A Girl's Story (Zelda's World Book 1) Read online

  New From Paloma Meir

  A Girl's Story

  Overdone (The Loss of Reason)

  Book Three

  Trashed

  Vee & Addie (A Short Story)

  Copyright © 2015 by Paloma Meir

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof

  may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever

  without the express written permission of the author

  except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  First Edition, 2015

  www.palomameir.com

  [email protected]

  For my daughter Twyla

  A Girl’s Story

  By

  Paloma Meir

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-One

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Chapter One

  I must have been nine. She sat on her school bus seat alone, staring out the window. Her hair was white, the sun lighting it up, a sleep bump in the back. Her dark eyes took up half of her face. She was probably a year younger than me, and one of the last girls to be wearing a dress to school. The dress was red with tiny white flowers and a yoked top. She would have surprised I knew what a yoke was, but I did. The dress was short enough to show her pale knobby knees. Black patent leather shoes on her feet when the other girls wore sneakers.

  She was always alone. She would eat lunch at the cafeteria tables, the last one on the bench, eating her sandwich, picking out what she didn’t like and putting it in her napkin to throw away later. She never looked up and nobody ever spoke to her.

  I wondered what she thought about? What did she see as she stared out the bus window? I wanted to know. I played kickball with my friends after lunch and there she would sit on the bench not far from me reading a picture book with frogs on the cover. She never looked around, or noticed our game. Sometimes the balls would come dangerously close to her head. She would shift her position; that was it. No yelling out to be more careful, nothing like that.

  I always had lots of friends, everybody did. It was easy. We all liked the same things, kickball, throwing food at each other, wrestling. Not her though, always alone. I wondered how she could stand it. I tried one day to not talk to anyone, to sit silently away from others. I lasted maybe an hour.

  I started to sit next to her on the bus. She never noticed. Sometimes if her book bag or lunch was on the seat she would move it onto her lap. That was it though. Her eyes out the window, what did she see? I looked out the window with her.

  The trees, was she looking at the trees? I saw the them through her eyes. The winding branches, the knotty stumps. The shapes, was she looking at the shapes? Was it the colors? Sitting next to her I saw the colors changed over the days.

  My knees would knock into hers when the bus would run over bump. She would move them away from mine, still not seeing who was sitting next to her. My friends would talk over their seats to me, the noise of our conversations didn’t disturb her peace, but I ignored them anyway on the drive to school telling them I was sleepy. I wanted her to have her quiet time even though she had far too much of it.

  I don’t know why it happened, but she started dressing like the other girls, the uniform of jean and t-shirts. She still wore her shiny black shoes, but I knew that would change soon. I knew I would miss them when they were gone. Her white hair grew in fuller, the sleep bump not being able to form in the new thickness. I missed her knobby white knees.

  The girls on the bus, not all of them, more the leaders of the girls, the girls in my grade I had known my whole life, started picking on her. I didn’t quite get it at first. It started off slowly, and she didn’t turn around to acknowledge them, which probably egged them on. I wanted to stop them from bothering this deer of a girl. A slight figure who could be knocked down by a strong wind. I knew it wasn’t my battle. This was the girl battle; to jump in would have made it worse.

  They seemed to think she was gay, a homo in their words. We had all been taught tolerance, their choice of words were ugly. She was a wisp of a thing. I wondered if she understood what they were saying. I wondered if she even heard them. They would lose interest after a few minutes of their taunts. I was relieved.

  I don’t know what happened, and I never asked her when I got to know her and love her but one day it escalated badly. The girls screamed “lesbo” out the window as she was getting on the bus. Her tiny doe eyed face looked up to the source of the taunts, a look of terror in her wide eyes as if hearing their ugliness for the first time. Her eyes met mine for a moment without any recognition of having ever seen me before.

  She took off up the street running with the speed of a deer she looked so much like. The driver got off the bus and went after her. She was tiny. It must have alarmed him having her run off like that. She wasn’t the kind of girl you want going off alone.

  In the confusion of the moment, I jumped off the bus and hid behind a bush, waited for the driver to get back on and drive off. It felt like forever. I worried I would lose track of her. I had to make sure she got home okay or wherever she was going. Finally the driver got back on the bus and drove off.

  I ran up the street in her direction. I didn’t see her. I stopped at what I thought was her house. I didn’t think she would have gone back home. I didn’t know why I thought this but I was sure about it. I looked up at the trees thinking maybe she climbed up to the top. Not there, I ran up the street. She was fast, but I was faster. I caught sight of her rounding the bend of the sharp turn on our canyon road. Her sneakers were brand new, white, they glowed in the morning fog. I thought of yelling after her. I didn’t knowing if that would scare her more. I stopped running, slowing my pace to a quick walk, not wanting to step on anything that would make a noise. At the top of the street I saw her looking into the window of a house that appeared abandoned. Apparently not, she ran from the window and crossed the street to another house that looked vacant.

