Chapter Two
For Curiosity’s Sake
The morning air is crisp, leaving Margo’s fingers numb, a sure sign that a fierce winter approaches in the coming months. The dirt road meanders through the woods until it meets the graveled one a mile and a half from her home. It is to this intersection she heads to catch the bus, and with only a few minutes’ delay, she has no choice but to start jogging. She kicks up a trail of dust behind her.
“Morning, Indiana,” calls a familiar voice. She grits her teeth. With a mile already behind her, she’s made it to the crossing of Old Dobbin Drive, and Michael Peters strolls around the corner at that precise moment. His attempt at getting underneath her skin does not go easily ignored.
“Silent treatment’s getting old,” he says from behind her shoulder. Margo can hear his feet shuffling not too far behind, his long legs easily keeping up. “I liked it better when you fought back.”
Anger pulses through her. Resisting the urge to turn around and tell him off is beyond difficult. What’s worse is she’s been resisting for weeks now. But like a deep, pestering splinter, if you try picking it out it will only end up irritating you more.
“Fine,” he huffs.
The bus is already waiting at the stop by the time they arrive. This has become somewhat routine; neither is known for their punctuality.
“Ladies first, Indiana.” Michael gestures in a mocking manner.
“You know, that’s really getting old.” Margo snaps her mouth shut. He grins victoriously.
She stomps her way up the bus steps and slings her cursed bag into the first empty seat she can find without speaking to anyone. Not that they care. Everyone went silent around her after the accident.
She presses her head against the cold glass, longing for the time when the stares were minimal or nonexistent as long as her sister was near. The only person at school who speaks to her nowadays is Michael with his lame Indiana jokes, and only a half-wit can find his moronic sense of humor entertaining. So why does she still shrink up inside?
She loops the strap of her bag around her fingers absentmindedly. It wasn’t long after Owen gave her this ugly thing that she was dubbed Indiana. “Looks like something out of ‘The Temple of Doom,’” Michael had taunted back then.
Suddenly it isn’t the boy sitting across from Margo who angers her but her father. This bag is the last gift he gave her before he walked out high and dry on her mom at their lowest point. The last positive memory she has of him. But it is also a reminder of what he did to them.
It doesn’t make sense, really. How hatred swarms Margo’s thoughts, yet she cannot unclench her hand from the strap of his bag.
This is exactly what Michael gets off on: her weakness.
She squeezes her eyes shut and focuses on the changes in the drive as the bumpy road shifts to smooth concrete, allowing her mind to wander.
The shadows of two empty faces fill her thoughts, both fading memories. She has long since given up on the girl. The boy, however, still holds a fraction of a chance, and every once in a while, his blue eyes slip into Margo’s dreams. His warming smile, his thick chocolate-brown hair, his sun-kissed skin… A flicker of hope rises within her that he will make his return, acting as if his absence the previous summer had never occurred. Margo understands his reasoning, of course. After what her family has gone through, she would never have expected his parents to send him and his sister to visit. But a phone call explaining his absence was expected.
“Hey, Margo.” The boy snickers.
The memory fades. Gawking with a couple of his friends on his heel, Michael grins the usual smirk he wears before a joke at Margo’s expense.
“Is it true what they say?” he blurts. The laughter rising within him makes his words almost unintelligible. “What they say about your sister? That she —”
Before Margo realizes what she’s doing, she’s already towering over him. Michael cowers away, a look of utter fear on his face.
“Say it!” she threatens, inching closer to him with each word. “Just try to pull that one!”
“Sit down, Margo,” the bus driver yells. “Michael, if she hits you, I’m sure I won’t see a thing.”
The bus roars with laughter, for once on her side. It takes every ounce of restraint within her to sit back down across from him, but somehow Margo finds the strength. And after another five minutes of riding, her anger fades and is replaced by the depression she works so hard to keep buried deep within. The last of the trip is, for the most part, painless and quiet, other than the boy across the aisle muttering private jokes to himself — trying to recover his pride, Margo guesses. Another student whispers to Michael something about taking it too far as students file out of the bus.
