The Book of Sara: Mark II - The Lockers

Abigail walked Adam’s street in the year they numbered 1986. She was not enrolled. She was not a girl among girls. She appeared in a house of bells and fluorescent light called Hazelwood West, wearing the long black dress the surface would tolerate, barefoot as the rite requires. At a corner table sat five the school had already discarded. One of them was named Sara. This book is hers.

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1.  She was not on their roll. The building had no name for her. The table made one anyway.

2.  After the last bell the tribe lingered at the metal doors where Adam’s children keep their second skins. Jared found a joke. Tim found the echo of it. Lisa stood at the edge with the pad to her chest and drew the hallway as it actually was: too bright, too loud, a row of mouths that shut.

3.  Deanna noticed what the jokes were built to miss. Abigail’s eyes still on Sara. Sara folding smaller. The blade came up.

4.  “What’s your deal with Sara?” Arms crossed. The old country defending its only border. “You’re not trying to mess with her, are you?”

5.  Abigail did not rise to the blade. “Sara keeps a fire,” she said. Soft. Certain. “It is buried. It is hers. No house owns it.”

6.  Deanna’s mouth flattened. “A fire. What are you even talking about?”

7.  Abigail did not explain the altar to a hallway. She smiled the thin smile and left Deanna with the lockers and the unease. Lisa’s pencil took that too; the protector standing in a country that had just felt a second door open.

8.  At the back exit the jokes were still going. Sara had the hoodie drawn tight as a second skin. Abigail came to her anyway, voice low enough that the tribe could pretend they had not heard.

9.  “You don’t have to be afraid.”

10.  Sara flinched. Looked to Deanna. Looked away. “I don’t know what you mean.”

11.  “You do. The weight is yours. The shadows are yours. They are not a leash. You don't have to carry a farmed hour as if it were your name.”

12.  Sara’s throat closed. Her legs would not agree to run. “Why do you care?”

13.  Abigail’s hazel eyes held. “Because I’ve been there.”

14.  For a breath Sara looked back. Two houses recognized each other and didn’t yet have a rite for it. Then she broke, muttered a goodbye that was not a goodbye, and fled into the thinning afternoon.

15.  The tribe had barely seen it. Abigail turned into their noise as if no threshold had opened. Lisa had seen it. The pad already knew.

16.  In the parking lot Deanna caught Sara’s sleeve. Softer now. The blade put down, the hand left.

17.  “Hey. Are you okay?”

18.  “Yeah. I’m fine.”

19.  Deanna did not believe the fine. She did not press. “If she’s bothering you, just say the word. I’ve got your back.”

20.  “Thanks, Dee. Really.”

21.  Ordinary loyalty, offered in a parking lot. It was not small. It was not enough. Sara walked home with both truths in her: the watching frightened her, and it was the first time a gaze hadn’t been a fist.

22.  Under a streetlamp Abigail stood barefoot on Adam’s pavement and watched until the corner took her.

23.  The leaves moved. She gave the wind the only word the night required.

24.  “Soon.”

Lisa’s pad. The first sitting. The table is still only a table.

18.  Praise be to the sovereign flesh.

19.  Let the hunger go unfarmed.

End of Mark 1