Meeting Victoria

They arrived at the school and Katelyn rose and got off the bus. The wind was weaker at school. They walked inside. Katelyn battled once again against the outflow of tears. She could feel the pain bombarding her throat, her chest, and her whole sense of self. When she got home, Victoria would be there, and she could tell her all about what was wrong. No, it is all a dream, she told herself. This is not really happening, or Hanna would say something to me. When I get home, I can tell Victoria all about it and everything will be okay. No, Victoria is gone. I can never talk to her again. Katelyn sat in her seat at the front of English class next to Hanna. She could not believe Victoria was gone. Whenever she tried to grasp the thought, a new sense of horror oppressed her, and she could not quite grasp what being gone really meant. She had never talked to her parents much and sometimes she wished they would disappear, but not like this. She wanted to go back to her home. Maybe, if she went back into the house where she once lived, everything could go back to the way it was. She would be whole again, but her hopes were not possible. They had moved to the other side of the school when she was in Grade seven. It had been three years, but she still did not feel whole. Victoria had been sympathetic, but Victoria was gone now. Katelyn owed Victoria for being there when she needed her. A sickness gripped her heart as Victoria’s dead grey eyes floated before her face.

The teacher entered the classroom and started talking, but Katelyn could not seem to grasp what she was saying. Romeo was saying something about light through glass and stars in the sky, but the words seemed so abstract and disjointed. Do they even make a proper sentence? She pondered irritably. The scenes had seemed lovely when she had read them in advance, but now they seemed unworldly and artificial. It was not that she though highly of Romeo before, but now he seemed like a mistaken fool focused on impossible ideas and raging against the iron conventions of society. Oh, Juliet, how Romeo takes advantage of you. No, Juliet was a fool as well. Something in her heart told her they were different somehow, but at the same time, their characters seemed to blend into one so they were indistinguishable, and she could not remember which of them did what. What she did remember was that both of them would die just like Victoria and then they would disappear into oblivion with only other people’s memories of them remaining.

Of course, as literary characters it made no difference whether they were alive or dead, as they were merely symbols. Still, it felt like a void. Why do they not realize how permanent death is? She thought they would worry, but they were preoccupied by their desires. They were so unrealistic, so distorted, so misled, and so foolish, but she knew people killed themselves. If the pain of life is so great, why not? She asked herself, but she thought Romeo and Juliet’s suffering was too artificial to warrant suicide. She did not believe they really loved each other. She wanted to say she was better than them, but when she questioned their actions, she began to see the emptiness in life, and she wondered what the point of living might be. Why not kill myself like them? They changed their society, but she would change nothing. She wondered if, in reality, feuding families really would unite after their children died, and in her mind, she believed they would not.

Was Victoria’s death a catalyst for change? How? No one even knows she is gone and why should they care about a minor politician who my mother somehow overlooked as a politician? And so did I. She felt the tears streaming down her face, but she brushed them away. She could not let them fall. She could not show everyone what was wrong. She did not want them to ask because she did not want to answer. Her red magic pulsed from her heart beating faster and faster in a painful rhythm. Perhaps, she wanted to imagine it was just her heart rate, but she knew better. In the last few weeks, she had used less magic, but she had felt something change in her heart and with it her hair had started to redden at the tips.

“Good morning,” a soft grey-eyed woman had greeted. She had drawn her blonde hair into a high ponytail and wore a pink pencil skirt and a white blouse with a short-sleeved jacket. Katelyn had taken a step back, surprised and somewhat alarmed. In her hand, the woman had held a medium-sized sparkly pink purse with a short handle and a large buckle on the front. She had had a youthful look to her smooth face, giving her the visage of one in her late twenties, especially with the way her warm eyes lit up her face. Her words had suggested familiarity with Katelyn, and that beyond anything else had alarmed her. “Katelyn?” Katelyn had froze, all feeling leaving her momentarily.

“Who are you?” she muttered in a muted half-tone.

“My name is Victoria,” the woman replied. “Your father sent me, and I am going to take you back to school.”

Love this novel? Read it on Royal Road to ensure the author gets credit.

“How did you find me?” Katelyn had asked, worried that the woman might be dangerous, but the woman had known her name, and she had to have gotten it from somewhere. She had eyed the woman’s silver necklace with light pink gems on it and her identically coloured earrings. The woman had had another necklace, one with a longer chain and a lemon-shaped cloudy rose-pink pendant. Katelyn’s eyes had fixed on this necklace and the way it shimmered lightly.

