I fell. Suddenly clattering to the ground. Swiping jars to the floor which smashed all around me as I landed in a heap.
There were howls of laughter. The chair was pulled out. They ran back up to the kitchen. The door slammed shut and the pantry light went off.
I lay there in the darkness as they shrieked with laughter.
I had banged my head and my cheek was bleeding. I tried to sit up and felt the sharp pricks of glass shards in my hands and heels. I couldn’t see what I was sitting in but it was cold and sticky and there was a lot of it.
“You didn’t really think we could be friends with you, did you?” she said through the door.
The other girls’ voices drifted away.
I felt an ant crawl between my fingers.
Another over my ankle.
“You didn’t really think I could be friends with you, did you? Just look at you. You’re a mess!”
She knew it without seeing me.
She was right.
I was a disgusting mess.
“Look at you, Mary. Who would want you?”
The kitchen light went out and the thin sliver of light beneath the pantry door vanished, leaving just an eerie glimmer of moonlight from the high window above the top shelf.
And it began as I knew it would.
She began to thump on the door.
Thump.
Thump.
Thump.
Thump.
Thump.
Thump.
Thump.
Thump.
The noise filled my head.
Thump.
Thump.
Thump.
Thump.
The darkness swelled and vibrated around me.
Thump.
Thump.
Thump.
Thump.
Thump.
Thump.
And then the fear swallowed me into blackness.
Kathleen found me this morning.
I had jam in my hair.
A bruised and bloody cheek.
My hands and feet were cut from shards of glass and I was sitting in my pajamas in a pool of jam, honey, and my own pee.
She came right in and knelt there in that pool of mess and hugged me and stroked my sticky hair and told me it would be all right.
But I know it won’t be.
I know that this is just the beginning.
April 18, 1982
I have spent days and days in bed.
I can’t face school.
I don’t want to see anyone.
I can’t even read.
I have just been sitting here, wrapped in a blanket, watching the clouds pass the window. My hands won’t stop trembling. My mind runs over it all again and again. I am so stupid. I should have seen it coming.
I ache with the effort of not crying. I won’t let her make me cry. Not ever. But I want to. I want to let tears roll down my cheeks as I tell someone how scared I was. I want to sob out my disappointment that really they were all just pretending to like me.
Instead I sit here in the quiet, watching the birds and the clouds.
The cuts on my hands and feet are healing. The outside signs that anything happened are disappearing.
But inside I am broken.
Of course, from that day onward, the night visits started just as they had done before she left the last time.
She waits until the quiet hours then creeps up here.
While the rest of the house sleeps she stands and scratches and scrapes and bangs at my door.
Thump.
Thump.
Thump.
The noise is terrifyingly loud to me in the darkness, but protected from the rest of the house by the heavy fire door at the bottom of my stairs.
I barely sleep at night, and during the day I sit here shaking, quaking, the sound of those thumps echoing in my head.
April 30, 1982
My life is a nightmare.
It has begun as I knew it would.
I have only been back at school a week but already they are making my life hell.
My days are full of taunts, tricks, and practical jokes.
My nights are haunted by her.
I am suspicious of everyone.
Jumpy.
On edge.
On the edge.
Today it was the old nudged-elbow trick. I had a tray loaded with steaming beef and cabbage and a glass of water when one of her minions shoved into me, knocking my arm and sending the tray clattering to the ground. I looked straight across the room to her in time to catch her nod of approval to the culprit, Julie, who was now making exaggerated apologetic noises as the others sniggered. I had gravy down my skirt and beef splattered on my shoes. The water had formed a puddle at my feet.
“Have you peed yourself again, Mary?” someone asked.
I helped Kathleen clear up the mess.
The problem is that she is being so careful not to be caught. She is never anywhere near when disaster strikes. But I know it’s her.
I had PE earlier this week. She had switched the sneakers in my gym bag. The sneakers there weren’t mine and they were way too small. I squeezed into them (the usual giggling sounds from the other side of the bench) and hobbled onto the hockey field. Then, right under Miss Greene’s nose, they made sure I was the target, swiping at my ankles instead of the ball whenever I was involved in a tackle. They kept passing the ball to me—and straightaway another girl would be there, hacking at my legs with her hockey stick. At one point they actually knocked me down and a group of them gathered around—all fake concern and cooing noises. Miss Greene just blew her whistle and play resumed. The girls running off down the field, laughing, leaving me in a muddy heap on the field. It felt as if the game went on forever.
When I got back into the changing rooms, I waited until they were out of the showers before I went in alone, the bruises already beginning to show on my legs. I stood under the warm spray, but then someone turned off the cold so that scalding hot water spurted over me. I know it was her. More sniggering as I rushed out, naked, to avoid being burned. My towel had fallen off the hook outside the showers and was sopping wet. At least when I got back into the changing room my own sneakers were there on the bench under my bag.
And that was just PE. It’s been like that all week.
I don’t know that she arranged for all the water jugs in the dining hall to have salt in them—and that everyone else knew except me.
I don’t know how she got ahold of my history book to write “Mrs. Evans is a fat cow” all over my homework. I had two lunchtime detentions for that.
I don’t know when she got into the art room to carefully slice the head and arms off my sculpture. It had been done cleanly with a knife—she hadn’t even bothered to make it look like it had been accidentally knocked over.
Even today, as I came back up here to change, the door handle came off in my hand. How did she do that? It took Jane and Pete ages to fix it while I stood there like an idiot, gravy drying into a crispy brown sludge on my skirt. I know it’s her, but I just can’t prove it.
And, of course, I know as I write this from the safety of my room that tonight, when the whole house is asleep and silent, she’ll be back up here and the scratching and scraping and rattling and banging on my door will start again. And I know I will lie here cowering and shaking.