Beatrice Foley had spent all weekend on her creative writing paper only for it to come back to her with the red, foreboding words, ‘See me after class’ written at the top. She couldn’t focus for the rest of the period, so she spent the remaining fifty-two minutes drawing dramatic stick figures falling off the teacher’s note and stomping on the letters. By the time the bell rang, and several of them had built rope ladders on the curl of the ‘s’s, Mrs. Jacobson was standing over Bea’s desk with a patiently waiting smirk.
“Beatrice.”
Bea jumped in her seat, only just realizing everyone else had left. Her short pigtails scratched the back of her uncomfortably warm neck.
“Yes, Mrs. Jacobson?”
“Your assignment was to think of an idea for a mythological story, like the Greek and Roman examples we read in class. Not a fairytale.” Mrs. Jacobson leaned back against her desk, pawing at the handle of her lukewarm coffee. “I’m not trying to discourage your creativity, but you need to save that for another time.”
“Yes, Mrs. Jacobson,” Bea chanted, pigtails drooping.
Mrs. Jacobson’s eyes fell to Bea’s frustrated doodles and she couldn’t help but take pity on the imaginative third-grader. She shuffled her way into one of the student chairs beside Bea and tapped the second paragraph with her fingernail.
“You know, this section was really good. I liked the mermaid the best, and the funny little old man. Did you imagine these characters all on your own?” Bea nodded hopefully, and Mrs. Jacobson rested a hand on her shoulder. “You’ve got a great imagination there, Bea. I know you can make a mythological story if you can do something like this! Why don’t you bring me back a new story by the end of the week, okay?”
“Okay,” Bea said happily, scooping up her paper and heading to the lunchroom. She sat at an empty table near the back, away from the noise of her classmates. Rather than shovel down the soggy pb&j mom put together, Bea spent lunch changing her story. She made the funny old man into a brave knight and gave the mermaid legs. Everything was altered so drastically that, to her great disappointment, it was no longer her story at all. Bea turned it in anyway, but she was no longer proud of it. She resolved not to share her dreamworld with Mrs. Jacobson, or anyone for that matter, who would want to change it.
***
Bea wandered home from the bus that afternoon without her usual high spirits. She heard the yelling before she opened the door.
“I don’t know why I bother!” her mom was shouting.
Bea’s mom worked the 8pm - 4am shift at the local hospital, so she was often waking up around noon. This gave Bea’s parents a couple hours to get an argument cooked up before Bea came home from school to enjoy it. Bea wasn’t much of an audience participant, though. Just an observer caught up in the mess.
“Get the hell out of here, already!” her dad’s voice boomed. He threw a beer bottle and it broke against the wall, landing in jagged pieces that would soon be lost in their brown carpet. Bea didn’t flinch; she tried to imagine the glittering bits into fairydust. Just as the holes in their wall were from a disoriented cyclops, and her father’s drunken curses were only spells in ancient tongues, Bea unintentionally learned how to cope. The threats were nothing but lies after all, they had never come true before. Bea stood in the doorway waiting to be acknowledged, gently clearing her throat. Then they would calm down and turn passive-aggressive instead of downright aggressive. But not this time.
“Bea.” Her mom hissed. “Cover your ears.”
Bea didn’t bother anymore.
“You unbelievable, ungrateful, son of a-“ Bea’s Mom bit her tongue. She had always taught her that the first person to use dirty language or violence in an argument loses. Those words echoed in her hypocritical ears. She took a deep breath and smiled.
“I’m done.” And this time she was.
She walked upstairs and grabbed an old suitcase from their closet that had once been reserved for summer vacations. It had been collecting dust and little mice droppings in the pockets since Bea was young. She only took ten minutes to pack; she’d been picturing it for a while.
Bea stood in the doorway, frozen in disbelief and wondering why her dad wasn’t trying to stop her. Parents always left at night when people were sleeping. Parents left by lying when they said they were going to the store. Parents left when they died and couldn’t help it. Parents didn’t pack a bag and vanish on a sunny afternoon after school. But Bea’s mom did. She kissed Bea’s forehead, said a tearless goodbye, and was gone.
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