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Land of Thūn

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By WhittlerPublished 3 years ago 12 min read
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“Class, I would like you all to please welcome Miss Ninibeth March to Monroe High,” said Ms. Highchurch in 1st period. “Miss March, could you tell us a bit about yourself?”

Ninibeth stared at the sea of pale faces looking back at her. They wore expressions better suited to the sighting of some exotic animal, but in truth her expression for them was not much different: She had never seen such a large body of people who all looked more or less the same; who so utterly lacked any color or variation.

“Um.” She swallowed. “I’m Ninibeth March.”

“We know that already,” one student put in smugly, prompting a smattering of giggles. Ninibeth hurried on,

“I’m from Long Beach, California.” The students quieted, all of them picturing someplace bigger and more exciting than their own town. “M-my parents passed away,” she said around a huge, dry lump in her throat. “I moved here to live with my aunt while I finish school.”

Ninibeth had never felt nervous speaking in front people before. Now, however, she thought she was going to be sick. She’d had some vague idea of the things you’re supposed to mention in front of a new class - some of her talents and hobbies, and perhaps her favorite flavor of ice cream. But such trivia escaped her at the moment, and she couldn’t seem to recollect it.

An excruciating pause ensued, in which the other students were awkwardly subdued by the Newcomer’s bleak introduction and exotic background, and Ninibeth tried not to vomit. She rushed to the nearest empty seat and huddled there for the rest of the period, not meeting anyone’s eye.

The next day, Ninibeth closed her locker to discover a boy standing there.

“Hello,” said the boy pleasantly.

He was taking in her hazel eyes and shapely figure with open appreciation - a stupid, self-betraying look that Ninibeth had seen before. She stared at him and already felt exhausted, for she could tell a lot about him just by looking:

He was attractive and too confident in himself (or at least pretended to be), which meant that he was popular. If he was not promiscuous yet, he soon would be. He smiled easily, which meant he lied easily. Anyone paying attention could tell when he’s lying, she thought. But in ten years he’ll be so good at it he’ll even be fooling himself. He might never have any idea who he actually is…

The boy was clearing his throat.

“I’m Nate,” he said in this roguish way that was clearly intended to impress her. “I just wanted to welcome you to Monroe.”

“Thanks,” was Ninibeth’s short reply. She shouldered her backpack (also one of Uncle Nick’s relics) and turned in the direction of her next class. Nate went with her.

“I could show you around the school if you’d like,” he offered. Ninibeth shrugged.

“It’s a rectangle,” she said. “Can’t be that hard to navigate.”

“Alright,” was Nate’s easy reply, matched by an easy grin. “Well hey, there’s a soccer scrimmage after school today. We’re warming up for the regular season. I’d love to see you there.”

“Gee, thanks,” Ninibeth replied distractedly. She was busy looking into her next class, where her science teacher’s khaki pants halted a full six inches above his five finger shoes. She glanced at Nate one final time before turning in. “Maybe I will.”

Nate sauntered away with a pleased expression, looking doubly forward to his after-school activities. In his mind, “Maybe” meant “Definitely”.

Someone else had noticed the exchange, and disapproved strongly. Her name was Charlie Behr.

“Nate just doesn’t know what he wants,” she said confidently to a friend earlier that day. “I’m going to show him.”

What that meant, of course, was that she expected Nate to want her - the only reasonable desire he could have. They had indulged each other’s company before, but never with any sense of commitment. Now Charlie began to feel that, as with her other possessions, Nate’s companionship was not to be shared.

Charlie Behr was pretty enough, in a vapid, self-aware sort of way. Her looks, however, faded to obscurity in the presence of Ninibeth March. She’d had some sense of this the day before; the first time she saw the New Girl.

No matter: Charlie Behr was wealthy and well-established in the school. She knew everybody and had all of the necessary connections to exert influence where she willed. Ninibeth March was a Nobody.

These sentiments changed the next day, when Charlie observed Nate drooling over the exotic animal from California. She began to do what she always did when someone threatened her utopia.

First, she bemoaned Ninibeth’s existence in thinly veiled terms to her Besties.