Margo stays behind.
After the last person shoots an awkward glance in her direction just before exiting, she lugs herself to her feet dragging the stupid bag behind her.
“It really ain’t fair,” says the bus driver when she reaches the stairs. “Life, ya know?”
Margo sighs. It isn’t the first time she’s heard this. “Teenagers are vicious.” Once her feet touch the asphalt, she turns to add, “Thanks.”
“Anything to see that pretty smile.” The air brake exhales as he cranks the door shut.
Margo faces the building. Rogers High School. The penitentiary of her eleventh grade sentence. Swarms of different classes are fighting their way inside the building. There are the popular ones: cheerleaders, athletes, preps. The expressive and talented: artists, band members, glee club. The techies. The ‘individually unique’ — the definition of ‘unique,’ of course, meaning whatever is considered ‘in’ this year. The dark wearers.
Below all of these classes rests one lone category. Margo’s category. The nobodies. They consist of the randoms who don’t quite fit into any other group. The lone rangers. The brave souls. Just fancy terms for who they truly are: the rejects.
Last year things changed slightly, though not willingly. For a short while, Margo became the school’s most talked about nobody. The whispers were like the buzzing of cicadas. Only upon her entering the room did it stop so abruptly that the eerie silence became palpable. Nothing could have made that first day back more humiliating.
A year later and the iciness still follows her through these halls, the bubble of silence around her so chilling. The torture behind her lids every time she shuts her eyes is unmanageable enough without the tangible reminder.
Michael Peters does not talk to her in lunch. Or in fifth period, the only class they share. His eyes shy away nervously throughout the whole hour. It isn’t until the ride home that he does something unexpected.
He quietly slips into the empty seat next to her. Even though they are mere inches apart, neither speaks. She waits patiently to see where this will lead.
His shoulders wilt. “I’m sorry about what I said earlier,” he nearly whispers. “I didn’t mean to —”
“You sounded like you knew exactly what you meant,” Margo says hotly.
He nods stupidly.
“Well then, I guess I’m done talking to you, Michael.” She turns to watch the hills roll by, counting cows as they pass. Michael doesn’t leave her side.
“Margo, do you… Can you ever forgive me?”
She scowls at him. “No.”
His lips sullenly twitch downward the slightest bit, and suddenly Margo feels obligated to elaborate. “It’s not that I don’t want to,” she huffs. “But you don’t mean it. Not really.”
Her cheeks shake as the bus turns onto the gravel road. Relief rushes through her knowing that her escape is near. Michael heads toward the front of the bus long before they reach the stop. She doesn’t rise until the bus slows.
The walk home is quiet. Margo is grateful for the silence and takes in the calming scenery. The trees’ leaves have shifted into warm hues over the past few weeks and have formed a tunnel of gold around the road on which they walk. The afternoon sun
warms the air.
The two near the crossing of Old Dobbin. Margo welcomes the impending lone walk, albeit she is aware of Michael’s eyes on the back of her head. Of course he would find a way to prolong their time together….
“Can we talk about this?”
Without faltering her steps, Margo replies, “I don’t have anything to say.”
The thudding of feet behind her speeds up until Michael blocks her path. “Well, I do.”
She groans.
“I shouldn’t have brought up your sister like that.” His voice is firm, eyes strong upon her face. “It was wrong, and I’m sorry.”
“So what?” she shouts so loudly a flock of birds take flight at the sharpness of her tone. Suddenly it all spills from her lips. “Did you really expect me to forgive you just because you realized you took it too far this time? How about the past twelve years of you messing with me? Am I supposed to forgive you for that, too?”
“Look, Margo, I’m just saying that I —”
She jolts from under his touch, and in an attempt to keep her in place, Michael catches hold of her bag from which she also jerks away. Her textbooks fall out in a series of loud plops.
Defeated, Margo holds stock still, hands balled at her side, cheeks darkening. A hiss escapes through clenched teeth, and a rush of energy pulses down her arms to her fingertips. Her fists tighten in reaction, eyes squeezing tighter until the spasms subside. Her heartbeat slows to an even rhythm.
