Dawn's Abyss

It was 6:00 Monday morning, and I was looking out my window when I saw him. To anyone else, he would seem like your ordinary boy. In my case, he was more, and I didn’t know why.

Ashton Voss was jogging down my street for his early morning exercise. He, like me, was a sophomore in high school, but he’d just transferred to Hazelwood from Australia. I knew this because he’d gotten instant popularity dialed in for him the moment he stepped into school.

He disappeared from my line of vision. I had no idea the path of his jog was less innocent than it appeared. It was surprising I knew anything about him at all, really. I wasn’t exactly first to know about anything socially important.
My name is Dawn, and that’s it. I’ve been living by myself since I was five-years-old, and I’ve never had a last name. I don’t remember my parents or even care all that much. I wouldn’t have anything to thank them for at all if it weren’t for the anonymous $600 that mysteriously showed up in my mailbox twelve times a year.

Hazelwood is a small town and I’d been living here for as long as I can remember. I keep to myself, get good grades, and am a fan of dark clothing.

Unlike Ashton, I don’t get noticed anywhere and that’s the way I like it.
Getting dressed in the morning was always easy. Today, I wore dark jeans and a black hooded sweatshirt. Voila. Breakfast wasn’t exactly exciting either. I ate my usual balanced meal of a banana and Special K cereal. I would need to buy some milk later.

An hour had passed since I’d seen Ashton out my bedroom window and I needed to get going. It took me half an hour to walk to school, which started at 8:15. Being forty-five minutes early worked well for me. I always enjoyed the mystified stares of people who came in on time wondering what the deal with me was.

Okay, most people don’t notice me, but I like being a mystery. I don’t talk to anyone and teachers just don’t call on me in class anymore. They stopped asking me what my last name was when they dropped by my house for a surprise parent/teacher conference and discovered my car in the driveway and no adults to be found.

Yes, I had recently turned sixteen and was finally able to drive the car that had been sitting in the garage for eleven years. It was just a little, green Toyota pickup truck. My driver’s license didn’t have a last name on it. The guy who issued it to me was surprisingly easy to sway with a hundred-dollar tip. That wasn’t like me. I was a very moral person. I didn’t like lying, which I didn’t have to worry about very often because I seldom spoke. I never stole anything or cheated. I didn’t even like thinking bad thoughts about people.

I could drive to school, but I didn’t want people to know more about me than was necessary. It was the middle of autumn, which meant it was 54 degrees outside. That was perfectly reasonable walking weather. This also meant football season for Hazelwood. This is where Ashton’s popularity comes in.
He’s some sort of mega superstar quarter back for the varsity team. I think that’s supposed to be a really big deal for a lower classmen such as him. I wouldn’t really know. My Friday nights aren’t spent freezing my rump off on icy bleachers at football games.

As I walked to school, I wondered why I suddenly had a blazing desire to know more about Ashton. Usually, those conceited jock-types made me scoff, and like I said, I tried not to think poorly of anyone. He wasn’t any different . . . until this morning.

For some reason unfathomable even to me, I always walked on the sidewalk on the left side of the road. It was probably just one of those weird quirks that everyone acquires. I suppose today, fate gave me a reason.

I heard blaring rap music and resisted the urge to cover my ears. I turned my head to the right just in time to see a bouncing (from the extreme volume of music), shiny, gigantic truck that could eat my tiny Toyota for breakfast. It slowed to a stop a couple of paces in front of me. I kept walking, averting my eyes from the expensive vehicle whose owner I knew must have stopped for a reason.

“Hey,” a voice called. I paused for a moment before turning my head slightly to see Mr. Popular in the flesh.

Ashton has rolled the window of his black monster truck down and for the first time since he’d come to Hazelwood, I got a good look at him. He had typical curly blond hair, blue eyes, and overly bronzed skin that could only be a result of spending way too much time in outdoor activities. I repressed a shudder at the thought and fought the urge to roll my eyes.

“Do you need a ride?” he asked.

