Candle in the Attic Window(10)

This teacher is just an overpaid babysitter. He sits in the back, scolding those who speak. We cannot talk. We cannot do anything. We are supposed to study.

I think I will read, instead.

Did I ever tell you about my favourite book? It’s an epic fantasy story, called “Stone Dogs”. It’s very strange, very surreal. I happened upon it by accident at a used bookstore. I saw a wall of the same thing – dragons, elves, dragons. Beneath these rotting and yellowed covers, I saw a single book, on the floor. Face up.

The cover was a thick paper that was textured to the touch to feel like human hair and bone. The illustration on the cover was a line drawing of a little girl feeding on a dragon. The dragon was dead; the girl was petite.

I bought the book with my lunch money.

I’ve reread it 46 times, already. I can’t stop reading it; it is a compulsion. Each time I read it, pages change; words change. Paragraphs are never quite the same with each reading. The characters morph; the landscape changes. Even the map in the back is constantly moving with each read, constantly morphing in shape.

And yet – the plot is always the same.

I’ll tell you about that some other time. I only have a half an hour left to read and I MUST read. I feel all drunk and fuzzy even thinking about it. Thinking about that book. In my hands. Like hair on the scalp of a head running between my fingers.





Thursday: Lunch





I usually go outside to eat, Geoff and me walking around the back lot talking and eating. Not today. Today, they said we are trapped inside. That the snow and the sleet and all the ice are far too dangerous for anyone to leave.

I feel caged. Sitting here, in the gymnasium, chewing on a stale salami sandwich. Geoff sits beside me, but he’s not talking. He’s just looking at crumpled mountains of paper in front of him. Scattered next to him are books on architecture, on engineering. On equations for worlds and universes. And a metal compass. And an ink and quill.

I would bother him, but I know he is working. Designing a world of his own, a galaxy of his own. Geoff is a writer of sorts. A creator. He has over thirty notebooks in his locker, filled with histories of this imaginary world, genealogies, genetic code for various creatures, the planets around it and the number of stars in the sky.

I know interrupting him now would be a big mistake. He gets angry when his work is disrupted; he yells and screams and throws his books at me. He is my only friend. I have no choice but to obey the whims of his imagination. I eat my sandwich in silence.

It smells like feet in here.

I want to go home.





Thursday: Biology





The walls are plastered with the bodies of dissected animals. They are beautiful. Pinned open and revealing their innermost secrets – labeled and categorized with painstaking detail. Like an open pocket watch, the clockwork displayed for all to see.





Geoff’s world is like that.

Orderly, open. Naked and catalogued.

I don’t listen to my teacher speak. She has a very nice voice, quiet and trembling. Like she is about ready to scream at any moment. A hidden hysteria in the background.

Her actual words are meaningless, pointless. There is nothing to learn when she speaks. Just words. Hollow things. I look instead at the pinned-open body of a pig foetus. The parts are so perfect. Like they are made of glass.





Thursday: Art Class





We have a kiln. But it is out back, covered by snow and ice. We can’t get to it to retrieve our sculptures. I fear I will never see mine again. It was a cat with wide eyes. I call it “Fear of Mice”.

So, instead, we are treated to a slideshow on Renaissance Art. The boys in the back giggle at the nude women. I hear someone bark out the word “fat!” and another, “chubby chasers!” and I feel ashamed.

Am I like that to them?

At the end of the show, the teacher stands in front of us. Her name is ‘Glenda’, like the good witch. She has no last name, none that she will let us speak. She is tall and thin; her arms are branches and her feet are roots. Her dress is brown and green, and she looks like a tree. The ice will be coming for her soon. To crystallize her.

She gives the usual speech. About beauty back then being different. That thin people were considered ugly and poor, and fat people beautiful and rich. She looks at me and winks.

I want to kill her. I hope the ice comes for her soon, turns her into a frozen tree, stuck dancing in the sleet and wind. If I see any ice, I will betray her. Give away her location. Let them come, find her. Swallow her whole.





Thursday: American History





We don’t learn about real American History. We only learn the same mythology everyone is always taught. About Pilgrims. And Columbus. About JFK’s death and MLK’s life. We never learn the real stories. The little histories.

My dad has a collection of books in his attic. They are diaries from the Civil War. This is history. I’ve read most of them but not all. They are by civilians, soldiers. Wives and artists. There are no famous people. No war heroes, no presidents or congressmen.

My favourite one was written by a 14-year-old girl. There was a yellowed picture stuck in the pages. She looked like me. That is why I am writing this. This is real history. This is what happens when you aren’t famous. When you are invisible.