  She looked through the window, and I guess decided the house was empty. Around the back she ran to an overgrown ivy-covered gate and climbed over it with a speed and dexterity I could never hope for, the benefit of being a string of a girl. I waited until she had gone over and I couldn’t hear her footsteps anymore before following her. I climbed over as quietly as possible not wanting to drive her further away. I wondered what I would say when and if I ever caught up with her.

  I tiptoed down the tile-covered path to an open and unruly backyard overlooking the deep canyon. She sat in the center, her book bag and lunch spread out around her, staring off into the canyon, past the trees. Silent as she always was. I watched, for how long I don’t know. Eventually she lay down on the overgrown grass and took a nap. I walked over to her. She was asleep, her skin even more pale in the peace of slumber.

  I knew I had to leave. I had to go back home and make up a story about missing the bus and get a ride to school from my parents. I picked a flower, a dandelion, lay it next to her and walked home wondering why I had done this.

  …

  At school I approached her tormentors, the leader of them being Joni who I had known all my life. I had to make them leave her alone. I couldn’t appear as if I cared too much one way or another. It wasn’t a boy thing. I didn’t want them to know I watched her, how I followed her.

  “Hey Joni. Why don’t you leave that girl alone? She’s not even in our grade. She’s just a kid.”

  “Aren’t you the Peacemaker? She stares at me all the time. I think she’s in love with me. I don’t want her homo cooties on me.”

  “Yeah,” Her friend Liza said, “She’s gay.”

  I was only nine or ten but I already understood the gang mentality of the girls of the world. We boys were physical, we would knock each other down, showing each other who was the dominant one then it was over, friends again. All good as Zelda always liked to say.

  “Just leave her alone. It’s like stomping on a kitten.”

  “Does Danny have a crush? Too bad she likes girls.” said Joni

  “She has like special needs or something.” I felt bad for putting her down that way but you know I had to be a dude. “Just leave her alone.
”

  “All right Danny Goldberg savior of the retards. We’ll leave the little homo alone.”

  They did too. In fact everyone did. She was an untouchable. She would walk through our school and the kids would turn away. I didn’t know what was worse. On the bus she didn’t look out the window anymore, only down at the floor. When the bus would bump on the road I would exaggerate my movement and touch her hair in the confusion of the moment.

  …

  Spring came. She found a friend. A new girl named Carolina. If anything Carolina was even weirder than her. Although in the third grade at that point Carolina wore dresses every day. She was lanky like Zelda but two or three inches shorter. Mouthy Carolina was mouthy. Joni laid into her the first day, ignoring Zelda completely. Carolina yelled back with a dignity unseen in most kids. Zelda looked up watching the whole exchange wordlessly of course. I didn’t even know the sound of her voice, but I did see the first smile pass over her face.

  I couldn’t sit next to her anymore because she sat next to Carolina, but her head was firmly up. She looked around. Her eyes would meet mine sometimes but showed no awareness of having seen me before.

  Carolina had an older brother Serge. He was in my grade and heavy into baseball. Where Carolina was odd Serge was completely normal. I was a happy guy, friendly with everyone so I naturally buddied up to him, I would have done it anyway because that’s the kind of person I am but with him I did have an ulterior motive. Bringing the conversation around to his sister and her friend wasn’t easy, but I made it happen a few times.

  He didn’t have much to say about his sister or Zelda. Carolina was just his sister. He wanted to jump in and protect her from the legion of mean girls but thought she was doing fine on her own so he left it alone. He had actually spoken to the object of my unknowable curiosity, Zelda. He said she was sweet copying his sister all the time. She spoke clearly and could make eye contact. He said she was just shy.

  She would eat dinner at their house on most Sunday nights. I casually tried to get myself invited. Serge didn’t take the hint. He was active in our little world but his home was off-limits.

  Zelda was safe with Carolina and I was busy with Sunday school and three different sports. So I thought about her but much less. I tried to write her off as the neighborhood curiosity uncomfortable in the idea of all my spying. I figured everyone had someone they kept an eye on. People were curious, you know?

  I had a normal life, vacations with my family, Basketball in the courtyard with my older brother Brian. The only thing outside of my all American life, as Zelda always called it, had been my fascination with her. It could have been anything, I would tell myself, I could have gotten a telescope and watched the stars as a hobby, like my buddy Serge. I could have worn yellow socks every day. Everybody even the most conventional of us have something that puts us apart from others. She was my Pokemon I guess. My one bow to uniqueness. It wasn’t something I shared with anyone.

