Please just stay out of the road," Meg murmured, dusting her jeans off before walking away. "It's dangerous."
After she returned to the porch, then came the prank... putting the doll in place, followed by the sound of screeching tires.
"They'd better go fast enough to make it look real..." Peter grumbled, shuffling a bit. "That money came out of Meg's dowry, after all."
Sheppard's stomach clenched when he saw the girl's discomfort and uneasiness.
"Hey, Stewie? Um... please get off the street. It sounds like there's a car coming."
Her face flashing to the doll, hazel eyes worried, the sound of the car growing louder.
"Stewie! Stewie, get out of the road!"
"Nyahhahahahahaha," Peter chuckled, making the camera quiver. "This is gonna be good!"
But then something happened... something that made Peter stiffen and stand up, pointing the camera at her.
Sheppard saw the terror on Meg's face, saw those hazel eyes grow wide behind those dented glasses, the way her hair fanned out as she whipped her head towards the speeding sports car doing fifty down the small suburban street. Her head flew back around and a variety of emotion flashed across her face, fear, anguish, anger, and her eyes shone... then those emotions clicked and her face locked into a contorted mask of desperation.
She lunged off the porch and ran across the grass, thin arms pumping, hair flying back, sneakers slamming against the sidewalk.
"STEWIE!" she screeched, sprinting towards the doll and flailing her arms with a terrified expression; when the sound of screeching tires split the air, Peter gasped and turned the camera, focusing on it as the driver stomped on the breaks. The footage jumped at the sound of a car horn. "STEWIE, MOVE! PLEASE!"
Sheppard slapped his other hand against his mouth and leaned back when she dove... throwing herself headlong into danger.
And the car hit her.
It hit her going fifty or sixty miles an hour.
Her ear-splitting screech filled the camera audio and the principle could only watch, eyes bugging out of his skull as the camera jumped again: the footage shook violently, but the principle could still see her flipping over the car, could see the way she landed on her neck and went rolling across the pavement. The sound of shattering safety glass and screeching tires went on forever, but then, there was stillness.
The camera suddenly fell and hit the ground, revealing that it had been stained with a long streak of blood.
"Oh, my God..." Peter whispered, sounding stunned. "I dropped the camera! Lois is gonna kill me! Please don't be broken, please don't be broken, please don't be -"
The video suddenly went black and without warning, Tom Tucker was back on screen.
"That is where the footage ends" he stated quietly, flipping through his papers. "Although Meg Griffin survived the accident, she is as of yet in critical condition. We hope to hear more on that later. In other news, there's a-"
Principle Sheppard snatched the remote, frantically jabbing at the power button until the screen went dark.
Eyes shadowed with fury, he contemplated what he'd just seen and heard.
Gooseflesh rose up his spine, fury and anguish burned through his veins like poison.
"He dropped the camera?" he hissed, hands shaking with wrath. "His daughter was hit by a car in front of him, and he was worried about the camera?"
He heaved a great sigh and rubbed his eyes roughly with his fingers.
He felt sick.
Sick in his heart, soul, and mind: he felt as though there was more he should have been able to do. He thought of all he had done to help Meg and knew that it was now out of his hands, but still, he cursed himself and continued wishing that there was something more he could have done.
Anything that would have helped to swing the odds in her favor.
He had been a teacher and the school principle for many years now—nineteen to be exact—and during that time had experienced many troublemakers as well as many troubled teens. As the school administrator, the only way he could hold his head high was to know unequivocally that he had everything he could to help his students be the best they could be. However, after coming into contact with Meg... he'd had a whole new definition for the word 'troubled' up his sleeve.
Ever since the incident concerning Michael Pulaski, he'd kept a close eye on her and little by little, he'd started noticing some very worrisome signs.
The same clothes... the same hat... the same tattered jeans... dented glasses... and a very quiet, somewhat antisocial disposition. Meg, at her highest pinnacle of being social, had only managed to befriend three other misfit girls... and even then, they'd only been friends in name. She no longer spoke with them, as they'd had a falling out near the end of the previous year, over something he didn't really know much about but had heard mutterings of here and there.
He'd also noticed the odd attitudes of the people around her, and in the end, he'd started going over old copies of the school's security surveillance recordings.
The first time he'd seen the extent of what had been going on with her behind closed doors, his heart had nearly failed him.
The first incident had been during her freshman year, only a week after she'd enrolled as a high school student.
Meg Griffin had been cowering in the center of a dark classroom with a ring of students all around her... students who had thrown textbooks at her, students who had laughed and spit on her... who had even gone as far as hitting her with desk chairs and baseball bats. Then, being left alone, shivering all by herself... bruised and nearly broken, but more than anything else, her face on that first had been what bothered him.
More than the vicious bullying, more than the violence, more than the spitting, the name calling, the laughter.
The whole time, despite her posture as she'd lain cowering on the floor, her face had been completely resigned.
As if she'd accepted what they were doing to her... or was already used to such treatment.
After catching a glimpse of just how horrific her situation at school really was, whenever he'd looked at her, he hadn't been able to fathom what was going through her head. She hid it all so well that it had been impossible for him to guess that she'd been suffering such a huge scale of bullying.
"She can't ever catch a break," he muttered, leaning back with a sigh. "I hope Meg is all right.