Lucinda- Chapter 1

Chapter 1

“Hey, Lucinda, nice fall,” Heather Livingston called out, followed by a chorus of laughter from her friends. Heather was rubbing in the fact that Lucinda tripped over a pink dodge ball that she had not seen, and fell down on her face. Heather was leaning on a row of small blue gym lockers. She smugly flicked her blond hair behind her right shoulder.
Lucinda turned away to look at her locker. She refused to let Heather see her blush. She didn’t want to give Heather any more ammunition to blast her with than she already had. Heather always made fun of her after gym. Gym class was the last class of the day, and Heather spent the whole school day getting ready to torment Lucinda for a couple of minutes.
Heather opened her locker, and put on her slinky clothes. Lucinda ignored what Heather was saying about her; she had heard it all far too many times. She didn’t look at Heather as she made her way to the closet that held the students’ backpacks during gym class, either. Lucinda could smell the perfume that Heather would spray into the air and walk through while the scent was still fresh. Lucinda coughed at the repugnant, strong smell of the perfume, penetrating her nostrils and suffocating her lungs.
After putting on her short shorts and midriff shirt, Heather left the girls’ locker room, doing most of the walking with her hips. Her mob of friends followed her through the front door that led to the gym. The last friend out was Heather’s best friend, Alice. Alice looked at Lucinda, and her eyes narrowed, but at the same time softened. She studied Lucinda for a while, until Lucinda locked eyes with her and read Alice’s mind. She wondered how Lucinda was, and quietly left the room. When Alice left, the soft got to Lucinda. The awful smell of perfume seemed to multiply and expand to fill the entire room. It smelled like the cosmetics part of a department store that Lucinda always avoided because its odor was so overpowering. Lucinda preferred a subtle smell, something earthly, like the smell of herbs or flowers.
She stayed in the locker room by herself, waiting to be dismissed by the blaring drone of the senior class president making the announcements. As always, the announcements that came on were about club meetings and football practice. Lucinda was not involved in school activities. Instead, as a junior, all she could think about was how long she had left of her high school career. She kept on telling herself that there was only one year left. In the end the principal come on and said, “Have a wonderful weekend, and remember! Friends don’t let friends drive drunk.” Lucinda grabbed her things and ran out of the girls’ locker room, through the back door, to avoid the looks of the entire Heather group in the Gym waiting for to come out.
Heather’s thoughts could still be heard in her mind. Heather. Ugh. Just the way her name sounded made Lucinda think of the hatred in Heather’s mind: the hatred that could last forever. Lucinda also had that hatred for Heather, which was going on for the length that Heather made Lucinda’s life a living hell, three years. Her hatred was not as strong as Heather’s, but she hated her just the same. In the first year, when they were freshmen, she feared Heather, but after three years her fear turned to hatred.
Since the first day of school, Heather noticed Lucinda in first period, and made fun of her because she always wore black clothing and left her pale face bare, without makeup. Lucinda’s long brown hair always covered most of her face; she had so much self-hatred that she never wanted to have anything to do with her face, body, or hair. Heather accused Lucinda of acting as though she was too good for the other people in their school to let them look upon her face, because Lucinda’s parents owned most of the town. Heather’s hatred for Lucinda’s parents was one of the only thoughts Lucinda could read from Heather. Those thoughts came on the first week of school, and after that week she could read nothing else. When Lucinda looked inside Heather’s mind, all she could find was that Heather had no real emotions, and her entire existence consisted of simply reasoning her actions and orchestrating small, juvenile plots against people like Lucinda.
Lucinda remembered one day while she was in the free gym class. If you were in that class, it meant you didn’t have to dress out for the period. Heather had her arm around her new boyfriend, who also had gym in the same period. Heather smiled coldly every time she looked at her new boyfriend, so Lucinda was curious and read Heather’s mind when she looked up at the boyfriend. Lucinda read her thought at the very moment that she looked at him, and read: “This boyfriend is starting to bore me. I should break up with this one tomorrow and go out with that cute friend of his.”
