The first-day-of-torture

So my parents died. According to general opinion, I’m an orphan, who should be living on the streets and begging for food. And if you’re the type of person that I usually come across, your first thought is probably going to be something like “Oh no, how can I help this poor, circumstantially tragic person?”
Fortunately, I’m not into that kind of storybook trash. Being an orphan these days… let’s just say that it’s a little different.
These days, one lesson I’ve learned is: if you’re nice, you make friends. And my policy is: friends are trouble.


It was Monday, what I call “first-day-of-torture”.
“Lucy! Come over here and eat with me!” Toby called.
I quickly ducked my head and attempted to tiptoe back to my locker. The last thing I wanted to be caught doing was eating lunch with someone like him. Oh sure, he was nice, in an innocent, dumb puppy-dog way. But still, no one at this school of losers was worth anything. Including me.

The news came the next day. A plane my mother had been on crashed, leaving no survivors. It was a terrible accident, a tragedy; no one could believe it, a mistake in the design, had the pilot been ill? Endless flocks of teachers, neighbours, relatives-I-should-know and people-who-knew-my-mother swooped down on me day after day, asking if I was alright, if I needed help, if I was sad.
To me, my mother was just a relative. All this was just an annoying interference in my life.
After two weeks me of staying late after school, trying to avoid the horde of would-be worriers who tried to talk about “the death”, my father flipped. The real word for it is “suicide”, but one thing I’ve learned is that when you mention that word out in society, usually it doesn’t turn out too peachy in the end.

I climbed the stairs to the attic and looked out the window, and winced in anticipation as Toby climbed up as well.

“Hi,” he muttered. “I heard…”
“Well, this is a nice surprise from the usual word vomit,” I replied sarcastically. “What did the teachers threaten you with? Lifetime lunch detention?”
He asked indignantly, “You’re not sad? At all?”
I turned away and sighed, “Why would I be? Bo-ring.”
“What, you’re not going to let your friends talk to you?”
“You aren’t my friend. No one is my friend, and I want it to stay that way,” I spat at him.
For the first time, I looked into Toby’s eyes. He was hurt. Why? It wasn’t his family, his friends or anything of his.
So I stood up and walked out the door. Better to figure it all out another day.



The attic above the library would have scared off just about anyone .
The wooden roof had been awkwardly made, sitting at different angles so it looked like the whole thing was about to cave in right on top of you. A lamp threw eerie shadows that twisted my true shape, distorted the piled up books, and stretched the tilted pencils tens of times past their actual length.
Still, despite all these things, it was a perfect place for me, precisely because no one visited it. Rumours that it was haunted floated randomly around the school, a popular topic for when the gossipers didn’t have anything new to talk about, but as far as anyone else was concerned, it was just old.

I collapsed onto a seat, to my feet’s relief. Then, I heard the noises.
Footsteps, ones of someone who was trying unsuccessfully to be quiet, but was failing.
Scraping, of a hand dragging against the wall as the person kept his or her balance on the stairs up to the attic.
My mind raced as I thought of the possibilities. A teacher? A cleaner? A forgetful librarian who had forgotten her books?
Whoever it was, I needed to get out of here. If I was caught here, after school, with no excuse and no parents to back me out of here, I was probably dead for sure. Technically speaking, no students should be here at all, but everyone ignores that rule anyway.
“Psst!” whispered a voice from the window.
I almost leapt up as high as the roof in shock.
“Toby?” I hissed back as softly as I could. “What are you doing here?!”
He whispered, “Getting you out of here? What does it look like?”
I rolled my eyes and hissed as venomously as I could without talking too loud, “And you’ve been so helpful.”
“Well, it’s not like you’ve done anything to help yourself!” he said.
The noises increased with alarming frequency, as if the person was now running up the stairs.
“Come on!” Toby whispered. “There are stairs, it looks like the school wanted to build a pointless fire escape for the library.”
“What about you?” I replied.
“I’ll manage.”
With that, he climbed into the attic and shoved me to the window. I climbed down, waiting for Toby to follow. His legs, body, then head disappeared, and then…
Creak…
The door opened.

I froze, instinctively wanting to just get away.
“Toby?” A soft, gentle voice reached my ears. A woman, one of the school’s librarians.
“Mum.” Toby’s low tones answered.
The woman sighed, and I somehow knew that there were tears being shed. “Look, I know you want to find hi – it, but please… it’s too painful. Just give up, please.”
“I’m sorry…” Toby mumbled. “I’ll stop searching, I promise.”

I had never known who Toby’s parents were. When he’d first started at this school, rumours had circulated that his father was a drunkard, that his parents were jailed. A million different versions came from that, and another million from that. I had never paid attention to any of it.
Now, I knew in my heart that something terrible had happened to his father. Maybe I’d never know, but I could see Toby clearly now, as a friend.



Another “first-day-of-torture” came by, but this time I held onto it.
Once again, I climbed the creaky stairs to the attic, and opened the door. My lungs welcomed the musty air of my adopted home. My eyes focused on the kneeling figure of a boy.
“Welcome back,” I said. No sarcasm. No lies.
Toby smiled. Orange rays caught a spark in his eyes, something I had never seen before. “Ready to try having a friend?”
I grinned back. “Sounds good to me, now that I can have a half-orphan for a pal.”
I held my hand out, and he gripped it as he stood up.
It was time to end a now happy first-day-of-torture.

Sorry, Mrs Goddard. I've gone over the limit by 100 words or so.