The Girl With The Silk Dress
The Girl showed up in the middle of October. Even though it was getting chilly in rainy Washington, she wore the same thin silk dress every single day. The Girl also never said a word. Mary’s fourth grade class immediately began bullying The Girl ruthlessly. Mary pitied The Girl. Mary’s parents had always told her to be kind to everyone.
Even Mary couldn’t help but notice The Girl’s strange mannerisms. She had a tendency to stand directly behind people, which upset many of the other children. She had a lopsided smile that would creep across her face as she stared at her classmates.
Mary had begun to develop a friendship with The Girl as winter progressed. They walked down the hallways together and always went to the bathroom together. Mary’s other friends always asked her why she hung out with The Girl. They called her names and said she was creepy. Mary reassured her friends that although The Girl was strange, she was harmless.
One day after lunch Mary walked silently down the fourth grade hallway with The Girl. Bright, cheery yellow lockers lined the walls. Mary listened to the sounds of their echoing footsteps. She had become accustomed to silence when she spent time with The Girl.
They stopped at the bathroom as they always did on their way back from lunch. As Mary was drying her hands with a paper towel, she heard something clatter into the big metal sink. She turned her head sharply and stared in horror at the bloody tooth that lay in the basin. Watered down blood swirled from the tooth with the flow of the water.
Mary looked at The Girl in concern, worried that she was in pain, but The Girl just smiled at her. Her left front tooth was gone and Mary couldn’t look away from the empty, bloody socket. The Girl took Mary’s hand and they walked back to class together. Mary tried to get another glimpse at The Girl’s mouth, but she didn’t smile for the rest of the day.
The following week, one of the boys from Mary’s class got annoyed at The Girl for watching him during math class. He shoved The Girl and pulled her hair, but when he yanked on her scalp a large tuft of hair easily came out of her head, into his fist. It was like pulling grass up from the front lawn. He screamed in disgust and called her a freak. The next day The Girl wore a scarf over her head to school.
In art class Mary sat by The Girl. They were making pottery. Mary’s project was a pretty blue dolphin, but The Girl was sculpting something warped and dark. Mary tried not to look at it but she could see it getting more and more twisted out of the corner of her eye. Finally, she couldn’t resist it anymore and decided to look.
The Girl had been making something that looked barely half human. Mary could only guess that it was part spider. It had grotesque legs sticking out at all angles and its face was scrunched up in pain. The Girl was strangely good at sculpting for a fourth grader.
Mary looked closer at the human-spider because it seemed to have something sticking out of the top of its head, but it wasn’t clay because it was sharp. The light reflected off of the thin, red edge. Blood? The Girl raised her hand to perfect the curve of one of the creature’s legs and Mary gasped. Where The Girl’s right thumbnail had been was now smooth pink skin, dotted with blood.
Just then, the art teacher walked by and glanced at The Girl’s sculpture. “Looks wonderful,” she remarked.
It was the dead of winter. The children arrived at school pink in the nose and with snowflakes decorating their hair. When The Girl arrived wearing her ragged silk dress, her face was deathly pale, her nose not pink but a dusty gray color that crept up from the tip like a rash. Her lips were dry and cracked deeply but they did not bleed.
The children were released to recess after lunch as usual, and Mary dutifully walked by The Girl’s side to the playground. They headed over to Mary’s favorite jungle gym, the one with the blue monkey bars and the great big yellow slide. The Girl had never cared what they did at the playground, she always just followed Mary’s lead. The entire playground was covered in an invisible coating of deadly ice, noticeable only when it refracted the sun at the right angle.
Other students climbed around the playground, shouting and laughing. They were playing monkey on the ground, lava tag, and some other games Mary didn’t recognize. At first, The Girl hadn’t even gone on the playground, instead she had stood on the side, watching all the other children play. She had never been interested in playing, but at Mary’s request she would reluctantly join in. Mary noticed that most of the time The Girl would just imitate the other children, which caused some of them to get upset.
Mary grabbed The Girl’s pale, papery arm and dragged her onto the playground. They headed up to Mary’s favorite slide, the slippery yellow one. Mary went down first, screaming with joy. She hit a patch of ice at the bottom of the slide and went flying off, but managed to land on her feet. She turned around to warn The Girl about the icy slide.
The Girl was standing at the top of the slide with a boy from Mary’s class. He pointed at his friend and shouted something. The Girl was watching him and curiously she raised her arm and mimicked pointing her finger. He turned on her and yelled something angrily, waving his arms aggressively. The Girl didn’t seem to notice that he was angry at her and she just waved her arms back at him without saying anything.
The boy looked around for other people, but the only person near was Mary. He made eye contact with her and grinned. Suddenly he shoved The Girl. Mary gasped but couldn’t make a sound, as if she had been paralyzed. Her eyes were as wide as a deer in headlights. The Girl’s fragile body tumbled down the slide and ricocheted off the ice patch at the bottom of the slide. She went flying to the left, but her head got caught on the edge of the slide. Her neck must not have been able to take the weight of her body, and Mary could only watch as The Girl’s body fell to the ground, and her head rolled back into the slide.
Quietly, a voice in Mary’s head spoke, “Put it back on.”
“What?” Mary whispered aloud. She whipped around, searching for the person who had whispered in her ear, but there was no one near.
“PUT IT BACK ON!” The voice rasped louder.
Mary jumped and, shaking, crept over to The Girl’s head. Her eyes were open and followed Mary as she neared. Mary gulped and picked up her head by the ears and carried it over to her body. Her hands trembled as if there was an earthquake. There was no blood, Mary noticed, only grey, torn flesh. She matched up The Girl’s neck with the gaping hole in between her shoulders.
The Girl took a deep breath and her eyelids fluttered. Weakly, she stumbled to her feet. Mary could only stare at her with a sort of horrified curiosity. Mary’s mouth hung open in a way that her mother would have deemed rude. The Girl cracked her neck, once to the left with a loud snap, then to the right.
“Thank you Mary,” The Girl said with a toothless smile.