Zara

MARCUS HAMILTON

This book is for BreeMonks, my favourite person, best friend, and someone who will appreciate the blood and guts within ... as in within the book, but also within people, especially when they come out after that person has been peeled with a potato peeler.

Happy Birthday, BreeMonks. You are the best by so far it is hard to even see you up there.

Zara

First published in the year of the Cute Widdle Puppy Wuppy, 2019

by

Krueger Wallace Press

Email: [email protected] or visit

www.kruegerwallacepress.weebly.com or visit

Cactus Country. It’s the best thing ever!

All rights reserved. No part of this printed publication may be pricked by a cactus plant, reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electrical, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the publisher and copyright owner, Krueger Wallace Press.

This eBook edition published through Ingram Spark

Designer/Typesetter: Marcus Hamilton

ISBN: 978-0-6482312-6-4

Edited by Tex Calahoon

Text and Creepy Bits copyright Marcus Hamilton 2019

Cataloguing-in-Publication entry is available

From The National Library of Australia

http://catalogue.nla.gov.au

Do not use this book as a Halloween mask.

This book is not a business card or a playing card.

Day 1

I’d never known anyone like her. None of us had. She arrived like the afternoon wind on a Summer day, cooling the heat that had held us captive. She touched us so gently at the start that we didn’t even realise it was happening, and then, by the end, she was a presence none of us could ignore, a gale force, a whirlwind, tearing through us like we were paper.

She changed everything.

She changed everyone.

She changed me.

That first day, when she started at school, it was no different to any other new kid starting at any other new school.

At first.

She seemed shy, standing up the front as Mrs Brewer, our principal, introduced her to the class. Her name was Zara, transferring from another school, interstate, far away, another world.

Zara looked down as the information and requests of us continued, her shoulder-length hair falling forward over her face, and then, as the introduction finished, she looked up and smiled, and we all sucked in a breath. It was as though the air changed, the world changed.

Her eyes locked on us, round, innocent, somewhere between blue and grey, somewhere between nervousness and laughter. She captured us in that smile as though she was spreading joy through each and every one of us, and then, as suddenly as it had started, it disappeared, and she went to the seat that was waiting for her.

I can still see it now, even after everything.

The seat was two across and one down from me, far enough away that I couldn’t make out every detail like I wanted to, close enough so that when she turned to sit, her scent reached me, a perfume that smelt like pastel blues and greys.

They would become the colours I associated with her, always, the colours that always remind me of her.

Mrs Brewer left, her duties carried out, Mr Gallagher started teaching, and everything snapped back to normal, in a heartbeat.

She touched us so gently at the start that we didn’t realise it was even happening.

By the end, she was a presence none of us could ignore, a gale force, a whirlwind, tearing through us like we were paper.

She changed everything.

She changed everyone.

She changed me.

And things would never return to how they had been before.

Day 3

On day 3, people noticed the breeze. They noticed its touch, gentle and sweet. They noticed the pastel blues and greys, the swirl of the black scarf around her neck, despite the warmth of the day. They noticed the smile. They noticed the strand of hair that crossed her forehead.

They noticed everything.

Because it was impossible not to.

She moved like liquid, flowing around the room, swirling to her chair, settling, gentle waves, ripples, a perfectly still lake.

When Mr Osborne asked for an answer to a calculus question, her hand went up immediately. Her response, which was correct, brought forth ripples and murmurs, breaking the surface tension. Zara looked around, smiling, not looking for acceptance or acknowledgment, just smiling at everyone, letting them know they were in her world.

Not everyone.

Almost everyone.

Pastel blue and grey with every turn.

Not everyone smiled back.

She was different.

Not restrained.

Not in her box.

The ripples eased and came to rest.

Mr Osborne moved on.

As he wrote on the whiteboard, she turned to the one person she’d missed on her smiling lap of the room, and she flashed, for an instant, a smile that rocked the world.

A smile to the one person she’d missed.

A smile to me.

Her eyebrow raised slightly, a tiny movement, enough for me to notice, then it dropped again, and she turned back to look at Mr Osborne, concentrating, learning, absorbing.

I realised later that was what she did. She absorbed. She absorbed everything, and that, in the end, was the reason things went the way they did.

It was what made her who she was, and it was what broke her.

Day 7

It was only day 7.

The cracks hadn’t even started to appear, in her or in our world.

Nothing was broken.

The breeze was still gentle, twisting and turning to her chair, not bothering anyone else, but becoming a part of their day.

Part of the routine.

Except she was anything but routine.

She wore clothes that weren’t quite in style, in time, but weren’t right out there either, and although her outfit changed, she wore the same scarf every day, her neck always covered. I pictured that neck, in my mind, over and over, every time slightly different from the time before, every time the perfect neck.

Other people started to talk about it, wondering why she wore it, and they made up stories.

I heard some of them, the stories, but I ignored them. I couldn’t have cared less why she wore the scarf, why it was there, what the meaning was, if any.

She wore the scarf.

That was enough for me.

I only cared that she was there, and that each day, when she flowed into the room, I was already seated, so she had to look at me as she went to her chair.

