Two Bows in My Hair

I wish I could listen to some music right now.  This boring lady is making me sick with this stuff.  I hate going to school and hate speaking to the kids around me.  They are mean.  It’s not my fault I get good grades.  It’s not my fault that I wear expensive pretty dresses.  It’s not my fault my father is a prince and I’m a princess.  It’s not my fault they are just regular people.  What do they want from me?  I deserve better than this.  Yet, my father wants me to be around regular people and make friends.  What was he thinking?

“Jennifer!”  I heard the strikes against the desk with alarm as she said my name.  “Pay attention.  I’m asking you a question.”

“Oh, sorry.  I was…” daydreaming, I wanted to say.  “Um, what was the question?”

“We were discussing time travel and how it’s important to keep a journal.  Do you keep a journal?  Does anyone who’s actually here wants to answer this question?”  Granted, she was annoyed, but what did she expect with this boring class.  She started pacing, as she waited for a response.

What a nag, I thought.  She’s really a big one.  But the class loves her.  We get to eat in class, pass notes around and leave a few minutes early.  All the things I didn’t want to do.  I didn’t have anyone to pass notes to and I was taught to eat at designated times, and not to snack.  Most importantly I was never in a rush to get out of class early.  I had no one to play with, so where was I going anyway?  To sit by myself in the yard and watch everyone else have fun?  It’s not like I can run around and get my dress dirty.  And there was no one that had any gossip for me.  They knew my father was a prince and the head of the military.  Speaking to me is like telling on their parents.  That’s why I hated this school so much, but daddy didn’t understand why I couldn’t get along with others.  He just didn’t get it.

“Much like what Jennifer likes to do most of all, dreams, we can use our minds to go back in time and examine events that had taken place.  Important events that led to what exist today.  But it’s not all about the past.  It’s the future too.  History tells us that there are a certain type of species that can time travel back into the past or even see the future.  A very rare species that many scientists will love to get a hold of and study.”  Mrs. Trapp need to shut hers!  No one cares of time travel and logging down important events in their lives for someone in the future to examine.  It’s stupid.

No one has ever proven time travel and how would anyone know about rare species, if the time travel is in their mind?  How crazy!

“Teacher, have you ever experience time travel to the past?  Have you used your mind to do so?”  Clarissa said.  She was super stupid.  She failed practically all her tests.  Tests are for leveling a student, Mrs. Trapp always says.  It’s for positioning people in life, because we all have different capabilities.  So then, why in the world can’t Clarissa be positioned somewhere else?  I don’t expect Mrs. Trapp to have an answer to that.  Instead she continues with her nonsense.

“No, but I do record my dreams.  Dreams tell the stories of events in your life that you may not readily see or explains something you may not understand.  It’s because your brain is always working.”  She smiled as she spoke, drawing in the other students into her made up story.  Sometimes I wonder if this was science class.  Was she a real scientist?  We were told we weren’t supposed to learn science, because it’s a bad thing.  But here she was talking science.

“Excuse me, Mrs. Trapp.  But are we studying science?  My father pays good money for schooling and…” I grinned.  I wanted her to squirm.

“Now, Jennifer, you know this is not science.  This is human development class.  It does involve a bit of science and medicine and philosophy.  I’m sure your father will understand what I’m teaching, because he had to learn it too.”  Mrs. Trapp snapped back, but I could care less.

Her dress looks completely worn.  She wears it all the time and I wish she would buy another dress.  At least one more.

It didn’t make sense to focus on them.  It’s the same thing every day and I was getting tired.  My daddy had bought me two silk bows that I couldn’t help but to wear today.  I’ve never seen not one girl in the entire school with silk bows.  Not one.  I can feel them looking at it every time I spoke and I know they wanted it.  I grinned to myself, while watching them watching me.  Mrs. Trapp continued trapping her mouth.

“As I was saying, there was a scientist who found out about this kind of man.  A species that’s quite different.  He was especially careful with the way he lived his life and people wondered how he was so lucky.  They called him Lucky Jim.  Well, one day he was found out.  A major disaster happened and destroyed many homes and many people died.  Jim had lived in the path of the disaster.  They were celebrating a holiday, but that day he refused to celebrate and instead ran for the hills.  The doctors, later found out he knew certain events were going to happen.  Soon after that, people would ask him what he knew, so much that he had to go into hiding.”  Mrs. Trapp was determined to fool the entire class.  What a story!

