The Girl from the Well

That his tattoos were moving is what she wants to tell her uncle, but she does not. She does not tell him that the boy feels wrong. She does not tell him that she cannot shake off the feeling that there is someone else in the room, watching, when he is there. She does not tell her uncle because she believes it to be a figment of her imagination, a mockery of her senses. It is the permanent ink staining her cousin’s skin, she tells herself, spreading across the canvas of her imagination. All these thoughts she keeps to herself and does not say aloud. What she says instead is this:

“I just want to know if I can do anything to help. He doesn’t seem to want any friends, and he always keeps to himself. Nobody’s been going out of their way to bully him or anything like that, but few people go out of their way to befriend him, either.”

“Tark’s been doing pretty well at home, considering,” the man says. “He stays in his room a lot, but he doesn’t listen to death metal or write about suicide or anything of that sort, thank God. Your cousin’s a good kid. I don’t want to pressure him into doing anything he’s not comfortable with yet. And for the record—he wasn’t abused by his mother. Not in the way you… He wasn’t abused. It’s a little complicated.”

He tries to smile again. “Thank you for being concerned, Callie. I was worried you wanted to talk because his teachers told you Tark was being disruptive in class or getting into fights with the other students. He’s been seeing a therapist, and he’s still a little moody around other people, but he’s improving.”

The young woman nods. “Okay. I just—I just wanted to be sure.”

“I would appreciate it if you could keep an eye on him whenever you can, though. Moving here was a little tough on Tark, and he could use a friend.”

“Or an overbearingly fastidious older cousin to boss him into having a social life,” the young woman finishes. The man laughs at this, but as he walks away after one last hug, I can see that his brows are drawn together and his eyes are tired.

After he leaves, the young woman stands there for a few more minutes until a bell rings and rouses her from her trance. She wraps both arms around herself and shivers before turning to enter, pulling the large doors closed behind her.

? ? ?

I spend the rest of the day counting. There are two janitors roaming the school grounds. There are sixteen rooms in the building. There are thirty students in the tattooed boy’s class, and most ignore Tarquin in the same way Tarquin ignores them. Once, a girl beside him asks for notes from Mr. Spengler’s history class from the day before, and he looks at her in a way that makes her uneasy. Still, she persists.

“Your name’s Tarquin, right? That’s an odd name.”

“It’s the name of some Roman emperor everyone’s pretty much forgotten,” the boy says, hoping she will take the hint.

She does not. “My name’s Susan. Where are you from?”

“I’m from Texas,” the boy lies. “Home to beloved exports like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, mad cow disease, and bullets. I collect mannequin legs and spider bites. A race of super-ferrets live inside my hair. They hate water so I shower with an umbrella. I eat bugs because I’m allergic to fruit. I wash my hands in the toilet because sinks are too mainstream. Anything else you want to know about me?”

The girl gapes at him. Her friend nudges her away. “Just ignore him, Nat,” the girl whispers. “He’s weird.”

Nobody else bothers him for the rest of his classes. The boy prefers it this way.

There are thirty-two students in one of the elementary-school classrooms next door. Of these thirty-two, one giggles when she spots me.

“Is there something funny you would like to share with the class, Sandra?” The teacher does not sound happy.

“There’s a pretty girl at the back of the room, just standing there,” the girl objects, pointing straight at me. It is the other students’ turn to laugh.

“Don’t make up stories, Sandra. Pay attention,” the teacher says, and the girl obeys, though she cranes her head to look in my direction whenever the woman doesn’t see, still grinning at me.