I grimaced fleetingly and shook my head to indicate that he should just keep on driving. It was hard to contain my surprise. Although I saw slightly touched, I didn’t want pity from the likes of him, despite the fact that I was dying to jump up and shout “Yes!” That would simply be far too out of character for me.

I continued walking on my way to school. I was fifteen minutes away now and this was the first time since I’d been walking to school that anything remotely eventful had occurred.

“Wait!” he called, putting the mammoth of an automobile in drive. I didn’t wait. I was done talking (on his part) with him.

For five minutes, I strolled along in silence, feeling the presence of Ashton and his care behind me, not to mention the soft purr of his engine. But when I finally chanced a tiny glance in my peripheral vision, there was nothing and nobody to be seen behind me.

I guess I wasn’t the only mystery in Hazelwood.

With a puzzle raging in my head, I made my way into school. My first class of the day was English with Mr. Mason. My locker couldn’t be further away from his classroom, but that was okay with me. I liked walking. I removed my Language Arts textbook and my Writing notebook before creeping over to the other side of the school. I liked to be subtle, so creeping was a popular choice of mobility for me.

“Hi there, Red,” a girl named Loraine greeted me as we passed in the hallway. I wouldn’t consider us friends because Loraine was kind of eccentric and out there. There was also the fact that I’d never said a word to her. For some reason though, she always sat across from me at lunch. It would just be the two of us because I preferred to fly solo.

I kept walking for a second, not realizing who ‘Red’ was. Then I remembered. Occasionally, Loraine would call me this because of my copper hair. That did tend to make it difficult to be discreet paired with my lime-colored eyes that seemed to hide a secret.

Usually I wore my hood up when I had one on – like now for instance. I nodded in Loraine’s direction and proceeded to put my black hood up over my head.

Mr. Mason’s room was empty just like it always was at 7:30 in the morning.
“Good morning, Dawn,” he said, taking a sip from the coffee in his aluminum thermos, but not looking up from the daily newspaper.

I didn’t respond. Thankfully, Mr. Mason was one of those teachers who respected his students and didn’t try to interfere. He knew I acknowledged his presence in silence and that was good enough for him.

Opening my notebook to a free page, I allowed my mind to unravel and began to attempt solving this mental puzzle. I also scrounged around in my bag for a pencil. It amazed me sometimes the things my mind came up with to draw when I was deep in thought.

It didn’t seem simply coincidental that the same morning I experience this odd sensation when seeing Ashton Voss jogging, he offers me a ride to school when never having spoken a word to me before. It’s not like he would get much of a response, but everything was just occurring so suddenly. I was used to uneventful, humdrum days and interacting with this random boy frankly scared me.

I continued to ponder my dilemma even after the bell had rung. I hardly noticed my hand furiously flitting across my notebook, etching confusing lines all over the place. It wasn’t until a recently familiar face began looming closer to me that I snapped out of my reverie and put my pencil down. Ashton Voss was walking toward me. I hadn’t noticed he was in my class before.

My heart rate sped up and I mentally scolded myself. Why on earth would I get excited about something as petty as this? I wasn’t social. I didn’t talk to people, and I certainly didn’t have conversations with or accept rides from star quarter backs. Today was full of surprises, though. Who knew what changes would be next?

He stopped at my desk and looked down at my notebook. I was immediately embarrassed. I hated when people looked at my work. The teachers grading my schoolwork even made me nervous, and everybody had to do that. Artwork was so much more personal.

He studied my picture for a few seconds before I haphazardly closed it and Mr. Mason began calling attendance. Ashton sauntered on to the back of the room and took what I assumed was his customary seat. It was odd that I hadn’t noticed him before. Although I was anti-social, I was uncannily perceptive.

“Dawn?” Mr. Mason called mandatorily even though he’d personally greeted me already this morning.

I raised my hand swiftly to indicate my presence before returning it to my desk and flipping through my notebook. Now that Ashton had already seen my artwork, I wanted to check if it was worth looking at. I wasn’t particularly fond of others viewing my creations, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t be my own critic.

