prep school

It was 2008 and I had gravel stuck in the back of my shoe.

 I wore a beige, short-sleeved, button-up with a navy blue khaki skirt. Well, we all wore that, the girls at least, it was our uniform. Except my shirt was a bit different, right over my pocket, I had a baby blue pin that said “Head Girl”. I had been elected by a student body of about 100 students; grades 4 and up only. Still, it was half of the school, plus some teachers. The small, private and angelican school was essentially one hallway with red columns and no wall. All the classrooms were facing the field, where we had a goalpost with no net.

School had just been let out. As the head girl,I had to go outside and ring the bell to dismiss everyone. Students poured out of the classrooms and started to run onto the field and into the gravel-filled playground. I watched as the scanty flock of beige and navy blue bodies rushed into the field. Some older students hung by the chain link fence that separated the school from a neighbouring hospital. The “Head Boy” at the time, Tristan Quadri, swore he saw a man holding his own eye run into the hospital two years prior. He claims it happened after football practice, late one evening. 

I didn’t see it actually happen, that’s one thing that I’m grateful for. Emily Blanc said a stone slipped, Hannah Black said some boys were playing with a “boulder” and lost grip. I don’t know how many students were around when it happened, it could've been five or six. The point is there were no teachers around, they had been called into a staff meeting about sixth graders picking cherries on the hospital's property. 

On the playground, some students stood over a little boy's body, staring at the red running down his forehead and the tears running down his cheeks. The heat from the sun stuck to the stones. They say he came up to his feet, held his head and ran.

I had been sitting on a bench under the one big tree the school had, trying to get the gravel out of my socks when I saw them. He ran toward me, holding his head with his right hand and covering his mouth with his left. The group of students behind him sounded like sopranos. 

I think I was about eleven years old, he was about seven.

The crying boy rushed his way into my arms and began bawling. The choir informed me he had been hit. Obviously, I thought, but what was I supposed to do about it?

I remember looking down at him as I felt the warmth of his blood seeping through my shirt and onto my skin. I held his hand and walked to the head office, where all twenty teachers were.

             It had been a school rule that students were not allowed in the head office. The front door was a cold mixture of steel and zinc.

The bleeding boy sat in the hallway while I struggled to open the heavy door. I told him everything would be okay and that he should keep applying pressure while singing the national anthem. I sang it with him, I was in choir back then. 

The door plan didn’t work. Instead, I climbed through the nearby window where students would normally gather to buy popsicles after school. It was a tiny sliding window that our principal would, bi-monthly, sell popsicles from. 

I started screaming before my feet even touched the ground. There were two rooms, I opened the first without a knock and shouted “Aiden is bleeding”. I wish I knew what they were thinking at that moment, seeing me there, covered in fresh blood and tears and stupid fucking ribbons in my hair. And like a twisted game of musical chairs, everyone jumped out of their seats in unison.

I was then bombarded by bodies, smushed against my face and grabbing on my arms. I floated on the hysteria of the herd of school teachers. Questions, questions, questions. Fault, blame, fault, blame.

       There was no nurse, no ambulance, no doctor, just twenty teachers and a little girl. I don’t remember the noise, Aiden’s scream, rather. Thalia from grade four said it sounded “ancestral”, I didn’t know what that meant at the time and I’m not sure how she did. My brain must’ve blocked that part out because all I saw was squinched faces all around. Mr. Bird, the football coach, hoisted him into his arms while the art teacher, Ms. Tenya, wrapped his head with her yellow fuzzy cardigan. It looked like a halo.  

Students were ordered into classrooms and told to shut the doors. No one told me anything though, that was something I found strange. No one told me to wash my hands, get a new shirt or call my mom. I watched as my peers scurried indoors and peeked through the grills on the windows. There was even more gravel in my shoes at this point. The pieces of stone tore holes into my socks and pierced the soles of my feet. 

A small huddle formed with Aiden in the middle, cradled by two men. We all hastened across the field. I kept singing the national anthem and looking at Aiden in his eyes.
“Keep us free from evil powers,

Be our light through countless hours.

To our Leaders, Great Defender,

Grant true wisdom from above.”
He mouthed the words along with me as he watched me skip backwards toward the hospital and sing like a fool. The teachers mumbled along with me, making the drum sounds with their mouths. I saw his eyes roll back, so I sang louder and flailed my arms.
“Stir response to duty’s call, strengthen us the weak to cherish,

Give us vision lest we perish.

Knowledge send us Heavenly Father,

Grant true wisdom from above.”

I never once ran out of breath, each word was louder than the last. 

My back hit the fence and I fell through to the other side, the huddle shuffled around me as I got up to collect myself. 

    My skip turned into a run and outside turned into the inside of a waiting room. 

The room was humid, Aiden wailed in my lap while the teachers explained to the front desk lady why it was an emergency. The whole room stared at us; the two children in the back row, I stared back. It felt like when I screamed in the head office. He wailed on a loop, my head was throbbing. I looked down at his face framed by dried-up blood, the middle of his face was wet and red. I could see the green and blue veins in his eyes as he sobbed. Ms. Tenya’s cardigan now had a brownish stain by the sleeves. 

Mr Bird snatched Aiden up from my arms and into a wheelchair. He and the other teachers ran toward a door I was too short to see from where I was sitting. Aidens cry descended into the back of the hospital and then came silence. One by one everyone in the waiting room turned around to look at me, like extras in a video game. The lady at the front desk finally broke the silence and told me to go back to school. I left, through the door and through the fence. My legs didn’t take me farther than the middle of the field. I remember I just kneeled there, the sprinklers turned on but I didn’t care.