Page 11 of Bring me Back
It was enough to have Helen turning to me, lips closed into a crisp line as she nodded.
“She’s a good girl.”
“I heard that before,” I said, almost just to myself. “How old is she?”
Helen turned to me with an expression I couldn’t decipher. I hurried to explain. “I heard the kids recognizing her. I know she isn’t a student but…”
“She just finished college,” Helen said as she rested her back on the seat. “Some of the kids have older siblings so…”
I looked in front, a million questions about Hallie on the tip of my tongue.
“Let’s hear first from the Demetrias,” Helen called, clapping her hands.
The other kids left the stage; a few girls remained. Even though my class was open to whoever, I only got a couple of girls since I started working at the school. I barely knew their faces. I saw them around and they usually called me Mr. Miller, but I couldn’t pick them out of a line-up.
“Alright, Amalia, you start,” Helen said.
Amalia started with the monologue, and from the first line, I knew I had to go.How rude would be if I simply walked away? Maybe between Amalia and the next I could find time to leave undetected?
As the girl butchered Shakespeare’s work, Helen sighed and whispered to me.
“They weren’t nice to Hallie. She’s a good person, Daniel. But a flight risk.”
I rubbed my fingers over my mouth. I already got she was a flight risk. It wasn’t hard to see. Why would a college graduate seem so scared of school kids?
“What do you mean not nice?” I asked for clarification.
Helen nodded at whatever Amalia was doing. “A little more intention, perhaps?” she asked conversationally.
“There was… bullying.” She whispered back to me as Amalia started over, as painful as the first time. “The more she made herself small, the more they went for blood.”
My whole body shook in the small chair. Feeling uncomfortable, I asked the next question. “What about the administration?”
“I talked to Anderson many times,” she explained about the dickhead who currently sat as principal. “He wasn’t worried. Kids being kids and all that.”
I shook my head. “It doesn’t sound much like that.”
I wanted Helen to assure me they were just silly pranks, but she didn’t. The silence stretched for a moment too long. I turned to see Helen’s eyes scanning the stage, nodding to Amalia, her head in some place else. “She always been good, very talented.” Helen cleared her throat. “She survived and left. Now she’s back and I know she’s stronger.”
I closed my eyes and thought back to the girl who folded herself in two walking down the halls. She didn’t seem stronger there.
“Are you sure about that?”
Helen turned to me with a vague smile. “Why else would she come back willingly?”
Again, I wanted to ask more, but I stopped myself. Helen wrapped up with Amalia, going to the next girl. I shifted in my seat, and after a few minutes, movement by the back curtains caught my attention.
Excusing myself, I sneaked out. Not to my workshop like I should have, but backstage.
I lied, whispering to Helen I needed to grab a few things, but I wasn’t even sure if she believed me. Up the steps, I kept forward to the backstage entrance on the right-hand side.
Hallie was sitting right on the floor, costumes all around her as she stitched something really small; her eyes were half of an inch away from the fabric. When my boots announced my arrival, she looked up from her work.
The fabric made waves around her like she was lost at sea. Her dark eyes focused on me. She gulped.
“You’re quick,” I said.
Hallie looked down back at the costumes, but a questioning frown in place.