?? They Call Her Rabbit ??NOT ME, but the new girl in school.
One of the mean girls started it, saying that the Wyoming transferee reminds her of the waistcoat-wearing rabbit in Alice in Wonderland.
Keeps checking her watch, always in a hurry, and my God, did you see how high she jumped, just because someone somewhere down the hall slammed a door shut?
Mean Girl has a point, but I think she's just jealous. "Rabbit" does jump rather high, and maybe Mean Girl sees that as a threat. She's Cheerleader Captain, after all, and with their annual rah-rah-rah competition just a month away?
I can see where she's coming from, sure, but IMHO...the comparison's a little off. "Rabbit" reminds me more of an Eat Me cookie...only hers would read Bully Me to certain people.
Which said certain people are happy to do, unfortunately.
I feel for her, really. I might be half-British, half-bitch, but a bully is one thing I'll never be. Like her, I was bullied in the past as well, but in my case, it's mostly because my mum (God rest her soul) had this super great idea of naming me Adalheidis.
It's a German name, even though my mom isn't German, and a name so bloody old that even the Germans have forgotten about it. Most importantly though, the name's a spelling monstrosity; while the other kids were already out playing, five-year-old me was still stuck in class, trying to remember where exactly the H went in my name. I knew it wasn't next to D, but was it before or after L?
Point is, writing my name took so much longer than answering my first math test, that by the time I made it to the sandbox, lines had been drawn, everyone's got their own cliques, and I'm officially A Loser.
Middle school was just as bad. Since the other kids didn't want to risk being labeled stupid for mispronouncing or misspelling my name, they took to calling me Ada-Something, and the name stuck. Even worse, they'd say it with this little sneer, like I'm the kind of person whose name isn't worth remembering.
The only reason high school doesn't suck as bad is because my sisters and I had to move from California to New Jersey, and here in Maravilloso High I made sure no one had any reason to bully me. Those years taught me a lot, and first thing I did as last year's new girl? Introduce myself as Addie and nothing else. And the next thing I did? Come up with three major rules.
Keep your head down, mind your own beeswax, and never get involved.
These things are what keep me out of the bullies' radar, and I live by them religiously...or at least I used to...until the day I accidentally witnessed the same bunch of girls locking "Rabbit" inside the school's storage room.
And the moment I realize what's happening?
Oh, you bet I didn't save her.
I'm not an idiot, you know.
It's just me, and there's like an entire catty litter of them. So I had to wait until they're all gone before I rushed out and banged my fist against the storage room's doors. "New Girl? Are you okay?"
"I...I...I'm——aaaaaaaaaaaaah!"
My heart nearly stops beating at the sound of Rabbit's scream. What the heck have they done to her?
"Hang on, okay?"
There's a heavy rope of chains looped around the handles to keep the doors from opening, and
it takes an awful time to undo their work with my fingers having started to shake. You'd think their weird-colored lipsticks would be the most dangerous thing stored inside their Louis Vuitton purses, but nope. They have chains instead. Chains, dammit, and how those girls managed to get their bloody hands on it in the first place, I don't even want to know.
A sigh of relief escapes me as the chains finally fall to the ground with a creepy, rattling sound, and I slowly pull the doors open. "New Girl?"
Nothing.
"New Girl?"
I have the doors halfway open now, but I still don't hear anything, and nausea nearly kicks in as I imagine the new girl's dead body lying on the floor.
Please don't be dead.
I finally have the doors flung open to the sides, and darkness swells up from the storage room. It's completely black inside, and I can't understand why, with the afternoon sunlight behind me still burning rather brightly. I even glance over my shoulder to be sure and check my shadow on the ground.
Yup. Still sunny.
But when I turn back to the storage room...
Huh.
Still dark as night, the golden rays of sunlight seemingly unable to penetrate past the storage room's wide-open doors.
"New Girl? Hello? Anyone?"
I wish I knew her name, but today's just the first day of school, and "Rabbit" is the only thing I know about her.
"Can you make a sound? Any sound at all?"
Still nothing, and although I try groping for a light switch without entering the storage room, there's nothing but just really weird walls: rough, crumbly, and slightly damp like the walls of a rabbit hole, maybe?