  …

  About a year later I was out for a run. I had started playing Lacrosse, which would eventually become my one sport. You have to build endurance for that. I would wear a heavy backpack and race the mile up the canyon with the stick held high above my head.

  I saw Zelda and Carolina in the garden of a ramshackle house on our street. The older couple who lived there were usually outside, stooped over their garden wearing matching khaki shorts tending their roses, but they weren’t outside that day.

  The two of them were in the yard pulling the roses out, putting them in their hair, the thorns cutting their fingers. They wiped the blood on their faces like war paint, laughing and laughing. I knew if the older couple came out and saw them they would be in big trouble. I didn’t know what to do. They were in a world of their own not seeing the destruction they were causing to the elderly people’s garden.

  I ran by making as much noise as possible to pull them out of their dream world. Zelda didn’t notice but Carolina looked up and waved to me bringing her out of the haze. Her waving caused Zelda to pop out of it too. Awake they walked back down the street to one of their homes I assumed. My work was done for the day.

  …

  The other girls lived in their casual school clothes, even Zelda though she seemed a little shinier than the others. They all wore denim jackets but Zelda’s would have a heart of rhinestones on the pocket, that kind of thing. Other than that jacket I don’t think she ever wore the same thing twice. But Carolina was stuck in the dresses the younger girls wore. I asked Serge about it once. He said his parents preferred it that way whatever that meant. They were from the East Coast, maybe it was New York thing.

  Joni still ignored Zelda but laid into Carolina about her dresses. It was bad. I hadn’t been paying much attention to her because she seemed safe with her new friend but this one argument was loud. The bus quieted down with all of us trying to eavesdrop, but the noise of the diesel engine drowned out the words.

  All I really knew is that the next day Zelda went back to her dresses. It was the only sign of her ever having a thought or an opinion of her own that I observed. I was proud of the feral kid. I had missed her bumpy knees. I wouldn’t see her in jeans again until I put them on her.

  A day that always stayed with me was when I was running up the street with the Lacrosse stick high above my head. Zelda and Carolina were standing in the middle of the most dangerous part of the road, a blind curve. They wore matching red velvet dresses and devil horns on their heads they made out of craft paper. Chalk in hand they drew enormous demons in the middle of the street. I wanted to tell them to get out of the road but I also wanted to watch them. Zelda was speaking to Carolina. I had never heard her voice before, and I wouldn’t hear it that day but I watched her face change expression, and her laughter. Her eyes lit up.

  I hid behind a bush and watched, half hoping a car would come down the road so I could jump out and save her. I imagined her looking up at me, making eye contact and thanking me for saving her life. My fantasy didn’t go beyond that. I was ten or eleven what are you going to do?

  It was the middle of the day. Everyone in our canyon was already at work or not going anywhere. A car never came. I watched her do a dance with Carolina with the completion of their project. She hopped up and down swinging her long hair. I saw what she would look like when she was older. I had a sense of who she would be as a person. It was a flash and I could never put into words. I realized for the first time she was beautiful.

  …

  The next year she switched schools, which was a relief in a way. I had other things to think about. The girls started to get crushes on us boys. We didn’t know what to do with it. They would write us notes and try to talk to us, invite us to parties. We just wanted to do our sports, ride our skateboards around. Some of us were into it, some of us not so much. I was pretty neutral on the whole thing. My best friend Brendan summed it up perfectly by saying girls were for nighttime.

  Joni’s best friend Liza took an obsessive interest in me. Following me around school. If I turned around sensing she was behind me she would giggle into her friends shoulders. There was nothing interesting about her. She was a follower, one of the more mindless girls. Doing whatever Joni said, and I always remembered how mean she was to my little Zelda.

  She was pretty though, maybe even prettier than Zelda if that were possible but in a common way, standard California girl. She dressed it too, the sheepskin boots and tight jeans. Zelda had the crazy deer eyes, something sexy, not that I thought that way at the time.

  I would hook-up with her at parties, more the high-fives from my friends than an interest in her. That was always a mistake for days after she would call me on the phone and not knowing what to do I would talk to her mentioning how busy I was with things. She never took the hint. It would get better and she would fade away then I hook up with her at a party again and it would start all over. I tried to find other girls to get her off my back but in the girl world she was a presence to be reckoned with. So they stayed away from me. Blah as Zelda would say.

  There was this nice girl Pamela who I took an interest in but Liza made her life miserable so I tried to leave her alone. That was a shame Pamela was on the track team. I could talk to her. She was boyish in a way. She could hang with my friends. Eventually she fell away sick of the drama Liza caused.