CHAPTER ONE: DOLDUNT PRISON

Chapter One     The Hunchback of Washington Irving High School






Sara sat at her customary lunch bench pretending to listening to her newest best friend, Tiffani.       Sara’s mind was on other things. Her mother had another of her migraine headaches, the family always moved after her mother’s headaches. She really had no idea why they moved, they just did. When Sara questioned her mother, she always gave a different excuse. Sara sighed and smiled at Tiffani.
     “Are you listening?” Tiffani asked, poking at her meatloaf, the worst-ever school lunch.
     Sara looked at the palm of her hand and nodded.  “Uh huh, catching every word. And, I agree. You should do something about it.”
     Tiffani eyes rolled. “So, you think I should ask the entire football team to the prom.”
     Sara picked at her birthmark on her palm. The birthmark, a tiny white star had suddenly turned black two days ago, on her fifteenth birthday.  “I think that would be fun, Tiff.”
     Sara looked longingly as the best-looking jock in the school walked no more than ten feet from where they sat. She had a crush on him, though wasn’t sure he knew that she even existed.
     “I think I might be pregnant,” Tiffani said.
     “That’s nice,” Sara replied
     Tiffani slapped her open palm on the table, rattling her lunch tray and spilling what was left of her juice. The boom startled students three tables away. “Sara Roberts, you haven’t heard a word I have said. I just told you that I was pregnant.”
      Sara frowned and showed her friend her palm. “It’s black, my birthmark is black.”
      “Your birthmark isn’t a big thing, Sara.” Tiffani consoled here. “I didn’t even notice it until you pointed it out.”
     “No big thing?” Sara snapped back. “I might as well be a hunchback. The mark makes me look hideous and deformed.”
     “No it doesn’t, that’s all in your mind.”
     "You’re just saying that ‘cause you’re Miss Perfect. My mother has another one of her stupid headaches is not in my imagination. I’m worried we’re going to move soon. Just once I would like to attend the same school for two years in a row.” She stopped long enough to catch her breath. “My dad is away on another one of his business trips. He promised to post stuff on my wall daily, and I haven’t gotten one post yet. So do whatever you want to do with the football. See, I was listening, kinda.”
     “I’m…”
     The bell rang.
     “I’ll see you in English.” Sara jumped up and ran to her next class.

                                                  #Sara’s desk in her math class was in the middle of the first row nearest the teacher. She detested math and was always behind the other students because of her family’s moving every year. She always felt as if she was the freaky outsider and today she thought she was definitely the hideously scarred outcast.  She always was self-conscious of her birthmark, and thought it made her look disfigured. Despite Tiffani and her mother, telling her it was nothing. What did they know? How had it suddenly changed colors? How could it be white one day and become black the next day like the start of an unwanted pimple? Of course, she had showed the black birthmark to her mother, who told her not to worry about it. Not worry about it, she thought; obviously, her mother had never been fifteen, disfigured, and the outcast in a new school. A pimple she could deal with. All of the cool kids had pimples, but not her. Oh no, she had to look like Quasimodo. She simply hated her birthmark.
      Mr. Dalton was talking about how much they would use algebra in their daily lives as adults.  But, Sara was having a difficult time focusing.  Sara slumped in her chair, painfully watching the clock on the wall slowly click seconds away.
     History class was a repeat of math class. She just couldn’t concentrate. The only thing she learned in class was that the British were coming and a rehash of the tea party eons ago. She thought, “I learned this stuff already.” She snickered to herself.  “Now, why would we care if the British came to the tea party?”
     She raced to class to her English class, almost knocking the head cheerleader on her butt. Sara didn’t even slow down, rushing into the classroom long before the bell rang.
     Ms. Graham smiled and said, “Well Sara, you must be anxious for a lesson in the history surrounding William Shakespeare’s play, Julius Caesar.”
      “Uh, sure,” replied Sara, looking down the corridor for Tiffani.  The bell rang, Tiffani never came, and Sara slumped down in her seat. Sara kept a constant watch at the door, as if doing so would magically bring her friend into the room. Tiffani did not enter the room, no matter how long she stared at the door.
      She wondered if Tiffani had skipped class to hang out with the football team or was just too embarrassed to be in the same place as the Hunchback of Washington Irving High School.
     She heard some of the lesson but none of it made sense. She heard Ms. Graham say the eyes of March, and eating Brutus, but not much more.
     “Sara Roberts.” Ms. Graham put her hand on Sara’s shoulder, “Can you tell me anything you have learned in class today?”
     Her mind went blank. Could this be a trick question? Every eye in the class was looking at her. “Uh- yes- Ma’am. March has eyes, and they ate Brutus.”
      The entire class broke out in laughter. She shrank down into her seat, wishing she could hide herself in her arms. She wished she were anywhere else. She wished Tiffani had come to class.
      The bell rang. “Before you leave, class, you must study for the test on the play Julius Caesar for tomorrow.” Ms. Graham shouted, helplessly waving her arms at students exploding out of her classroom. “We are reading Huckleberry Finn next and I want three chapters read by Monday.” The last sentence trailed off, and the classroom was empty, with the exception of Sara
      “Sara we need to talk at your earliest convenience. Maybe we could meet after school today.”
      “Ummm, sure, Ms. Graham,” Sara said absentmindedly as she unfolded herself from her desk.
      She seriously considered ditching her last class to find Tiffani. She knew that skipping class was against the rules and would probably end up on her permanent record.
      The end of the day finally came. She totally forgot that she was to meet Ms. Graham.

                                                              #Sara slowly walked to the back of the school bus with her eyes firmly fixed on the floor. She held her backpack loosely dragging it behind her. Her other hand, the deformed hand was buried deep in her jean pockets for fear one of her classmates might see it and tease her. She shuffled to the rear seat of the bus, careful not to look to one side or the other. Dejectedly she collapsed onto the seat, pulled her backpack to her chest, and began to rock back and forth.
      The bus began to fill, but the kids purposely ignored the backbench until they had no other choice. A freckled-faced boy forced to sit next to her scrunched way over to the side, avoiding Sara as if she had mono. Her classmates had teased and avoided her for as long as she could remember. It didn’t help matters that she acted odd around them by occasionally talking to herself or singing for no reason whatever. She always tripped anyone brave enough to cut ahead of her in the lunch line.
      She glanced out the window at the oldest car she had ever seen parked next to the bus. A large toad was sitting in the driver’s seat staring at her grinning ear to ear. The back seat was full of rats dressed in purple and red leisure suits. She gulped. “Toads can’t drive, that’s impossible, someone pinch me please,” she gasped in horror.
     The freckled faced boy jumped and flailed his arms as if a flock of killer bees was attacking him when Sara frantically tapped him on the shoulder and pointed out the window.
     The boy looked out the window, waived and moved further away from Sara, “That’s the new janitor, Mr. Apple-something. I didn’t know he had kids in our school.”
     “Our janitor is a toad? His children are rats?” Sara said as she ducked below the window.
      The blond-haired girl with bright shiny braces in the seat ahead of her turned and shook her head. “Didn’t your mother ever tell you if you don’t have anything nice to say about janitors, then don’t say anything at all?”
     The bus chugged out of the parking lot followed closely by the new toad janitor and his rat children. The toad passed the bus at the fourth stop. He waived to her, smiled an evil toad grin, and sped on its way. The rats were no longer in the back seat, this worried Sara to no ends. Where did the toad drop off the rats?