“She’s so sulky,” Charlie observed, picking all of the bacon bits out of her salad. “And have you seen what she’s wearing? What are those glasses for - is she pretending to be Harry Potter? And those clothes - it’s like all she’s ever dreamed of is being a thrift store rack.”

The other girls snorted into a spasm of giggles.

“To be fair,” put in her friend Bella, “her parents did just die.”

“That’s no excuse for deliberately offending the senses,” Charlie retorted. “I’m sure they’d be turning in their graves if they knew what she had on. She might as well accuse them of neglecting her all her life!”

Never mind that Ninibeth did not attend Nate’s scrimmage, or any of his subsequent events either. The less interested Ninibeth appeared to be, the more fixated Nate became, and Charlie Behr’s need to destroy her grew.

Charlie refused to actually get close to Ninibeth. They didn’t share any classes - only a Lunch period, in which Charlie would not be seen conversing with the New Girl. For a while, then, she could only observe Ninibeth from afar; and therefore only attack Ninibeth with the information she gleaned from a distance.

This did not prove much of a difficulty. Within a week, she had her fodder: the New Girl was wearing the same clothes every. single. day.

On the following Monday - just one week into the new school year - the school campus was littered in every direction with flyers, reading as follows:

Ninibeth March needs your help. Please leave unwanted clothes at the Admissions Office. Anything you can give is appreciated.’

Underneath which ran a series of five pictures of Ninibeth, taken without her knowledge, in the same outfit. Each picture was captioned, respectively, with the successive days of the week.

“Who did this!?” Principal Gorsuch fumed as she and the other faculty went about snatching up flyers amidst the giggles and sneers of the students. “Someone will be held accountable for this!”

Despite launching an investigation - which led nowhere, because everyone still wanted to be invited to Charlie Behr’s Halloween party and see her dressed up as a sexy panda; wearing a baby tee that read, ‘Save the Planet’ - by Friday the Admissions Office (and the floor in front of Ninibeth’s locker) was inundated with piles of old clothes - some amounting to little more than holey rags - as well as completely irrelevant items such as aprons, gardening gloves and incontinence pads.

“Have all of this sent to the nearest homeless shelter,” said the principal to the school secretary in exasperation. “And then call all of the students to the auditorium. This needs to stop.”

Nate finally left off hounding Ninibeth. In fact he seemed to forget her entirely.

“I’m not going back there,” said Ninibeth flatly over Great Aunt Nora’s milk and cookies. She had just finished recounting the dispiriting details of her first two weeks at Monroe High, and very much wanted to cry but couldn’t. In fact she hadn’t been able to cry at all, ever since the terrible news of her parents.

“Children are so cruel,” Aunt Nora mused, two weeks after extolling the virtues of her town’s adolescent population. “And to someone who’s just been through a terrible loss. Who did this?”

Ninibeth shrugged miserably, not really tasting the coconut macaroon in her mouth.

“I dunno. Does it even matter?”

She didn’t have the energy to go to war with someone anonymous over something she knew nothing about. The worst thing about it, in her opinion, was how stupidly childish her peers could be. She didn’t care at all what anyone thought of her wearing the same clothes over and over. She couldn’t understand why anyone else cared, either.

Charlie Behr didn’t really care about Ninibeth’s wardrobe choices. She cared about Nate giving Ninibeth attention. Of course Ninibeth, never having spoken to Charlie (or hardly anyone at the school) had no way of knowing that.

“I’m not going back,” Ninibeth repeated.

“Oh my dear - you have to,” said Aunt Nora gently.

Ninibeth glared at the heavens.

“You can’t quit. Never let the ignorance and cruelty of others make you quit yourself. You go to school for your own education and betterment. Why should their utter stupidity get in the way of that?”

Great Aunt Nora - who Ninibeth had by now taken to calling ‘Gan’ for efficiency’s sake - looked her niece up and down. “But of course, something must be done about all this. Those kids will keep pressing you until they’re given a reason to stop.” She thought for a moment, while her nimble fingers uttered their summoning chant over the current doily.

“Truly,” she mused, “ - is that all you’ve brought with you from California?” She pointed, and Ninibeth looked down at herself.

“Mostly,” said Ninibeth regretfully. “I was… It was hard to focus on packing.”