Michael, noticing nothing, grunts and steps forward to help retrieve her books.
“Just go home, Michael!” She kicks up a cloud of dust in his direction and falls to the ground; her head drops to her knees. Disgust builds inside her once she realizes just how close she is to breaking down. She wills her tears away certain that crying will only allow him to win, and lifts her head to pick up her fallen books.
“I’m just sorry,” he whispers. “That’s all.”
Shoving her belongings back into her bag and not wanting to even acknowledge him, Margo mutters under her breath, more to herself than to the boy standing over her, “You’re just lucky I’m not suicidal or something.”
Michael’s body tenses, unsure how to respond to such a morbid thought. He turns toward Old Dobbin as if her statement went unnoticed and continues walking along. Once he’s around the corner, he runs beyond sight.
A hysterical laugh breaks through her lips. Suicidal? Yes, she is far from that. Of course, there are other ways to cause pain to oneself, and she allows them more often than not. She shuts her eyes to prove her point. The two silhouettes are burned in her lids.
It is far past time to move on, and she knows that. She isn’t entirely certain why she has endured the memories for so long. It’s not because she is being selfish and coveting the past, exactly. Nor is it because she is too fearful to forget. The truth is she simply cannot, no matter how hard she may try, force them out of her mind.
Margo pulls the buckle of her bag and dusts off the bits of leaves from her pants when out of the corner of her eye a sudden flash of orange light streaks through the woods. The unexpectedness startles her; she instinctively whips her head in that direction. The breeze picks up, rustling the stray leaves on the road. Her eyes dart about the trees searching frantically for any reflective, shiny object to no avail.
She shrugs her bag into place and walks forth, assuming her imagination has run amuck. Or worse, that Michael is up to more trickery, and his lame attempt at consoling her had been nothing more than a ploy. She will not allow him to humiliate her twice in one day.
An image — one Margo has grown all too accustomed to over the past months — of Mrs. Hederman pops into her head, her wrinkled face contorted into something much like after having sucked a lemon, which Margo thinks coincidentally suits her personality. She picks up her pace as she is certain the vision will soon come to pass if she isn’t in her work gloves by five o’clock sharp.
She skids to a halt. A second twinkle of orange light emits in the woods to her right. Planting her feet, she scrunches up her face to scrutinize the trees.
“Michael,” she calls rather harshly.
But there is no answer in return. The haunting silence only leaves her searching harder until something indeed captures her attention, though it is not shiny or alight.
A path meanders through the trees, its foot meeting the road on which she stands. Quite charming and edged with cobblestone, it twists away until it disappears into the woods. To discover something new in the area is a surprise. Margo’s spent her entire upbringing in St. Joseph, Tennessee, known every rock along this road, watched every tree age over the years. How can such an ancient-looking path have gone missed all this time?
Just where the path fades in the distance, Margo catches sight of yet another ‘flash of light.’ The excitement builds within her like a firecracker ready to pop. It isn’t a light after all but a fiery animal with reflective skin walking deeper into the woods.
As quickly as it appears, the animal vanishes around the bend, leaving Margo alone and dumbfounded. She stands there for nearly half a minute, awestruck and in wonder. What kind of animal has skin that reflects light like a mirror?
Curiosity overcomes her. The dirt road slips behind as she joins the animal on the narrow trail. It is unlikely Margo will catch up with it, but it’s too beautiful and rare an animal not to try. Imagine the discovery of a new creature, a new life form, a new existence…. It’s well worth the slander of a Hederman.
Oddly, the woods shift from amber to green as she presses onward. How unlike September to carry such rich, lively colors. Even the soil on the path seems fresher, filling the air with the scents of sweet earth. The trees grow tighter as she walks along the unknown path. There is hardly room to squeeze through. Margo forces on, determined not to lose the flaming creature.