I didn’t even know this girl!

The only time I had heard her speak was when she answered questions in class. She hadn’t yet made friends, and sat on her own at lunchtime. I watched her when I wasn’t playing cards or going outside.

Or even when I was.

She would sit, on her own, and she would read.

A new book each day.

At the end of lunch, she would get up and leave, and the book would be there, waiting for someone to take it.

At first, no one did.

I didn’t even know if she had finished it when she left.

I wanted to know.

I was even starting to want to know about the scarf.

I wanted to know everything.

I was fascinated by her.

She was a mystery, seeping into my consciousness, but she was smoke, wind, mist, there was nothing I could grab on to.

‘You should speak to her.’

I’d said it to myself, a thousand times already, and now Glenn was saying it as well.

‘You watch her every lunchtime, stalker. What, do you feel sorry for her?’

I shook my head, and it was true. I didn’t feel sorry for her at all, in fact I felt jealous of her. She would sit, alone, reading, and her face told me, told everyone, if they looked, the story.

It showed what she was reading.

It dug deep into the souls of the characters and brought them to life with a movement of her eyebrows or a twitch of her mouth into that crooked smile.

Or she would laugh out loud.

She would actually laugh out loud.

At a book!

Of all things!

I didn’t know how she did it but I wanted to be in it, to be drawn into a world like that, to be able to feel the words as they seeped into my mind.

I didn’t feel words like that.

‘I’m not going to speak to her. Not yet. Maybe in class, if she needs help.’

Glenn laughed.

‘Have you heard her in there? I don’t think she needs any help. And like you would talk in class anyway.’

I smiled.

It was true.

I didn’t know what school she’d come from, but she knew things I had never even heard about.

‘I’ll speak to her one day,’ I said. ‘Now come on, deal.’

Glenn laughed and we returned to our card game, others joining us as lunch went on. I didn’t look at her again, not directly, but I stole a glance with a card dropped to the ground, when I took my lunch wrapper to the bin.

I stole a glance and went back to my game a different person.

Lighter somehow.

The bell went and I headed to class.

We had electives.

She closed her book with a sigh, rested it on the seat with a gentle stroke, and got up, walking to her class, different to mine, but our paths had to cross. Glenn gave me a tiny shove, a little increase in pace, subtle, but enough to ensure I would reach the same point as her at the same time.

I waved my hand behind me, waving him off, but still I walked at the pace I needed to.

Our paths crossed.

We both stopped, waiting for the other one to go, both being the polite one.

‘It seems,’ she said, crooked smile, ‘that we are at an impasse.’

I nodded. I wouldn’t have even known what impasse meant if I hadn’t watched movies. No one spoke like that in real life.

But she wasn’t real life.

This wasn’t real life.

This was here and now and nothing else mattered.

And it was only day 7.

Day 9

On day 9, I spoke to her. They were the first words I said to her, and I regretted them almost immediately.

It was at lunch, again, and we were playing cards, again, and I was watching her, again.

She had a different book, of course, but the others were still there, on the seat next to her.

People hadn’t started taking them yet.

She had on a different outfit, of course, was wearing a hat and, as always, the same black scarf curled around her neck, holding on like it needed her, like it couldn’t let go, even if she had wanted it to.

I needed to know.

I needed to see her neck, to be allowed into her world like no one else.

I went to the bin to throw out my lunch wrapper, and on my return she saw me watching her, and she smiled.

Not crooked smile, this was full smile.

Almost world-rocking caliber.

‘Impasse,’ she said, ‘is a wonderful word.’

I nodded again. Three million things to say raced through my head, and any one of them would have been better than the one I decided on.

The one that came blurting out.

‘Why do you wear that scarf every day? And why is it black?’

The smile disappeared.

The eyes closed slightly, as if looking into me.

As if upset with me.

And then the smile returned.

‘You noticed I’m wearing a scarf? Oh, happy day!’

And then she posed, stroking the scarf, her hands showcasing it for me, for everyone who was watching, and it felt like everyone was watching.

Three million things to say raced through my head, and any one of them would have been better than the one I decided on.

Because I said nothing at all.

She stood and leaned in close, her lips near my ear, her hair brushing my face, all my senses a swirl of pastel blues and greys, my soul screaming at me, You’re alive now!.

‘It’s charcoal,’ she whispered. ‘But black was a good guess.’

Then she moved away, laughing, reaching inside and grabbing all of me with a world-rocking smile.

I stared, searching my everything for something to respond with, but in the end I simply turned and walked away, heading to my locker, needing to get away, needing to understand what she was doing to me, why I was acting this way, why my brain was betraying me.

Why my body was betraying me.

Once, before Avril, I could speak to anyone.

Things had changed since then, but this was on a whole different level.

I didn’t speak as much.

Not anymore.

And definitely not her.

What was she doing to me?

As I opened my locker, turning the combination, I knew exactly what she was doing to me.

She was being herself.

And that was all she ever needed to do for me to be hers.

Day 10

The next day, I felt more confident.

‘Nice scarf,’ I said as I went by her, not mocking, gently teasing, and not stopping this time,