“But there’s no proof, right?”  I said, as I played with my bow.

“I bet you wish that your father knew that guy.”  It was the evil words of a withering soul, in the back of the room.  You see I was always trying to learn new words.  Withering soul.

“What does that mean?”  I turned around to ask her.  The entire class bellowed out with laughter.  She was so stupid just like the rest of the class.  What does my father have to do with any of this?  He’s never been injured, so what would he need someone to predict anything for him?

“Class, class.  Please.  That was a valid question.  We need to all be respectful of one another.  This is a class for learning and respecting each other.”  Mrs. Trapp said.  “Don’t fret Jennifer.  I won’t tolerate any of those remarks anymore.”

Don’t fret?  Why would I fret?

Kissing Her Head

My father had always been good to me.  Why would I fret?  I could remember him kissing the top of my head and singing to me.  He taught me and my aunties to sing.  Sharrie loved to sing.  She made us sing over granddaddy when he would yell at us for being bad.  It was us against him in the house and we always won, especially when daddy came home.

But there was something that I did remember, that now looking back at it, was kind of strange.  Granddaddy always spoke to us too much, but Sharrie never knew what we were talking about.  She was focused on what she was doing, knitting.  Always knitting and sewing.

Granddaddy used to make fun of her all the time and we would laugh, but she didn’t hear us.  I didn’t realize then.  She couldn’t hear what we were saying, because we weren’t speaking out loud.  She was different.  A different species of man, just like Mrs. Trapp said.  I didn’t realize that they were different.  That the people around me was different and couldn’t speak the way I did.  They were… or I was a different species of man.  My granddaddy had never lost a war during his time as king.  I remember all his stories of defeating his enemies.

I just used my mind to time travel back to when I was younger, speaking and learning from granddaddy!  Mrs. Trapp should be glad about that.  I learned to talk.  I learned to do many things with him, the way we are supposed to.  I didn’t need this stupid school.  I already know what I need to.  And anything I don’t know I can know from the other kinds of man.  They speak out loud in their head, which they call thinking.  They couldn’t hear me, but I can hear them.

Why didn’t I notice this before?  And why don’t they think to themselves?  Why did I hear some of them, but not all of them?  How many different species of man are there?  I’m tired of hearing them think!

Father used to be so funny at the dinner table, making fun of Sharrie’s cooking and making faces.  She couldn’t hear him and she never knew he was saying much more than making awful faces at her food.

“Okay, class make sure you do your homework.  No lateness, please.”  Mrs. Trapp said as we all got up to leave.  Shoot, I thought.  I was daydreaming again and missed what the homework was.

“Um, sorry but what was that?  What do we have to do?”  Should I even bother asking?  I wasn’t planning on coming back.

“Jennifer, really, you need to stop daydreaming in class.  I’m going to have to speak to your father.  I need you and the rest of the class to write about a controversial experience that you had and debate it with relevant philosophical arguments.”  Mrs. Trapp, just got stupider if she thinks I’m going to do that assignment.

“What?  What grade is this anyway?  Why do we have to do such heavy writing?  Why…”  I said, before she motioned me to the door and closing it behind me.  How rude!

I’m not interested in writing about any controversial experience and sharing it with the class.  They would just make fun of me.  Every day at the school was a controversial experience.  What did she want me to write about?  How mean the other students were?  How I hated my school and wished I was somewhere else.  I’ve just learned I didn’t need to be at school.  Why should I do any more assignments?  I’m going to tell daddy that I’m not going back and that’s that.

The Queen in The Making

There in the distance I saw Meredith sitting alone.  I wanted to make friends with her, but never mustered the courage to.  But since this was going to be my last day, why not?

Here goes.  I’ll walk over to her and sit down like it’s nothing, just an everyday thing.  A few mere steps.  Great, she’s looking up and sees me.  I smiled at her, but before I reached she got up and left.  Crap!  I sat down in her place, instead.  I could pretend I just wanted the shade, but…”

“Hey, Jennifer.  Not a friend in the world.  Poor Jennifer.”  Diamond said while laughing with her group of friends.