She comes to a halt, facing a wall comprised of thick, unified shrubbery, which ends the path and her search, as well. It is an unsatisfying conclusion, but turning back seems unavoidable until Margo lets out a small yelp. A thorny vine overhead has caught hold of her hair in its hand. She reaches to untangle the strand from the nasty vine when a faint triangular splotch of orange light catches her attention. It dances around her forearm like a prism set in a window casting its colorful rays upon a wall. As if to catch the light in her palm, she turns her hand over twice, and slowly follows the direction of the light to find a small opening in the shrubs.
Peering through the keyhole in the leaves, the orange light bouncing across her cheek, she sees it: the mystery animal. A tall, exotic bird, much like a peacock, with feathers of vibrant orange shimmering in the sunlight and the long graceful legs of a heron. Its tail drags behind it with long feathers whose tips are blue-green, and atop its head sits an emerald crown of feathers. The bird pecks its pointed beak at the ground.
All of the pieces seem to fall into place at the sight of it. Obviously, she’s encountered the same bird whose stray feather she found that morning.
A twig snaps as she shifts her weight.
The bird’s head soars high, its long neck curving elegantly. Its tiny head shoots in several directions until its eyes find Margo’s and locks with hers. With that, the bird soars through the trees like a gazelle.
Determined not to lose it again, Margo pulls apart the vines like tissue paper and forces through, ignoring the scratching thorns against her bare arms. Without much time wasted, she catches sight of the bird not thirty feet ahead of her. Running at a rapid speed, its head bobs gracefully with every stride. The closer Margo gets to it, the more dominant its colors become. Its body is not merely orange but has hints of reds and golds, and the feathers of its tail have blues and deep purples. Like a bleeding watercolor, its vibrant colors dazzle in the light. Her heart pounds in her ears and her chest burns, but she has come too far now.
Suddenly, Margo is forced to a stop.
A narrow opening in the woods is laid before her as beautiful as a page torn from
a fairy tale. Sunlight pours through the treetops in rays that dance upon vibrant green grasses. A cluster of moss-covered boulders is strewn across the area. Pops of red from mushroom caps and wildflowers add zest to the already perfect setting.
But what truly demands Margo’s attention are the thousand light specks bouncing around the clearing. The grand bird stands before her proudly with its tail feathers spread. Like water upon a flame, the cool colors of its tail surround its blazing body. And to Margo’s satisfaction, the peculiar bird no longer runs but waits, studying her while she studies it.
Her mouth gapes as she absorbs the beauty surrounding her. A dream would make more sense. Surely this is no reality.
The bird stands strangely before her now. Almost as if waiting for something; its beady eyes are fixed on Margo. She takes a few cautious steps closer, and it shows no sign of fear. The sun reflects off of a glossy surface from behind the bird’s spread feathers.
“Are you keeping something?” she asks, automatically feeling silly for questioning a bird.
But the focus of its eyes intrigues her, as if it would indeed answer.
No sooner had Margo made that assumption, the creature bows its graceful head and retracts its tail feathers to reveal what is behind it: a globe set in a gold stand which rests upon a boulder. It couldn’t have stood more than ten inches high with perfectly smooth glass and glistening filigree.
The colorful woods suddenly turn gray as ash. Nothing matters but what is now placed in front of her., the only thing remaining in color: this globe. She is drawn in like a magnet. The world around her slips away. The only clarity lingering emanates from this globe.
She blinks. The world erupts into brilliant color as she stumbles backwards to the ground. She curses under her breath clutching her numb hand into her chest.
“What…” Margo searches the woods, disoriented. Her arm throbs in violent spasms up to her shoulder, but her hand remains deadened. “How did my…arm…?”
She breaks off in a scream as the pain suddenly becomes unbearable, her face meeting the grass, which she finds is not as soft as it appears. She writhes, its blades scratching her cheek, as the icy current pulses through her arm.
She notices it then. The woods are strange, much too vibrant for early fall, the grass too green, mushrooms too bright. Even the trees seem oddly hued as if brought in from a different forest.
“Margo,” calls an airy whisper.
She scrunches her eyes tightly shut. “No!” she wails. Rolling over, she uses her bad elbow to help push herself to her feet, ignoring the razors digging under the skin of her arm. Her hand flops about as she makes a break for the path.
