Tell Me a Fairytale

"Girls, this is Lucinda." Geraldine Fisher's warm introduction of me to the other girls was a bit more than I would have offered, but they all still kept smiling, which I could hardly understand. How could anyone smile on a day like today? "She'll be staying with us, so let's make her feel welcome."

A young blonde girl who had been sitting on her bed and kicking her legs out for the past few minutes said with a sweet and probably false grin on her face, "Hi, Lucinda, I'm Emily."

"Name's Maddie. Nice to meet you," said the stocky redhead perched on the bunk across from Emily.

There was then a few odd moments of silence in which Emily and Maddie looked up expectantly at the top bunk of Maddie's bed.

"Vanessa?" Miss Fisher called.

More silence.

"Vanessa, please. Greet our new guest."

After another pause, a dark figure rose slowly and disinterestedly from the bed, holding a Bible in front of her face. "Hey," she said quietly. She raised her hand and half-waved, then dropped back into her mattress.

"Well, that's Vanessa anyway," Miss Fisher sighed. "She's shy." She smiled at me, then at the other girls. "I'll call you all down when dinner is done," she said, then left the room.

As soon as Miss Fisher's footsteps were out of our ears' range, Emily's grin changed, and she began to look exactly how I might have pictured the devil. I looked back at her awkwardly, hoping I was mistaken, but I believed I may have been looking at Satan himself in the form of a blonde ten-year-old.

"Tell us about you," she sort of commanded, her eyes wide, interested only in terrorizing me until I wet myself.

"What about me?" I asked, still feeling unbelievably awkward. I glanced away, and saw Maddie, who must have only been a little older than Emily, turn away to face a blank wall. Eavesdropper.

Then I glanced up at the girl called Vanessa's bunk, where I could see only her feet, tapping away to a beat I couldn't hear. It was nice to think that someone else in this place wasn't eerily peppy all the time. She obviously didn't fit in here, and I wondered how she managed to survive all these people by herself. What could she possibly be doing here?

And why am I here? I don't want to think about it, but I was now. I looked in the opposite direction of all the girls, holding back tears.

"Come on, tell us," Emily pressed, oblivious to my apparent discomfort. I followed Maddie's example, concentrating as hard as I could on the blank wall before me. "Oh, come on!" I felt a warm tear beginning to slide down my cheek so I closed my eyes to stop the others, and the funeral replayed in my head, just as vivid as three days ago.

I walked up to her casket and looked upon her for the last time. I was sickened by what they had done to her. Maia never needed to wear makeup because she was so beautiful, but today her gorgeous face was practically hidden by it. They had tried so hard to restore the healthy glow that death just wouldn't let her keep, she no longer seemed real. You know what they say, that they always look so alive, it's like they'll wake up and tell you it was all a big, bad joke? Maia was like a porcelain doll. She looked peaceful, but not asleep, and definitely not alive. Maia was plainly dead. This was not the way I wanted to remember my mother.

Crying, I turned and bolted past the pews and out the front door.