The Sacrificial Daughter (7 page)

After being held up by Mr. Daniels, a quick check of her watch showed she still had a good six minutes to catch her bus. It should've been no problem. Except that is for her ankle.

With the temperature outside hovering around freezing, there was no way she was going to try to cross the parking lot, dappled as it was with patches of snow and ice, without her shoes on.

"Crap!" she exclaimed through gritted teeth. Her ankle had swollen even more and now a swath of blue-black ran along the inner aspect of it. Yet she forced her three-inch heels onto her feet and grimaced her way as casually as possible toward the line of busses. According to her schedule, which had everything on it from what bus to take to her locker combination, her bus was the third to last in the line.

It felt like a long way, yet with time to spare she was able to get in line behind the last boy and pull herself up.

"Hi there," she said, giving the bus driver a practiced phony smile…a natural one was simply beyond her at that point. The look that he returned her, a sour overly fake smile had her growing nervous and for good reason. Bus drivers in general nearly always have an evil reputation among students. They could be cranky, as well as Nazi-like in their rule enforcements, yet towards Jesse they ran the thin gamut between surly and vindictive.

This particular one had the needle pegged to a level past vindictive, it was somewhere near malicious. The very evident facts about him also added to her trepidation. The bus driver was relatively young, thirty or there abouts. He smelled of stale cigarettes, was unshaven and though he was not exactly unkempt, his appearance bespoke of one who was on the verge of giving up. Yet he wore a wedding ring and not one that was beaten and worn by age; it looked new.

What sort of newly married man had a job like this? Sadly it was a man without a choice. Probably driving a school bus was all that was left in the job market for him. Jesse had to wonder how much longer he would be able to even keep that job.

Her father, the penny-pinching ass, always cut back on the number of buses and drivers in the local school districts. Close in routes would be axed altogether and the kids would be forced to walk or ride bikes to school. In addition, elementary, middle, and high school starting times would be staggered so that one driver and one bus would be used for each route as opposed to two or three.

It made a certain sense from an outside perspective, but from close up, with the man glaring at Jesse as if it were she who was taking food from his baby's mouth, it was painfully harsh.

He didn't respond to her,
Hi there
, other than to set his teeth firmly in his jaw. Jesse gave a tiny shrug that spoke of sympathy, which she regretted within a minute. The bus was close to being completely full, a first in her high-school experience. There were maybe three or four seats available yet none looked inviting and all had backpacks on them.

"Hi," she said with a cautious smile to a straight-haired acne-ravaged blonde boy. "Could you move your backpack, please?"

"No," he answered in a flat voice that suggested there would be use arguing with him.

Jesse wasn't too surprised; she had seen this kind of crap before. She moved on quickly—three seats down—only to receive the same cold response from some no-neck jock. The friend of Amanda's, whom Jesse thought bore a striking resemblance to a transvestite, was the next person without a seatmate. She wore an expression of happy evil and had a beckoning eyebrow that was raised in expectation.
Welllll? Aren't you going to ask me, too?
The eyebrow seemed to say.

Jesse pivoted neatly on her good foot and marched back up the aisle, laughter chasing after. "Excuse me?" she asked, tapping the driver on the shoulder. He had seen her coming but had turned away to look out the window. At her touch he didn't turn back to her.

"Yeah?"

"Well...um, sir?" She paused, disconcerted to have to talk to the back of his head. In an effort to look him in the face she went around to his side and squatted down near the door. "Could you help me? Some of the other kids won't budge over and I can't find a place to sit."

Still not bothering to look at her, he shrugged. "You can't ride on the bus without being seated."

Jesse reached her limit. "I know! That's why I need your help!" Curse words formed on her lips; barely she was just able to bite them back.

At her tone, the driver finally turned to look at her with eyes that had gone to squints. Steadily, she returned his glare and they locked eyes for a few seconds. He then looked down the length of the bus before replying, "Sorry, school bags can't be in the aisle. I guess you're just out of luck." He pointed to the door.

Feeling as though she were in a bizarre dream she stepped down off the bus but held onto the door. Striving to hold back words that were sure to get her expelled, Jesse instead spluttered, "But...but...what am I supposed to do?"

"You
could
take the late bus," he answered. There was a pause and because of the contemptuous sneer on his lips Jesse knew exactly what was going to come out of his mouth next. "Except there isn't a late bus anymore. Budget cuts are a bitch, right?"

Soundlessly her mouth came open and hung there until the door to the bus closed in her face with an indignant squeal. Then things took on a blurry muffled quality. She could hear laughter and jeering. She could see the faces of the students twisted into obscene hateful shapes. Fingers pointed and balls of paper and other objects came at her from the high angle of the windows.

Busses, that seemed as packed as hers drove by, one after another, filling the air with their nasty exhaust, yet
her
bus just sat there parked, idling. Vaguely, she wondered why. Her chin came up in a distracted unclear curiosity and she could see the driver's face...his lips were moving.

"Get away from the door!" he shouted through the glass, but the words didn't translate into meaning for Jesse. At that moment her thinking was like the taste of sea air, which she could always smell, but never quite taste. It just was too...nebulous? Just too out of reach for her senses.

The door squealing open again brought her back in a snap and she flinched in fear. For some reason she expected the kids on the bus to come off it in a human wave and attack her. Instead the driver yelled again.

"Get away from the door!"

So that was the problem, the bus couldn't leave with her so near at hand. She wanted to stand her ground and not budge, to perhaps force them to let her on the bus by holding it there until someone gave up their seat. However, Jesse was feeling distinctly weak.