“Margo.” The voice returns. Not a man, nor a woman. Just a taunting voice, one she should not acknowledge. “Margo.”
But this time she spares a glance in its direction. The colors of the forest dull into grays around the source of the voice once more. Her feet carry her toward the whispers, the woods no longer holding a flicker of her interest. Eyes black with lust, she craves for the promises of the globe. She can hear it calling for her, begging for her to take it into her hands. To own it. To claim it as hers.
“You cannot escape what has already been decided. I am yours. And you will be mine.”
She peers into the crystal sphere and finds a forest encircling a small city glittering with tiny lights.
“A snow globe,” whispers Margo.
“That was all you could say upon our last encounter.”
“Perfect…snow globe…”
“More perfect when the snow is falling.”
She marvels over its every detail. Crystal smooth as glass, golden trees intricately shaped in filigree, and, most unusually, a spiral-shaped etching in the front of its base. It appears haphazardly added, its style contradicting the fairy tale feeling.
“You who are cursed must meet your fate.” The whispers grow impatient. “Take me, Margo. You are only prolonging your suffering.”
The fire blazes within her, the yearning overwhelming. Her numb hand reaches outward and ignores the fact that the cold, deadening feeling grows stronger. She lays her fingers upon its cool surface, and her pain ceases. Life returns to her hand. It seems such hilarity for it to have hurt mere seconds prior when all it took to subside the pain was a single touch. She even laughs aloud, though it is a strange laugh that doesn’t belong to her body.
‘More perfect when the snow is falling,’ it had said.
Margo picks the globe up in her hands looking deep into the forest. She gives it a shake and watches the little sparkles float down from the crystal sky like fairy dust.
Smiling at her new possession, Margo sets the globe down to properly enjoy the falling snow and tries to let go.
All greed vanishes. The fire within her extinguishes.
“How did I…?” She stares at the globe in her hands unsure of where it had come from. She cannot let go. Ice creeps through her fingertips and into her palms. Fingers contorting, she tries with all her strength to peel away from the globe. She puts her foot on the globe to force her hands apart.
“Gah! Stupid!”
Her impulse lands her with three limbs fused to the globe. Her body weakens, and she does the only thing she can think of: she screams at the top of her lungs, knowing it is a wasted effort. The closest house is Michael’s, nearly a mile away.
The cold spreads into her forearms and calf like icy splinters climbing from the globe into her body; her scream shifts from a plea of help into pure agony. In a matter of seconds her entire body is frostbitten.
Rays of light break through globe, and it shakes uncontrollably in her hands. The forest is drowned in white. Her eyes tighten; her lids glow red. Wind rips at her hair, and her feet leave the ground. The ice sends her into convulsions until her body shrivels and twists into any shape to ease the pain. Her throat throbs, head feels as though at any moment it will burst.
The cold, hard earth meets her back, and everything stops.
Margo lays upon the ground panting with her eyes still tightly closed, wondering what pain could be inflicted upon her next. She cringes in fear, not certain it is truly over. But all she feels now is cold prickling at her skin.
Something else is different. She opens her hands studying her palms. The globe is gone. Maybe it allowed me to drop it through the torture, she thinks, instantly mortified for considering it allowing her to do anything. As if it thinks…
She spares a glance at her new surroundings. The once bright forest is now very different. Darkness has fallen over the woods and the coldness from the globe lurks. A layer of ice frosts over everything. The wind whips violently through the air. But what disturbs her the most is the way she had entered this clearing is flipped in the other direction. It is as if everything is opposite, like looking through a mirror.
Margo hops frantically to her feet, scrambling around in search of answers, until —
Her steps grow wobbly and her head heavy. The ground teeters below her as what little light is left continues to fade.
She isn’t sure what is happening, but two things are certain: one, touching that globe was a huge mistake; and, two, she is passing out.
Her body falls limp to the ground and she hits her head on something hard. Slowly, Margo gives in to the darkness and drifts off into nothingness.