Chapter 22 2004
The bus dropped me at Gaines a little after three. Beaming and famished, I walked down the sidewalk, trying to decide if I wanted to go to the phone room to call Profe or to the kitchen to share the news with the cooks.
My stomach grumbled, weighing in on the decision, and I walked around the main building to go to the back kitchen door. It was chilly but nice. The sky was crystalline blue and the ground dusted with the season’s first snow, which had fallen notably late that year.
I was nearly to the steps when Bart leaped out from behind the trash dumpster and grabbed my arm.
I yelped, but it was a Saturday in the dead of winter, and no one was around. On the weekends, half the kids and most of the staff went home. And those who remained typically spent their time in the rec room or gym.
I struggled against him, but he was so much bigger than me it was hopeless.
He drag-carried me across the parking lot toward the groundskeeper shed, and I was sure, if he got me inside, it would be the end of me.
When he reached for the handle, I twisted my body, contorting it sideways and craning my neck so I could sink my teeth into the sliver of exposed skin between his glove and coat.
He yelped, and his grip loosened enough for me to wrench my arm free.
I ran with everything I had into the trees.
His footsteps and curses followed. The cold air splintered my lungs, and my heart felt like it was going to explode.
I ran until I couldn’t get a breath and I was so deep in the woods I’d reached the brick wall that surrounded the school.
I spun around and looked back, eyes darting around the spindly trunks, waiting for him to appear. When after several minutes, there was still no sign of him, I sank to the ground and started to cry. The wet ground seeped through the knees of my warm-up suit, so I shifted to squat on my haunches.
I had no idea what to do next. I couldn’t go back the way I came in case he was waiting, and I couldn’t stay where I was in case he was coming.
A rustle on my left startled me, and my head snapped sideways to see a gray rabbit foraging in the pine needles and snow.
It lifted its head, and its dark marble eye looked at me.
“Hello,” I managed.
Seemingly unconcerned I was there, he went back to his nibbling.
It was then that I noticed his right ear.
An inch-deep wedge was carved out of it as if something sharp had sliced it a long time before.
It was obvious he was an old rabbit, his fur mottled and matted in places, and looking at him made me think of the great chief.
Which was perhaps why, when he hopped toward the wall, I followed.
Staying in my crouch, I crept after him. He disappeared behind a tangle of bushes, and I waited for him to come out the other side, but he didn’t.
“Nick?” I said, deciding on the name as I said it, the divot in his ear making the name obvious.
I inched closer to discover the bushes concealed a hole in the wall.
A couple dozen bricks had been chiseled from the base to form a jagged opening large enough for a person to crawl through.
I thought of the enormous effort it must have taken and wondered about the person who made it, wondering if, when they decided to go to all that trouble, they’d been as desperate as I was to escape.
I glanced back one more time in the direction of the school to be sure I was alone, then pushed aside the bramble and wriggled my way through.
“Whoa,” I said when I emerged on the other side, feeling like Lucy from The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.
Where on the school’s side of the wall there was nothing but spindly trees, on the other side was a glinting frozen lake surrounded by rolling hills of snow.
It was sparkling and untouched, the only sign of civilization the distant silhouette of the town beyond the far bank.
Around me, Nick and a dozen other rabbits nibbled at sparse reeds that stuck up through the snow.
Nick looked up, and his wise eye held mine.
“Adaa mudan,” I said. Thank you.