Heather was not like that at all –“ How could she ever be? What if she’s really controlling her thoughts and knows that I’m a mind reader? But if that’s true, then how could Heather know?” Lucinda thought. I will probably never be able to understand people like her.
Heather’s frigidity still clung to Lucinda’s psyche eerily, when she ran out of the girls’ locker room door of Wakulla High School. Luckily, the locker room was right next to the student parking lot. Driving home, Lucinda found herself crying, until she pulled into her own driveway. She walked shakily up her front sidewalk, with a stuffed up nose, heaving gasping breaths out of her lungs. She took out her house key, but decided against going inside the house. The peace of the backyard would be better for her spirits than the quiet, lonely, depressing house.
While she sat down underneath the tall, old oak tree in the backyard, she heard a quiet sound from the back door. Her cat! Hecate hadn’t had lunch yet that day.
“ Someday I might even starve that cat to death,” she thought. She played with the idea that she would just forget her.” Impossible,” she thought,” She would never let me forget her.”
She pulled the key out of her pocket again. This time she selected the back door key and unlocked it. Her long, brown hair fell across her face, as she jammed the key in the lock. Lucinda reached out, and tucked it behind her ear again in hopes that it would stay there. She turned the key, and heard the click of the door being unlocked. Hecate was on the table next to the back door waiting for Lucinda. She meowed when she saw Lucinda.
"Hecate, I’m sorry that I forgot about you, but you know how high schoolers are. Their heads aren’t on straight, and all they care about is what’s in style and if their dream college will accept them. Their thoughts make my brain not work properly,” Lucinda said bitterly. While getting the cat’s food ready, she spotted a note from her parents. She sighed heavily, saying to herself, “Let me guess. There was an emergency at the office and they won’t be back till late.” She put Hecate’s filled bowl down, and sat down to read the note.
Dear Lucinda,
We are so sorry for not being home. We are at an unexpected meeting about why our mall is losing money, and if there is some way to fix the problem. Please, don’t be so hard on us. Don’t stay up waiting for us, because we’ll be home at midnight or later.
We might not see you until it is too late, or we might forget to tell you, so we are informing you now. We are so afraid of you being completely alone that we are getting a housekeeper. Not to replace Maggie, though. No one could. We know that you are too old for a sitter, but you are so locked up in your own world that you need to open up to someone. She will be starting in a week. Get used to the idea. You have no say in this matter.
Love,
Mom and Dad

“Well, Hecate, it looks like its just going to be you and me tonight.” As soon as those words passed her lips, the phone rang shrilly. Wondering who it was, she her guard up for any phone prankster or a salesperson.
Her hand shook as she picked up the phone. She cleared her throat and said, “Hello.”
“Hi. So how is my best friend doing without her best friend, in other words me, there to help her through the school days? Did Heather threaten to burn you at the stake again?” asked the happy female voice.
Lucinda let out a sigh of relief. It was her best and only friend, Jennifer Lewis, on the phone. She was delighted to hear Jennifer’s voice again. This semester they didn’t have any classes together. So they talked on the phone, before school, and during lunch, and hung out at each other’s houses on weekends and holidays. She helped Lucinda forget about Heather making her life a living hell, at least for a little while.
“Oh, nothing unusual, Heather being her usual bitchy self, and her friends thinking she’s perfect. How’s your cold?”
“I think it’s dying. I can finally get out of bed with feeling like I’m going to fall over.”
“Poor you. Oh, listen to this. There’s a note from my parents saying they’ve hired a babysitter for me. She starts next week,” Lucinda said angrily.
“A babysitter?”
“Well, a housekeeper.”
“Then what’s Maggie?”
“The maid, I guess.”
“So you are going to have two servants? Don’t expect me to feel sorry for you. I’d love to have my pillow fluffed and no house chores to worry about.”
Lucinda ignored that and continued, “I don’t know. They wrote something about me being stuck in my own world. I have a feeling that the person they’re hiring will interfere in my private life.”
