A Lion in a Flower Field

October was a month of pranks, jabs, and punches.

Mira kept good on her promise to keep her head down and restrain her fists from sinking their teeth into the nearest victim, but one could only be victimized for so long before that leash slipped.

She’d braced shoves in the hallway, shifted away to avoid being flat footed by people behind her, saved face at behind jabbed in the side by rancorous elbows. The icing on the cake was when a girl from Mira’s Gym class tripped her down part of the steps. She’d held on to the railing and tugged on her assailant’s long ponytail, yanking and shoving her down the remaining flight of stairs.

A few days later, Herschel had pushed her hard against the lockers, the force rattling in Mira’s bones as she retaliated by snagging the back of his backpack, swinging his side into the corner of a nearby water fountain.

Magic’s own issues with his peers had gotten so bad that he grudgingly asked Mira for her company walking from class to class (through an agonizing sequence of stutters and silence). The teachers were skeptical about her leaving early, but overtime some came to acknowledge it as just part of the daily routine. The only teacher who knew the reason behind her early departure was Miss Flannise, who eagerly waved Mira away whenever Magic lingered unenthusiastically in the hallway.

It was easy to tell that Magic didn’t enjoy having to rely on her presence; he didn’t speak to her, didn’t walk near her, and looked down at his feet while they traveled the halls together. However he felt about her presence, Mira knew that her brother would have gladly taken this over the constant harassment at the hands of his peers in the hallway. Juniors walking towards them in the hall turned the other way. Freshmen stopped and stared. Sophomores kept their heads down and walked by. Only the seniors challenged her in the hall and Magic began turning off his headphones while they walked if only to tune out the targeted jabs at his expense.

“Watch your step, Arbesque,” Bentley sneered once, making a quick jab of his fist in Magic’s direction that Mira quickly deflected. “You’ll get dragged off into the abyss if you follow a ghost’s footsteps.”

“Better that way,” Mira had replied, slowing her pace to further the distance between her and her brother. “Don’t worry. If I see your mother there, I’ll say hello to her for you.”

Bentley jabbed a fist into her eye.

Mira snagged him by the shoulders, dropped him to the floor, and planted a vindictive heel into his abdomen before jogging away to catch up with Magic, who skittered into nearby lockers at the sight of her injury. In response to his questionable stare, Mira only smiled.

She’d also made several attempts to court Callie onto her side, pushing and nudging with the few brief moments of isolation from the other Peppers, but with no luck. It was aggravating, knowing that Callie had access to a crap ton of knowledge courtesy of being a part of the most popular group in the building and not saying a word.

Mira’s last attempt to talk Callie into handing over information resulted in a bruised set of knuckles (she’d punched a locker in frustration, hitting the grates) and she’d given up on that endeavor after.

By the time late October reared its head, a new rumor had surfaced and Mira, Janie, and Thalia sat in Miss Flannise’s art room to discuss it. The Art Club was in full swing and they’d taken a table on the opposite side of the room from where Magic was working on his scarf, peaceful and content with a box of fabrics, thread and sewing needles. Mira watched him carefully, her microphone turned off, while her friends chattered away.

“ … All I know is that Rory was talking about seeing a demon at night,” said Thalia, her foot rising and falling just out of Mira’s peripheral vision, “but I think those are the possums that hang around the alley near the school building.”

“Why would you trust anything Rory says?” asked Janie with an accusatory whisper. “You know he was the kid in Grade 9 who put a wad of gum in my hair and then had the balls to say it wasn’t him, right? Lia, I had to chop off so. Much. Hair! He could scream that a meteor was headed for the planet and I wouldn’t believe him.”

“What you choose to believe is your business, Jane. I’m only telling you what I’ve heard like we’re supposed to. What about you, Mirabel? Anything new?”

Mira didn’t answer; she was too busy watching the group of freshmen two tables away from Magic who were sneaking worried glances in her direction.

“Mira,” Thalia said again, “are you even paying attention?”

“I am,” she said, turning back to her friends as she sank further into the seat of the chair, slouching until her chin was parallel with the edge of the table. “It just doesn’t make sense.”

Janie raised a brow. “What doesn’t?”

“The town’s most infamous social outcast crawls out of his house to go school for the first time and, aside from the same shit we’ve been dealing with for the last seven years, there’s been nothing. No hints to something larger. No threats. Nothing.”

“Shouldn’t that be a good thing?” Thalia asked. “If no one’s going after him, it means he can finally be left alone. And he’s doing pretty good over there by himself.”

Thalia had a point; Magic was calm at his seat at the table, having gone back to his usual self earlier in the month. But he still refused to say anything about his unexplained absence that left Mira’s gut with an uncomfortable sinking feeling. She shook her head. “It’s too quiet. I don’t trust it.”

“Have you considered the possibility that maybe they’re not saying anything about it in school?”

Mira paused. She hadn’t considered that and now that she was it was making her stomach churn. This whole time she was trying to guard Magic from the violence inside the school that she hadn’t even stopped to think about what could be planned outside of it. “No …”

Janie rubbed her hands together nervously. “I don’t want to pile this one either, Mirabel,” she said, “but we’re at the end of October. Which means December is less than a month away.”

December.

The anniversary month.

“Do you think they’re waiting ‘til—”

Mira whirled, the words emerging in a snarl. “They’d better not pull shit in December.”

Thalia and Janie looked at each other, faces pale, mouths open in shock. “If they do,” Thalia murmured, “then what?”

Her focus shifted, landing on Magic who was digging through a bin of felt to add onto his scarf. Miss Flannise was beside him, mouth moving in speech Mira couldn’t decipher. Though her brother did not speak, she watched his head lift, his eyes focused, attentive. He was listening with eye contact. And Magic rarely did that, not with strangers and certainly not with most adults.

With an ache in her chest, Mira realized that in the quiet—the quiet she knew was bound to break—her brother was thriving. He’d found a small bit of comfort in the lions’ den.

If their peers were going to take that away from him, they’d have to go through her first.

“If they do,” Mira whispered, “I’ll beat the shit out of them. They’ll wish they thought twice before crossing him.”

10 - 24 - 0046

smoke woke me up again.

normally, i’d just let it exist in the dark in the hopes that forgetting about it would put me to bed sooner, but it felt … right. to put it here and write it.

it’s almost funny. mom always said that she wanted me to talk about these things. that maybe it would help keep the nightmares away. maybe it would. but I’ve never had the words. i still don’t. not even here.

because i don’t know how else to say that the smoke keeps me awake at night and expect people to understand.

that the smoke haunts my dreams and keeps me awake to deal with the consequences. How it holds tight in my chest like a bird’s talons gripping prey. it’s the predator in my room that hunts me nightly and I see it all. all of it. mabel’s good at chasing it away. but sometimes she isn’t fast enough. and I have to remind myself that i’m safe in my room with mabel in my lap, pressing against my chest to keep me stable with my mom in her room across the hall and that i’m sitting in my house with the window closed and the light on.

and then, before the panic comes back, i snuff the light and lay with mabel under the covers in the hopes that the smoke can’t get me for the third or fourth time that night.

m.c