Creative+Writing

North East Elementary School was a large, flat, brick building, one story, with lockers lining the inner passages that ushered students from one dungeon of torturous boredom to the next. Indeed, it was just like all other schools, whose existence appears only to be to drill their given information into the heads of their victims with the grim efficiency of a pickax. An unmemorable school, as most are, given the dreary, toneless teachers, and their cruel, sadistic pleasure derived from assigning the dreaded...homework. Needless to say, we are all in desperate need of forgetting these years of our lives, and the horrors which they held.

But I, I will never forget 5th grade, no matter how hard I try, how much I wish it had never really happened, and was just a dream. Yet, to pass it off as a dream would be a lie. No, this really happened, every word of this story is true, possibly not believable, but true.

It all started September fifth, first day of fifth grade. Meeting again after two long months, the atmosphere was awkward for the first five minutes, but then as everyone loudly discusses the finer aspects of their summer, the laughing and talking resumes, and soon all hint of awkwardness is forgotten. As we waited with dawning apprehension for the first bell to ring, the four of us leaned up against the fir pine trees with a hint of imperious superiority. Now //we// were the oldest, the fifth graders, the "big kids". When that fatal bell did ring, however, all trace of superiority vanished, and jumpy with apprehension about what the following year might hold, we edged into math class.

As we gingerly entered the math classroom, taking a brief survey of what was evidently "Room 336 (Math 5)" by the cheery, misleading sign above the door. We saw most of the usual: Jesse, Corrine and Phoebe giggling and pointing; Dennis and his gang muttering conspiratorially at some concealed object, and the miscellaneous weird kids who hung around together. There was no refined gleam of maturity and oldness to be seen among my fellow classmates, we were all just the same as we were in fourth grade.Though admittedly, slightly taller.

Five minutes later, an old, powerfully built, hawkish woman brandishing what appeared to be a rubber ruler in her claw-like hands entered the room and the talking slowly ceased. Mrs. Priest was the 5th grade math teacher, and was long reputed to have a no-nonsense type attitude towards her classes.

"Alright, midgets", she started- with a certain tone in her voice that made us all acknowledge that this was not to be a pleasant year- "I'm sitting here, gettin' paid to get your hollow little brains empty of trash and full of learnin'. You've all had plenty of time to rot out your brains over the summer, and its about time you fill 'em again."

My friends and I exchanged anxious looks.

"First order of business. Role call. When I say your names, you are to raise your hand or say 'here'. Got that? Good. Right then..."

"Orville Bartholomew" "Here" "Dennis Briton" "Yo" "WHAT?" "Sorry... here" he said, his self assured composure not so much slipping as landsliding. As she kept going down the list, each response becoming more and more subdued. None of us wanted the loud blast of her voice to be directed at us, and we all quailed under her hawkish stare of displeasure. A minute passed, she progressed to: Corrine Koleman...Phoebe Laking... Mary McAllmann. Minutes went by in absolute silence, except for a timid "here".

Finally, "Cassie Pulish...'Here'... Jesse Rieshwiech... 'Here'" and... "Oh, there's two of you. Twins, huh?" Her final statement yielded some amount of muttering. After Jesse was always me, and after me was always Jackie Tuffer. Everyone looked around in surprise, and someone behind me whispered. "You've got a twin? You could have told me!" But I was just as surprised as the rest. "That's more than enough of that" yowled Mrs. Priest, hammering her ruler against her desk with a loud slapping noise. "What's this?" Her beaky protuberance wrinkled as she checked her list and ripped off a small orange sticky note from her list of names, muttering aloud: "New student, Abigail Susan Smith"

We all looked around, and the muttering was revived. New kids were always an attraction, there never were many in our school. Most of us knew each other from kindergarten, and at latest first grade. I had never heard of a fifth grader entering new to our school, and I was swivelling around in my chair to see the new kid.

"Well kid, stand up. I don't have all day!" snapped Mrs Priest In the corner of the room, behind a still rather shell-shocked Dennis, there was a stirring of movement. Concealed by the darkness, and sitting so still and quietly, even Dennis and his gang, sitting not three feet away looked startled.

As the small figure stepped out from her cloak of shadows, the class got a better view of what she looked like. The first impression of this girl was one of some level of poverty. Her dress, tattered and torn was smeared with dirt and grime, her once-white shirt was now the yellow brown of an old banana, and she appeared to be wearing plastic bags around her bare feet to keep them warm. Yet, beyond this dilapidated appearance, her skin was unblemished and bright, and it even seemed to give off a very pale golden light. At the time, I thought that maybe that was just the sun or a trick of the light. Her hair was short, brown, silky, thick and healthy looking and gave off, for the merest moment, a wondrous smell, that rippled through the classroom. At the time, I passed it off as a smell from outdoors; the fresh afternoon breeze.Then I looked straight at her face, expecting her to be looking at the teacher. She was looking back, straight into my eyes.

