Crooked Smile (WINNER of the MJFA'S 2017)

Chapter 9 - The Indian Elephant

In the evening, Marilyn didn't mention Michael or the fact that he had been at their house in the afternoon to her parents with as much as a single word. It wasn't that she felt the need to hide it from them - after all, her mother knew about the bicycle accident and had even met him that very night. But Marilyn just couldn't wrap her head around the whole thing yet, and somehow she didn't want anyone else to form an opinion on the matter until she herself had decided what to make of it. It seemed as if the happenings of that afternoon weren't tightly woven into reality, yet, and she feared that they would somehow tear loose and become fantasy altogether, if she as much as thought about them too much. So she kept them to herself.

When she went to bed, fear of Monday at school started to mix with her thoughts of Michael. As nice as it had been to have him face Brian and his friends for her, he wouldn't be around to defend her at school. Without Michael around, they would probably treat her twice as bad. Yes, they'd probably be furious!

But Marilyn was exhausted from crying and from the excitement of the day, and so she fell asleep almost instantly.

Her parents had made plans for the weekend, and she managed to push her worries away and enjoy herself. But her fears returned with full force the very moment she woke up on Monday morning. Going to school had always been accompanied by a more or less strong feeling of unease, but on that particular morning Marilyn was downright afraid. It was the physical part of their attack the previous day in her driveway that scared her. What would their revenge for Michael spoiling their fun be? For a moment Marilyn seriously considered skipping school - just staying home, as her parents had both left for work already as she came downstairs - but they would eventually find out. And thinking about it while staring into her cooling coffee, she had to admit that she was even more afraid of her father's reaction once he did find out, than she was of Brian, Peter, Thomas or anyone else at school.

By the time Marilyn had decided that she would have to go to school after all, it was already quite late, and she had to hurry not to be tardy. When she entered the classroom, a little out of breath from running up the stairs, the second bell had already rung, and everybody was seated, but the teacher wasn't there, and the students were talking among themselves.

She almost thought she'd make it to her desk unnoticed. But just as she turned into her aisle, Brian leaned back in his seat on the other end of the room.

"Ey, ugly-Edmond! Where's your boyfriend?" he called.

Marilyn looked at him and made an irritated face, as if he was just getting on her nerves very badly, although in truth she was frightened to the point of trembling. She rolled her eyes, turned her back on him and sat down. Then she focused a concentrated stare into her book bag as she took out her folder, books and pens and laid them out carefully on her desk, trying to brace herself for the shower of insults and snide comments that was to come.

But it didn't come. Brian mumbled a little something like, "Who'd think ugly-Edmond'd find a lover?", but then he turned back to Peter and Thomas, who were discussing the last football match their school had lost, and all the things Thomas, who was captain of the team since the beginning of the semester, planned to do to prevent that from happening again.

In the aisle to Marilyn's left, two seats in front of her, Melissa turned. "Marilyn, you have a boyfriend?" she asked in a conspiratorial, girlish tone.

"Oh, Brian is just being stupid again," Marilyn tried to do away with the topic, feeling odd in the unusual situation. The teacher came to her help entering the room and loudly starting the lesson the moment he stepped through the door.

"Good morning. Kim, what was your homework for today?" he bellowed over the chatter causing it to die down almost instantly as he strode towards the front, not caring about a few 'Good Mornings' that were mumbled in response to his greeting.