Baux Hill Village is a small rural community on the outskirts of London and like any small community Baux Hill has its fair share of secrets. Moving there from a young age Joshua finds himself tangled up in the web of deceit. Will he find his way ou...
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Miss Cooper harshly dragged a piece of chalk down the blackboard. "If I have fifteen cookies, and I want to share them between three people, how many will each person have?" She stabbed at the board with the chalk and smiled as she faced us, as if the board were our little blank faces.
Moments tiresomely trudged past. When no one raised their hand to answer, Miss Cooper skulked around the classroom looking for victims, her hands tightly clasped behind her back. She was like a bear, large and terrifying, at least to children of our size, but her face carried a quiet warmth-- a softness, something mother-like below her sternness. Though it made her no less intimidating.
She stalked by my table and leered down at us.
Never look a bear in the eye. They'll think you're challenging them.
Edith scribbled away at her paper, face painted in a heavy blush. Cain stared at the wall, and Adam avoided Miss Cooper all together, always looking in the opposite direction to where she was looking. It was a funny thing to watch. It was as if he was trying to imagine her out of existence. An existence I forgot that I was a part of. I looked at Miss Cooper dead in the eyes, imagining that all she saw was an empty chair collecting dust. Would she really see me? Was I really there? Or would her eyes play tricks like mine had the day before.
"Up to the board."
After waiting patiently for the chair to get up from underneath me and answer the question, I stood up. I guess she was pointing at me. I walked to the board like a martyr on death row, sacrificed to a bear for simply existing. Miss Cooper forcefully pushed the chalk into my hands.
Ah, an offering.
In front of the board I stood, wondering what chalk tasted like while thirty pairs of eyes implored expectantly.
Fifteen fish shared between three bears... I didn't think one fish would satiate Miss Cooper. Maybe five. She'd have to be satisfied with five, right? Five was all she was going to get, after all, I had two other hungry bears to feed.
When I finished writing the answer, Miss Copper was satisfied, but barely. Maybe five fish really wasn't enough.
I sat back down, my mind full of fish and bears. Fish, bears, deers and secrets. Churches and strange women and bears and secrets. All swirling around.
I massaged my temples. My head was starting to hurt from all of the thinking I was doing lately. Or maybe it was because of the lack of sleep. Everytime I closed my eyes I was back in that forest, acutely aware of something watching me in the darkness. I knew it was the deer. It's colossal body took up so much space, even in my imagination, that my head felt heavy from the sheer weight of the memory of it.
"Hey, Adam?"
"Yeah?!"
Miss Cooper sent him a glare. He immediately slapped his hands over his mouth, hardly able to stifle his laughter. I didn't see what there was to laugh about. Adam could find humour in absolutely everything. It annoyed me, and yet, it was something I came to admire about him.