The woman had tucked the longer necklace beneath her blouse, paling slightly. Katelyn had thought the woman’s manner was odd, but by then she had begun to think of the consequences of not trusting the woman. She was already late for school, or at least she had felt in her mind that she was without really knowing for certain, because, after all, it could only be 7:00, but it could also have been more like 9:00. Besides, time had to have passed for her father to send someone after her and for this person to have found her. “Alright, take me back,” she had whispered, resigned to whatever fate the woman might present her with.

The woman had nodded, perhaps satisfied, but with a weathered disposition that almost made it seem as though she was fulfilling Katelyn’s desires and that she would be happy with many different decisions. It had seemed strange to Katelyn, given her previous estimate that the woman was in her twenties, and it made her suspect the woman was manipulating her, but she followed her anyway. The woman had led Katelyn back down the street in the direction she had come from, and then gestured for her to enter a silver sedan just around the corner. It was so close but just hidden that it suggested the woman knew exactly where to find her. She had entered the woman’s car, almost miserably, and then stared at her black ballet flats, feeling the darkness ricochet around her. She could feel the shadows smiling from dark surfaces, trying to convince her she was one with them. Shivering, she had fought them away, and shrunk from the whispers she could not quite make out. Something in the world had gone silent as an immense pain had slowly consumed her heart.

The woman had suddenly looked up at Katelyn through her rear-view mirror, her grey eyes searching and almost anxious, but when Katelyn blinked, the woman’s eyes had been ever calm. “We will all fall one day.” Her words had chilled Katelyn, but Katelyn had no idea what to think of them. Looking back, all she could think about was Victoria’s death and in light of her death and how she had ignored Mr. Valedette’s attempts to warn her, Katelyn wondered if Victoria had been resigned to death all along.

Soon, they had pulled into the school parking lot and that familiar feeling of entrapment had encircled Katelyn. Katelyn had jumped out of the car and into the rocky parking lot and then attempted to rush into the school and escape this woman, but she had followed Katelyn anyway and forced her into the principal’s office. It was a small, polished room with a white desk and chair facing a line of simple light brown plastic chairs. The short principal had sat behind a large monitor with only the top of his spiky grey hair visible. The woman had dragged Katelyn to the other side of the man’s desk, as he had turned towards them, a harsh look piercing through his dark-rimmed glasses.

“It is 10:00,” he had informed them in a slightly agitated voice. “School starts at 8:00.” He had crossed his hands across his lap. He had worn grey dress pants with a blue blouse and an angular striped blue and black tie. He had stared at his fancy silver watch and watched the second hand orbit the silver circle in the centre. Was he nervous? Katelyn had asked herself.

The woman had crossed her arms and tipped her head slightly. “But you are very forgiving sir?” she had spoken in a careful but almost commanding voice. “And you will not say anything to her parents?”

He had looked up quietly and studied the woman’s face slowly. “Do you know who she is?” The woman had remained silent. “I am surprised you stooped to this level, Victoria. Considering how you always thought you were meant for so much greater things.”

“Well, with situations as they are,” the woman had looked at the polished floor, “I had to take a step back to get the point across.”

“You will put yourself back further, this time,” he had told her. Had he known what my parents would do? Victoria had smiled slightly and met his eyes, causing him to grimace and look away. “You may go.”

Shock had filled Katelyn immediately when she had realized she was dismissed without any form of punishment from the principal. She had bolted out the door and headed to class.

“Katelyn,” Ki whispered behind her. “Kate, Katie!” She glanced behind her.

“You don’t have to call me Katie to get me to listen,” she complained, but he did not look convinced. The class was apparently over as the teacher was packing up her books and pens into her large black leather tote bag.

“Are you okay?” he asked her.

“Of course,” she answered and followed Hanna out of the classroom. Hanna smiled in a reserved, classic nerdish way with her blonde hair tied in a high ponytail. She was wearing a pale blue blouse the colour of her eyes and a sparkly silver belt around her grey pencil skirt. Katelyn wanted to seem as smart as Hanna, to fit in with her, even though she felt like Hanna was infinitely smarter than her.