When I found my drawing, I felt my face scrunch up in confusion. It was a series of distorted lines surrounding a lone opening in the center of the page. It looked slightly on the abysmal side and I felt as if something was missing . . . there was a void within the picture waiting to be filled. However, because class had started, I couldn’t dawdle any longer. In order to make the grades I did, I had to take intricate notes in all my classes.

Three pages and 55 minutes later, the bell rang. I had approximately five minutes to get to my locker and to my next class. It was Algebra. I hated Algebra. Arithmetic calculations involving letters, exponents, distribution, and fractions were so easy to mess u, hence I found myself going over each complicated problem numerous times. Also, the teacher – Mrs. Kurl – had an unfortunate tendency to single me out. I mentioned before that most of the teachers had given up on calling on me in class. Well, I was pretty certain that Mrs. Kurl was bent on making my education at Hazelwood personally impossible.

Regardless of all that unnecessary frustration, I traded in my book for English for my Saxon Math book and my Algebra notebook. Then, remembering a reminder from the previous Friday, I also grabbed my calculator, compass, and ruler. It was a good thing I had a good memory. I briefly wondered if that hereditary trait was paternal or maternal. Mrs. Kurl was not forgiving when it came to forgetting.

I must be a fast walker. I made it to class with three minutes to spare. Maybe because I’ve been walking to school since I was in Kindergarten, I had just gotten really good at it. I’d always been independent, even before, when the anonymous monthly packages were filled with groceries instead of cash. Those packages never had a return address. My parents were out there, providing for me in some odd, inconspicuous way, but I had to fend for myself in other ways than financially – like now, in Algebra class.

“Dawn,” Mrs. Kurl barked maliciously at me. “Would you care to solve this problem on the board?”

It stunned me how much one teacher could hate a student who’d never said so much as one word to her. Truly, I pitied Mr. Kurl, whoever he was, in so many ways. Though I’d never met the man, nobody should have to deal with a person who was so full of spite. Despite her rather special infatuation with torturing me, she was no walk in the park for the rest of the students either.
I walked up to the board and scrawled the facts and figures across the chalkboard neatly, solving what needed to be solved When I finished the problem, I checked over it just once before satisfactorily returning to my seat. Mrs. Kurl was one of those people who loved being right, getting her way, and gloating about it to anyone within an unfortunate hearing range.

“You are correct, of course,” she leered down at me. “Tell me, Dawn. Do you enjoy always being right? Do you enjoy the attention you receive for being such a mystery to us common folk?”

I concentrated very hard on not thinking anything impolite about the imposingly aggressive woman trying to get a rise out of me. I wouldn’t respond in any way to her taunts. I sat still as a statue and looked straight ahead, painfully aware of the invasive stares of my fellow classmates. As much as I was sure they disliked Mrs. Kurl they, too, were all waiting for a reply.

Instead, Mrs. Kurl threw back her head and laughed. “Little Miss Perfect is just too high and mighty to grace us with her literacy.”
After that, I jaw left alone. The spiteful teacher went back to the lesson at hand for the remaining forty minutes of class while I took notes like the Little Miss Perfect I was. How aggravating is that? Nobody understood that I wasn’t aiming for special attention or treatment. A good analogy would be that I was like a bird just learning to fly. I didn’t want help from anybody and was perfectly content with flying by myself.

I’d never been so happy to hear the bell ring in my life. I wanted to praise the good Lord. There was only one more class until lunch where I would be able to sit in companionable silence with Loraine and eat a balance meal in peace.

Boy was I ever wrong. My World History class with Miss Japers passed by uneventfully and for that I was ever grateful. However, lunch didn’t go quite as I’d planned and I can give credit to a certain Mr. Voss for that.
I packed my lunch every day for school the night before so I wouldn’t be rushed in the morning. Today, as I sat down at my usual empty lunch table, I pulled out a cheese sandwich, diet Dr. Pepper, and a granola bar from my paper sack. Another boring, nutritious meal in the middle of the most interesting day of my life so far . . . that I could remember, at least.

