The Fall of Never(106)

Still…she was alone.

Home-schooled throughout her childhood, she would ruminate about what it was like to attend regular school. Come two-thirty, she would dash outside and stand at the crest of the hill just as the school in town let out. From there, she would watch the children below disperse throughout the tiny streets, shouting and running and jumping and laughing. Over time, and with mounting curiosity, these hillside jaunts eventually brought her down the side of the hill and to the cusp of the closest town road. She never spoke to the children as they streamed by, never made herself stand out. Except once.

A group of girls paused one afternoon beside the road and one of them pointed up at Kelly. They were giggling behind cupped hands, staring at her as if she were a caged animal at some small town carnival.

“Freak on the hill,” the lead girl provoked. “Freak on the hill, freak on the hill.”

“I’m Kelly.” She introduced herself with the understanding that these girls had no intention of befriending her, yet it was all she knew to say.

“Kelly is the freak on the hill,” the lead girl shouted. She was an ugly, pudgy thing with an angry face, Kelly noted. Faintly, she wondered how such people attract friends. This girl appeared to have a lot of them.

“Rich people are weird,” said a second girl.

“She don’t look rich,” said a third. Then to Kelly: “You really live in that big house up there? Your daddy’s rich?”

“I don’t know,” Kelly stammered. She suddenly wished she hadn’t come down the hill.

“Look at her clothes,” the girl continued. “She don’t look rich to me. Did your mommy make those clothes for you, rich girl?”

“Did one of your servants?” chided their angry-looking leader. Her friends exploded with laughter, pointing and snickering.

Kelly felt tears burn her eyes. “I don’t have servants,” she said.

“Those are ugly pants,” said one of the girls. Then she laughed. “Like your ugly face.”

“Ugly face!” another girl shouted.

“Freak on the hill!” they all began to chant. “Freak on the hill! Freak on the hill! Kelly is the freak on the hill!”

Trembling, tears streaming freely down her face now, she balled her right fist into a tight knot, felt a large, heavy stone there, and drew back her arm. She fired the stone at their pudgy leader; it caught the girl’s shin and bounced into the street. The girls fell immediately silent as their leader’s face blanched scarlet, her eyes squinted, and she started to howl in pain.

Kelly just stared at them. Slowly retreating back up the hillside, she glanced once down at the palm of her right hand and saw that it was flecked with sand. The indent of the stone was pressed into the soft flesh of her hand.

I imagined you, she thought, and wondered where the stone had landed. Was it still there in the street? Could she go find it, pick it up? Or had it vanished? Where did it come from? Inside me, she thought, inside my head. I imagined it was there…and then it was.

It was make-believe.

Nights, Glenda kept Kelly on a strict diet of children’s books—nursery rhymes and fairy tales and stories of kings and queens and princesses.

“Where do they live?” she asked Glenda one evening, just as the woman was about to turn out the light and let her sleep.

“Who, dear?”

“The people in these books.”

Glenda smiled warmly, ran her fingers through Kelly’s hair. “Sweetheart, these stories are make-believe. The people don’t really exist.”

“Oh,” she said, disappointed. “Too bad.”

“Why’s that?”

“Because I want to go there.”

Still smiling, Glenda bent and kissed her forehead. She smelled of cinnamon and freshly baked bread and fruit-scented hairspray. Glenda was older than her mother, yet Glenda didn’t have children of her own. Eventually, the affection she displayed toward Kelly led the girl to believe that Glenda was her real mother. For some reason, Kelly rationalized, those two strangers who claimed ownership of her were insistent about keeping the truth hidden, portraying Glenda Banczyk as a simple housemaid. Who were those two strangers, anyway? Locked away in large rooms by themselves, fearful (or so it seemed) to be near the child they called their daughter.

Kelly Banczyk, Kelly would often think, smiling to herself. That doesn’t sound stupid at all.

Glenda turned out the light beside the bed and stepped toward the door, singing softly to herself:



Little Baby Roundabout,

Someone let the Baby out,

And now, Sweet Babe, it’s time for bed,

So close your eyes and rest your head.



“Goodnight, Glenda,” Kelly whispered.

“Goodnight, sweetheart.”

She never could remember her dreams.



For whatever reason children are prompted to suddenly and compulsively rebel against the canons of authority, a nine-year-old Kelly found herself in her father’s thinking room one day despite the man’s constant insistence that she never set foot inside the room. Perhaps it was for that very reason she felt compelled to push open the door and peek inside. Occasionally, when it was occupied by her father (most usually after dinner and with a snifter of brandy), he would leave the door open the slightest bit: just enough for Kelly to peer in and get an eyeful of the magnificent room…of the wondrous yet frightening floating animal heads that decorated the walls. They were real animals, she understood…or they had been at some point. Now they were dead, and at nine years old, the concept of death fascinated her.