Suddenly, an inexplicable sensation coursed through my body. Her eyes were...

"Hey you! girl!" screeched the voice of Mrs. Priest. Her eyes flicked upward. The sensation was gone. "Abigail Smith, yes?" The girl nodded, all the while looking at a plant in the far corner of the room above Phoebe's head. "Well then, it appears that I'm teaching one more runt than usual" she muttered. "Siddown" she added as an afterthought.

Abigail nodded and sank back into her shadowy corner.

The rest of the class passed without much comment, and when the bell rang, there was the usual rush to get out the door, although accompanied with more talking than usual. A real, live new kid is always something to talk about, especially one wearing plastic bags for shoes. Other than this, no one really seemed to notice anything different about this girl, and definitely nothing strange or creepy. Phoebe even seemed to be making plans to eat with her at lunch.

Next class was English, which the teacher decided to devote to criticizing our diction. A soft scrunching noise of plastic bags against the floor announced Abigail's entrance to a dark corner of the room, and, when the bell rang, declared her exit.

Lunch passed, bringing a certain amount of happiness and the glory of freedom along with it. The bell rang, and we went into Science to listen to Phoebe's echoing cries that the new kid was the most boring thing on the universe. "She doesn't talk, she doesn't smile, and her clothes smell nasty." She concluded, as if this closed any argument about the girl.

When Abigail entered again, the room went quiet, and everyone turned up to face the teacher, who lectured us about the importance of a good education, and how fortunate we were to be taught by such kind, caring teachers such as himself.

When finally the bell rang, and the day was over, the mass of students, like a hoard of ants spilled from the door, and out into the fresh, free air. Summer vacation might only have been interrupted for 6 hours. As I walked back home, I examined any logical possibility that what might have happened in math class been some normal coincidental occurrence.

Days following turned into weeks, and weeks turned into months. School was just the same, the teachers were just the same, and the creepy girl Abigail Smith seemed to simply fade away into the background of my mind, though I made extreme effort not to look back into her eyes. By November, barely anyone appeared to even notice her existence. Phoebes complaints seemed to have some basis in fact. The girl never talked, never smiled and her clothes really did smell naaasty.

It all happened on November 12, a snowy day that warranted warm clothes and, in my case, a hat with an orange poofy puffball on top. After math and language, when the recess bell rang, I was all alone in the schoolyard, my friends had gone inside the school to gather what warmth they could before getting back out into the cold. Just when I was thinking of heading in after my friends and joining them in the warm, a soft tap on my shoulder made me turn around.

Abigail Smith was standing right there behind me, her putrid skirt and tattered shirt flapping in the wind. Fighting the impulse to run, I said the first thing that came to mind. "Aren't you cold?" She made a guttural noise that conjured to mind a rhinoceros gargling. The noise was what made me instinctively look up, it was just a glance, but it was enough. I saw her eyes. They were a dark blue, blank, yet something seemed to stir behind them. Something old, with great knowledge. The darkness of the blue expanded into a great blanket, which enveloped me, and everything went black.

When I woke up, the crisp coolness of the air surprised me. There was no swirling snow, no kids running around on a playground, and no school building. Somehow, I was not freaking out. A different emotion controlled me, I felt sad for no reason at all. Just then another shock hit me when I was laying down, for I had no control over my own limbs. I appeared to live inside a body that had a controller of its own. A sharp voice cracked like a whip through my head. A voice that I had never heard before. "Get up! Lazy lump of coal! Get into the house and sweep! Listen to me girl, I am your mother!" The body I was in jumped up, and an echoic voice resounded in my head. "Stupid old lady" it said, accompanied by a raging anger that had nothing to do with me. The voice in my head, however was not my voice. Very different indeed. It was the broken voice of a little girl who had suffered much in her short life.

Struggling up from what must have been a very resting sleep, the girl leaped up, and ran down a narrow dirt road. Lining the road were houses with thatched roofs, and mud-brick walls. At the end of the dirt road was a large tower of stone. Passing the tower, which held the inscription "Jamestown Settlement by order of King James of England 1607", the girl ran on.

The chilly breeze biting her nose, and the wind whipping her brown hair into her face, she ran on. Anything to get away from that terrible woman. Turning left and plunging into a large hut, I heard the crying of a baby. The girl obviously did as well, and running into the house, past the broom she was supposed to use, and to a small crib that held a newborn baby. As I looked down on the infant in the crib, I felt the girl's obvious care for the child that was so in contrast to that fear and anger directed towards her mother.

"Don't cry, Andrea, don't cry..."