“That makes sense, but how did they know about your own world that you sometimes retreat to? I mean, since when do they know that something is wrong with you? After all, they’re never there when you’re in your own world.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Lucinda could not believe what she was hearing. “Do you actually agree with them?”
“It’s not that,” Jennifer said wearily. “It’s just that you have been acting weird lately. Listen, I can here my mom calling.”
“Will you be in school tomorrow?”
“I dunno. I gotta go. Bye.”
When Jennifer hung up Lucinda just sat there and stared at the phone. Jennifer never called her weird before, and she had never agreed with Lucinda’s parents before. Now that Lucinda thought about it, Jennifer was growing more distant every week. Lucinda hadn’t even heard from Jennifer for a week.
Maybe Heather is turning my best friend into one of her many friends. Does Heather actually have the power to do that? Lucinda wondered, “How could Heather influence people to abandon their best friends for someone that they cannot stand to even hear their name?” Jennifer is the only person I know that has ever called Heather a bitch to her face.
Man, I’m getting paranoid.
Lucinda put down the phone. She started up the stairs with thoughts of quitting Wakulla High and getting home schooled. She daydreamed with the idea that she would never hear taunts thrown at her again. But she knew that that it was impossible. Her parents would never let her. They would say, “You have to have friends and that is what school gives you that which home school cannot.” Even her grandmother, who usually could be counted on, came in on their side.
She glanced at her wrists, as she neared her bedroom. She pictured giving herself a long wide slit over her wrists drawing blood through her flesh. She pictured the blood leaving her body through the slit in her blue vein. Lucinda dismissed that image from her mind.
I am not going to give anyone that satisfaction, but what am I thinking? Like someone would actually have satisfaction in seeing me dead. Not even Heather could find that satisfying. I am letting Heather get to me. I should try to forget about her tonight.
She passed her bedroom. She was still walking down the second story hall when she heard Maggie call out to her, “Oh, you’re back from school. I thought that I heard you talking on the phone. Why, dear, you look awful.”
Lucinda looked at the small woman with a soft, light, and happy features and voice. Maggie’s hair was starting to gray and Lucinda could tell that age was showing on faster then it should. But Maggie had worked her whole life to make a living.
Maggie looked down at her with concern on her face. Lucinda ran to the maid.
She always felt closer to Maggie then her own mother. And it was no wonder. They had been together for a much bigger chunk of time than Lucinda had ever spent with her mother and father combined. Of course she never spent that much time with her parents separately after childhood.
Lucinda knew that her parents were bust business people. She knew that they loved her, even if they did not say it all the time. When she little her father would leave early to go to work while her mother would watch Mr. Rogers with Lucinda in the morning. At night her father would come home early to watch a kiddy movie with Lucinda. Now that her parents were sure that Lucinda could handle herself they left her alone with Maggie for most of the day.
She held her tears in and said, “Maggie I’ve had another awful day. Heather made fun of me like usual. And when I came home my parents write that you are being replaced.” She did not want to talk about Jennifer. She was already started to feel disgusted with herself for crying so much in one day.
Maggie looked in her eyes and started laughing. “My dear, I am not being replaced. You see your parents are going to pay someone to look after you at night. They are hiring a housekeeper not a maid. Actually she will be sort of a nanny for you. I was never paid to be your nanny; I just acted like one. Now, dear, since you had an awful day maybe you should take a nap. When you wake up dinner will be ready for you.” Maggie led Lucinda down the stairs to her bedroom door.
When Lucinda went inside her room she let out a sigh of relief. Another day gone by, she thought. Maybe Maggie is right, everything will be all right with this new whoever-she-is situation. Who knows, maybe I will become friends with this person. I should take a nap after I finish my homework.
She reached inside her backpack to pull out her folder. With it came a lunchbag, the flexible cloth one. Lucinda had never seen it before. By the weight of it the bag wasn’t empty. She opened the top and looked in. She couldn’t make out what it was and dumped the contents on her bedroom floor. Surrounded in layers of plastic wrap was a human hand. Lucinda clamped her hand over her mouth. A decaying smell filled the room and the sickening smell seemed to enter into her head.