“Cute,” Xander agreed, nodding.
“She was walking home from school last week, the way that she has taken for nine years. The same way we take home. Three guys, the youngest was probably twenty-eight, grabbed her and dragged her into an alley. They all raped her, and they all took a turn, and then they beat her,” Mike said, leaning in closer to Xander as he spoke. “The doctors are saying her uterus is pretty much demolished. And you know what? The alley was right across the street from her house. She has to look at it now every time she-“
Xander raised a hand for him to stop, and he did. There was a long moment of silence then, as Xander traced the outline of the girl’s small face with his index finger, then carefully closed the book. He pressed his elbows into the wood of the table, knotting his fingers together in front of his mouth. “What are we going to do about this?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” Mike admitted, slumping down onto the table. “Can we do anything? Should we? She isn’t even going to press charges.”
“What?!” Xander yelled in astonishment, gaining the attention of the principal. He calmed himself, then repeated: “What?”
“She won’t tell anyone who did it. Most people in school are just calling her a slut.”
Xander shook his head. “The ignorance of this school’s student body amazes me sometimes. What about a rape test?”
“She has to give consent, and as soon as the doctor mentioned it she wouldn’t let him near her again.”
“Can you really blame her?” Xander reasoned. “If I’d just gone through that, I wouldn’t want any cruddy old man going down there with a pair of forceps any time soon.”
“Guess not.”
They both sighed, just as the school bell rang. They looked up into the Science Lab as one, watching Cathy as she sat down to her Biology class. She waved to them, all the anger she’d felt moments ago having wasted away in the halls.
“I can’t help but think that it could have been her.”
“You don’t have to tell me,” Xander nodded glumly.
“Are we going to do anything?”
Xander looked up at Cathy, sadness creeping over her soft face as she started to stare into space. “Oh, you’d better believe it.”
CHAPTER THREE:
SUPER HERO
Cathy stared blankly out the window of room two oh three, watching a few sparrows dance and fly about. They interacted with one another playfully between the rays of sunlight that streaked across the sky in such well-defined lines that they almost looked solid. A few strands of her jet black hair fell down in front of her face again, and she considered taking the special bio-room scissors and lopping it all off. She settled for simply pushing it behind her ear for the fifth time that minute. That was okay, though. The little annoyances helped. They meant that she had something to focus on. That she could pretend she didn’t hear their voices.
All around her, the rest of her Biology class was talking, most of them so loud that she couldn’t have blocked them out if she’d wanted to. But every now and again, there was something worse. The quick rush of air that accompanied a whisper. Every time she turned to look in whatever direction it had come from, notes would mysteriously drop from desks and eyes would dart away to the nearest available place, many of them choosing to watch the sparrows as well.
She closed her eyes and let her chin drop until it rested against her blouse. It was white with little frills across a neck that was unusually high for her. She was also wearing pants that were higher up her stomach than she’d ever worn before in her life. She might as well been wearing overalls.
Yet still, they whispered.
Even Mr. Miles, standing at the head of the class pointing out the greater aspects of evolution and the Darwinian theories, something about birds on islands in a place she’d never heard of before. He wasn’t saying a thing about her, at least not verbally. But his eyes were casting odd glances her way. At the beginning of the year, those eyes had been kind, the wrinkles around his cheeks had made him look warm, and his British accent had marked him as a kind soul. Then, after the murders, his gaze turned to pity. That one had been popular among a lot of the staff at first. They looked at her the way she looked at the children from Afghanistan in one of those telethon pledges for PBS. In the final stage of this ‘face evolvement’ theory of hers, it was like the dual islands of birds in Darwin’s theorem. Half of the school’s population had done what Miles was doing now: looking at her with a kind of suspicion that was hurtful for both of them to have on his face. The other half (a segment grossly populated with boys) were looking at her as if she were, in their own words, a ‘slutty piece of tail.’ She never did understand that expression, but she felt she was starting to get the gist of it now. She looked down, and realized that her bra was visible through her blouse in this light. She grabbed her jean jacket and quickly pulled it over herself, then glanced at Mr. Miles, who suddenly seemed to no longer harbor any interest toward her.
She clutched her jacket around herself and leaned her delicate head against the window, deciding it best to keep her attention focused on the