“There’s nothing about me that’s poor, but you should know what it means.”  I said.  I wasn’t afraid of Diamond and her shadows.  She doesn’t mean a thing to me.  Look at her.  Look at how she dresses, stained clothes with worn out, faded colors.  She should be ashamed of herself.  Pitiful.

“I’m not poor!  And you need to worry.  Look at you!  Look at your head!  You need to wear a hat and cover that head of yours.  It looks like it’s rotting out!”  Diamond fired back.

“My head isn’t rotten.  I have more brains than you.”  I said, but they only screamed with laughter.  “I have better clothes than you!  Do you know how much this is worth?  I can buy you all.  That’s how much money I have.”  There’s no way that Diamond was going to have the last say.

“Who cares!”  Diamond interrupted.  “You look like a monster.  You freak!  You can’t cover yourself up with expensive clothes.  You’re still a freak.”  The shadows began chanting freak, freak, freak.

I was furious and had lost words to speak.  I felt the tears coming.  It was the last thing I wanted them to see.  I hate them.  I could feel my body tensing up and turning hot.  I wanted to kill them. I wanted them to stop, to not exist.  Just disappear.  The tears came anyway and they continued laughing even harder.  Tears were flowing too much, that I didn’t realize that they weren’t laughing.  They were choking.  They couldn’t breathe.  I think?

Before I knew it, my father had come to pick me up from school and I was walking out of the school yard with him.  Never to return.  The kids were staring at me.  Scared.  They saw my daddy for the first time and they knew I was telling the truth.  He was a prince and the head of the military.  He was all suited up.

“Daddy, I didn’t do anything wrong.  They were teasing me.”  I pleaded my innocence in the car.  I truly didn’t understand what happened, but I felt something was terribly wrong; something bad happened.

“Don’t worry honey.  You’re going to another school somewhere where the children are like you.  You don’t have to deal with them anymore.”  Daddy said as he drove the rest of the way home in silence.  He was always comforting.

I saw granddaddy at the door grinning.  “Girl!  What are you doing home so early?”

I grinned, “I don’t know.  Daddy say he’s putting me in another school.  One like the kids are like me or something.”  For the life of me, I couldn’t remember what exactly he said and trying to repeat it was difficult.

I ran inside the house and saw June knitting with Sharrie.

“Chocolate chip cookies?”  I asked.  Sharrie didn’t look up but shook her head yes.  I went to the kitchen and caught daddy and granddaddy speaking outside in the back.  I stood away from the window listening.

“I told you she don’t belong in those schools.  She has to be taught at home.  Sending her to another one just doesn’t make sense.  You’re doing this all wrong.”  Granddaddy said.

“It’s not wrong to want her to have a normal life and friends.”  Daddy said.

“She ain’t normal, Jacob.  She’s different.  Her mother Christina is different.  For goodness sake Christina is a walking corpse, she’s dying!  And Silas!  He’s a monster.  Who knows what he is.”  Granddaddy was furious.

“It don’t matter.  She’s going to school and she’ll have friends.”  Daddy insisted.

“She’s going to kill them too.  You’ll see.  How many people do you want her to kill, while she is trying to be normal?  She ain’t normal and she will never be normal.  She’s special.  And one day she’ll sit beside you as queen if you don’t hurry up and get married.  Our blood line has to sit.  When her time comes she will rule and you will rule both lands that we will acquire.”  Granddaddy said.

“You’re talking about military.  While I’m talking about my daughter.  It’s not about ruling lands.  This is about my daughter.”  Daddy said.

“It’s always about the land Jacob.  The land is yours and your daughters, Jennifer.  She needs to be trained properly to rule as she is destined to.”  Granddaddy left the conversation.

I shoved the last chocolate chip cookie in my mouth before sneaking into the bathroom.  I could hear their footsteps coming into the kitchen.  Daddy was still talking about sending me to a private school for gifted children.  I flushed the toilet and walked out as if I didn’t hear a thing.  Granddaddy grinned as I walked past them into the living room where June was knitting with Sharrie.