Gan made sympathetic noises. “At the very least, then, I could give you some money to get some more clothes for yourself.”

“That’s not the point!” Ninibeth cried indignantly. “I shower and I wash my clothes - there’s nothing wrong with wearing the same thing! Millions of people all over the world do it!”

“I don’t know about millions,” Aunt Nora murmured absently. Her own world wasn’t very large. She frowned at a wayward stitch in her handiwork.

“If I suddenly go to school wearing new clothes, they win. I refuse to give them that satisfaction,” said Ninibeth wrathfully.

“So you’re going to let them box you in like that, eh?”

“I just don’t care. I really don’t!” Ninibeth cried. “Why can’t everyone leave me alone?” Still there were no tears, but certainly the despondent fury which normally would have produced them. Gan set down her doily with a sigh, and looked sympathetically at her niece.

Then Gan did what she always did when she wasn’t sure what to do: She started rambling.

At first it seemed relevant to the matter at hand, but the more words she said, the further away it got until neither of them had any idea what she meant to say. To make matters worse, Aunt Nora didn’t have much use for sentences - almost every sentence wound its way through a tortuous maze of commas, hyphens, quotations and parenthesis before succumbing to a period.

“Children can be very mean,” she reiterated.

“I knew a girl who was mean that way - liked to poke and prod at people and make them as small as she could. Her name was Priscilla Ramble. And back in my childhood, we’d bring apples and lemons to the teacher, and Priscilla would always steal mine before we got to school - so she’d have two fruits and I’d have none, and the other children would tease me and call me poor - my but she was a pushy, most aggressive girl, too! So much bigger than me, and her resting face was squinty; in fact I think that’s why she picked on me - well because she could, first of all, but also because she was fat, and I wasn’t, and I was pretty, and she wasn’t, and all the boys liked me - that’s just a fact (although I was very quiet and I think that threw them off a bit; made some of them unsure of how to approach me), but anyways, you know, Nini, how much you look like me; you’ve seen the pictures of me as a girl” (Have I? Ninibeth thought with absolutely zero recollection) “so you ought to know I’m not just being fond when I tell you how very pretty you are - even prettier, in fact, what with having Ethiopian blood, why your skin’s such a gorgeous, dark-honey color! And those eyes - quite unique, in fact I’m absolutely sure these children are picking on you out of plain jealousy, that must be it” (Right, because that’s the only important thing, Ninibeth thought drily. They’re calling me names and donating clothes and nobody will speak to me, but that’s alright because I’m cute!) “- so anyway, when I was dealing with Priscilla do you know what I did?”

Here her soliloquy came to an abrupt and unexpected halt, and she stared expectantly at her great niece.

Ninibeth blinked in surprise. “…No,” she said. “What?”

“Well I was at my wit’s end,” Gan continued, leaning back whilst her gnarly fingers resumed their busiwork, “so I did what one always does when one can think of nothing else: I prayed. And do you know, the very next day, as Priscilla Ramble was walking to school, the tip of a branch poked her hard - right in the ear! - and gave her a bad earache, which turned into a headache, and she was home from school for weeks. When she came back she was entirely different for some reason - very distracted from her studies. She was still kind of mean, but she didn’t harp on me as she used to. And d’you know, years later I found out that all that time, fungus from the branch had been growing in her inner ear, and it got into her brain and killed her when she was not twenty-five years old! Amazing, isn’t it? I mean my goodness - when God answered that prayer, He answered it! I would say maliciously, if it weren’t God I’m talking about!”

Here Gan ended, having forgotten why she was telling this story in the first place, and neither of them were any closer to a solution. Ninibeth stared at her great aunt, left only with the assurance that she would, indeed, continue attending Monroe.

A few sips of milk later Ninibeth got up. Her angst had softened from a sharp prick to a dull ache, but it still hurt enough that she had no appetite.

“I’m going up to bed,” she said.

“Ooh, don’t you want dinner? There’s leftover meatloaf,” said Gan anxiously. “Or casserole from the night before.” Denture friendly!

“Not hungry,” said Ninibeth, and disappeared through the doorway.

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About the Creator

Whittler

Exercises in reflection, with some emphasis on Life's dark ironies and subtle humors.

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