Physically, she was exhausted from her stressful day and in pain from her ankle. Yet it was mostly her mental situation that caused her to step back meekly. For some reason, whenever she wore a dress or skirt, which was a very rare occurrence, she felt...small. Like a girl. Of course she was a girl, but the dresses and the pretty shoes made her want to act like a girl as well. She wanted to smile prettily and have heads turn in appreciation. She wanted to sit with her back straight and her ankles crossed and sip tea and laugh when the boys would cavort and act stupid to impress her.

She had heard that
Clothes make the man
, they made Jesse as well. As long as she wore her bedraggled "Barbie" outfit, dealing with another girl like Amanda, and bluffing her way out of a fight was probably the toughest she could expect to be. Swallowing the shreds of her pride she moved. 

In a belch of smoke, the bus drove away with the shouts of the students coming to her, over the sound of the engine:
Have a nice walk home—See you later, bitch!...Good-bye!—Good riddance, you mean.

And there was more. And there was laughter. And an eraser bounced off her forehead. She watched it leap in jaunty erratic movements over the uneven pavement. With it springing about, it seemed to mock her with its cheeriness, yet despite that, she kept her eyes dead on it. The alternative, to look up and see the other students, while tears formed in hot pools in her eyes would have only added to her torture.

Finally the bus was gone and she was able to look away from the pink eraser. The first thing she saw was Principal Peterson who watched from an open door to the school. He had seen her ill-treatment yet had done nothing to stop it and even as her quickly blurring gaze came to rest on his face, he turned back into the school. The door shut with a heavy sound.

Now Jesse was alone. Strangely, eerily alone. Yet she didn't notice it at first.

"Damn it! Damn it! Damn it!" She screeched out her anger and resentment and her hate. Just then she hated everyone and everything...even herself.

Her ankle throbbed and in her fury she wrenched off her shoe and threw it at the school, where it clicked off the uncaring brick.

"Damn you all," she screamed at the building. Her words echoed back at her unheard by all those that she despised except, that is for her...and the Ghost.

Still placid as ever, the Ghost—though she knew his name was Ky she still thought of him as the Ghost—was just climbing on his bike when he fell under Jesse's hard glare.

"Screw you too, Ghost-boy," she screeched. She meant it simply as a defiant parting shot, only he
reacted
to the words. So perfectly had he ignored the world that day that when he turned his head in the slightest manner, and it was a barely perceptible movement, Jesse was struck speechless for a few seconds.

When she had recovered, he was already starting to pedal away. "Hey! Hey you...hey, Ky!" She called after him. What she wanted from him, she couldn't really say at that moment. She only knew that she wanted him to turn back and look at her. Just for once.

"Hey, don't ignore me damn it! Hey! Ky, you pus-bucket..."

He wasn't hurrying as if he were looking to escape and at first Jesse was able to keep up despite the fact that she gimped along like a raving mad cripple. Yet as soon as he turned the corner of the building and left the empty parking lot, he picked up speed. In response to this she reached down and yanked off her other shoe. This allowed her to pick up her pace.

"I know you can hear me, Ghost-boy," she yelled, huffing and grimacing over her pained ankle. She saw that he was on the verge of outdistancing him and she put her all into her last scream. "Get back here, now!"

Nothing. There was no response from Ky and in a last fit of anger, she hurled her shoe at him. It blinked off his back, probably without him actually feeling it and he kept going.

"Damn it, Ghost-boy," she said quietly to herself, realizing suddenly exactly what she wanted from him. She wanted a friend. She wanted not to be alone.

Turning back to get the first of her thrown shoes, she came to understand just how really alone she was. It stopped her in her tracks. There was absolutely no one in sight.

"What the hell?" she murmured. Jesse had never seen a schoolyard empty like this one had, even the school itself was now dark. Suddenly a shiver went down her back and now she could feel the cold. It was a physical thing that made her desperately want to be inside where it was warm...around people...even people she hated. She ran back to get her first shoe from around the south end of the building and was stunned to see the student parking lot.

Only a few minutes earlier there had been a dozen cars at least still there, idling while their owners had chatted or stared at her as she was left behind by the school bus. But now there was only the cracked and aging asphalt. The lot sat deserted.

Just then, a bone-chilling breeze kicked up and the single shiver that she had felt a moment before started once again, this time thrumming in her chest. It didn't quit itself after a second either as the other one had, but stayed with her and put to rest the last of her anger. What replaced her rage was a ticking apprehension. It ticked up a notch when she pulled out her cell phone to call her mom for a ride, but only got her mom's voice mail.

It ticked up again as she hurried to retrieve her second shoe and saw the Ghost as a tiny figure far down the road that led from the school. And when she hobbled to the front of the building and saw Principal Peterson start his car and drive off—the last of the cars in the faculty lot—it ticked past apprehension and into fear. Jesse's fear was a brisk active thing. It spurred her imagination down paths that it was best not to travel and each one of those paths ended in the fearsome image of the Shadow-man.

Though she had barely thought about him at all that day, he was the root of her fear and just then she felt as though she had been left for him...almost like a sacrifice.

With this in her head she was soon scurrying along after the retreating taillights in a gimpy trot. She even waved her hands, hoping to be seen by the principal, yet if he did see her there was no indication and he didn't slow. By the time a minute had passed, the car was no longer visible.

She was now alone. Alone, surrounded by the forest which was perceptibly darker than it had been only minutes before.

The dying afternoon sky was turning a thick gray and was hung with low threatening clouds that lent a particular closeness to the air. It seemed to cling to Jesse in a misty sort of way and it made the dead silence around her greater than it might have been otherwise. She hated to disturb that silence, afraid of what could be in the woods listening, honing in on her position. Yet she disturbed it anyways. To do otherwise meant to slow down; something, that due to her fear, was probably an impossibility for her just then.