"You girl, won't go running away from me again !" her mother was back, carrying a bucket of water in her hand. "As punishment, you are to scrub these floors until they shine!"she pointed at the grimy stone floor with obvious vindictiveness. With one final look of disgust, she stalked out of the house.

The anger came back as quickly as it had gone. With one last caring look at her sister, the girl who picked up the bucket and looked in. In the murky depths, the sullen face of a ten year old girl stared back. The shock that I felt did not come up on the face that stared out of that bucket. The face was of Abigail Susan Smith. Then everything went black.

When I woke up, I was somewhere different. Some sort of forest surrounded me, and from the fast breathing of Abigail, I gathered that we were sprinting full speed from something or someone. She looked back, and I noticed that Jamestown settlement was moving farther and farther into the distance. She was running away. The light of the forest faded into the darkest black.

When I could see again, my first conscious thought was that I was the girl, or rather I inhabited the girl's body, and was stuck in her mind like a leech. It appeared that I was living some part of her life, though it did not make sense as to how she might really be 402 years old.

Although deep in thought as to whether I should have payed the one dollar for Dennis' black-market cootie shot, and if it might have saved me from being a girl, my host apparently was experiencing worse difficulties. Her throat felt parched (or was it //our// throat?), and I could tell that if she did not get water soon, she would possibly die. Stumbling on, listening carefully through the woods for some sort of stream, she walked on. Sitting and stopping every ten or so minutes, she seemed to have a set course. Then far off in the distance, I could make out the faint gurgling of a stream or a bubbling from a spring in the ground. By following the sound of the trickling of the water, we rounded a huge pine tree that -if it's size were anything to judge by- had been standing there for all eternity.

Around the tree was a gusher that rose ten feet into the air, throwing a fine golden mist around the little clearing in which it stood. The most wondrous, indescribably scent was emanating from it, and it filled my host body with new vitality. I could feel her weariness and hunger falling from her in sheets, and her anger and her fear replaced with happiness and love. All that remained was her thirst for water. she sprinted up to the fountain, and tentatively dipped her finger in it, so as to test the temperature.

Through her mind flashed several images, the most prominent of which was a man and a woman giving her a hug. The woman, I recognized to be her own mother. She drank deeply, off and on for several minutes. Whatever she saw and felt, I do not know, but when she got up again, she felt new vitality, and the strength to go on. Finally I saw what she had done, I found the reason why she had lived so long. In her thirst, she had stumbled across a fountain that could make her live...forever. Blackness closed in on me.

When I came back to consciousness, thoughts in Abigail's voice echoed through my head. Most of these thoughts had to do with getting back home, and to tell her parents of the wondrous fountain that gave her strength and banished her drowsiness. She yearned above all, to see her sister. But, a thought that held especial resonance in her mind was that she was lost, hopelessly lost. Slowly, the colors faded out of the sky, and all was darkness.

The darkness appeared to take longer to clear than previously, and when it parted, giving way to light, an image flashed up in Abigail's eyes. It was a still frame of Abigail, sitting cross-legged in front of a garbage can, in the present day. I was outside of Abigail's memory, yet still not in the schoolyard, like I was supposed to be. A voice resounded all around me.

"Immortality is man's greatest wish, is it not?" It was the voice that I learned to know so well. The voice that spoke Abigail's thoughts. "But look at what I have become." The voice spared no time in telling me the story. "Once, I was a girl like any other. I lived, I loved, I hated, I could feel sorrow, I could learn things. When I reached the place from which I ran away, they were all gone. They went away on the ship. My sister was gone. She was your own ancestor, you know. That is why I chose you."

"What do you mean?" I asked

"The fountain of youth is not a wonderful fountain of ever-giving youth, as it is said to be in folk-lore. It is the liquid form of everything mankind ever wanted;ever lusted for. Immortality, extreme health; no fear of death. Every man's dream. The purpose of the fountain is to pass on a message. The message that mankind has needed to hear for several millenia past. I am the embodiment of the fountain of youth. I exsist simply because I cannot die. I am an animated shell of a human being. Such is everlasting youth. I would stay 10 years old forever, if I did not pass on the spell of the fountain to someone else, along with the message behind it." she let the message sink in.

"So...I'll stay eleven years old forever?

"No. When you feel ready, you will pass on the message, and then you, yourself will pass on."

"Bu-but what //is// the message?"

"I think you already know."

Blackness, I was falling. The deep blue blanket that enveloped me was lifted. My feet were my own again, and they were planted on the snowy ground, like they were supposed to be.

I glanced up into the ancient face of that old, old, girl and watched a small smile briefly flit across it. The stirring behind those ancient eyes was gone, swiftly replaced by a misty blankness. The knees crumpled, and the shell of what once was a girl 400 years ago lay down to a final rest.