“Can I sit here?” a voice asked. I looked up, expecting to see Loraine, my mind registering a second too late that it was a distinctively male voice.
My brow furrowed, but I nodded timidly anyway. Who was I to deny someone a seat? I figured I should at least be polite and return him the favor of asking me if I needed a ride earlier that day. I looked around the cafeteria for some sign of Loraine. Why was everything so flip-flopped?

“Are you looking for the Loraine girl who usually sits over here? I asked her if I could take her spot; I hope you don’t mind,” Ashton said, pulling out a chair. My hood was still up, so I had to peek out from under it to notice the secretive smile playing across his features.

I sighed, giving in to my curiosity and knowing that this wouldn’t go anywhere if I wasn’t verbally active. “Why?”

“She speaks!” he exclaimed, throwing his arms up in the air. Jeez, if he didn’t calm down, a lot of attention was going to be drawn to us. I didn’t want that, so I shot him my best stern, you’d-better-be-quiet-or-else look, but I have no idea how ridiculous it looked because I wasn’t exactly used to giving looks at all that I know of.

“Okay, so you want to know why I asked your friend if I could sit here?” he assessed. I nodded my head with a disapproving stare at the word ‘friend.’ That is one word to be used loosely in my vocabulary.

“I don’t know for sure, either. You see, I noticed you on my second day here. It was in English class and it was like you didn’t know anybody else existed. You would just copy down notes and occasionally glance up at the chalk board, but nobody else mattered. I wondered who you were. I asked around and nobody was able to tell me much of anything about you, and I’ve never seen or heard you talk to anyone except for just now when you said ‘why?’” he explained.

I was stunned into paralysis. I was the nobody, the loner, the weird girl adopted from New York (I’d heard people call me this because of all the dark clothes), the orphan, the quiet girl with no last name. New Australian boys were not supposed to be investigating my life story.

He went on. “All I found out was an address. I’ve gone by there a couple of times, but the little house always looks deserted. I didn’t know what else to do, so here I am. I’m guessing you’re probably thinking I am some creepy stalker, but that’s not it. It’s just, ever since I was little I’ve always love mysteries. I even used to pretend I was Sherlock Holmes and sleuth all around my house; it drove my mom nuts! You’re the best mystery I’ve yet to discover, and it’s not even solved yet.”

I found myself cocking my head to one side and felt my mouth open a little bit. How was a person supposed to respond to something like that? I’ve never been spoken to so much in all my life. Aside from being completely dumbfounded and a little spooked as he pointed out, I was also oddly flattered.

“So Dawn, what’s your story?” he asked.

I shook my head in refusal and he got the hint. It would take a lot more than that for me to divulge anything personal to this stranger. He already knew my address. That meant his jog this morning had had a purposeful path.

“Fine, be that way. I’ll just sit here with you every day for lunch going on and on about my wonderful childhood memories ‘down under’ until you decided to tell me something about yourself,” he declared. I felt my eyes widen and my head snap up, casing my hood to fall back, revealing a mess of red waves.

As I searched through my bag for paper and a pencil, Ashton began talking again! I really shouldn’t have been surprised. Did that boy ever turn off the volume? . . . It must be an Australian thing.

“I didn’t even know what color your hair was! I had you pegged for a brunette. Man, I was way off,” he slapped his knee incredulously and watched me with an uncomfortable intensity as I scrawled something on a piece of paper.

I’ll tell you one thing about me per day.

He read it and then looked up at me with a triumphant smile plastered on his face. “I guess you’re a woman of few words on and off paper.” I rolled my eyes subtly and his smile broadened. “What one thing do I get to learn about Dawn today?”

I thought for a moment before telling him. I wanted to find out more about him, and this didn’t seem like it would be a problem because he seemed ready to lie out an autobiography for me. By telling him something personal about myself, I was breaking my ‘don’t let anybody in’ rule.

I had a feeling it would be worth it. “I love to walk,” I told him. Then, I was saved by the bell.