Carrina Triumphant

Today I have decided to share a story with you that is now out of print. It was first published in Snapping Twig Magazine, which is now dead. Since this story has the infamous mark of "previously published" stamped on it, I figured why not put it here for your viewing? What's it gonna hurt, right?

Carrina Triumphant

by Julia Benally

The clock’s red light glowed 7:59 A.M., but the Arizona heat was already creeping into the semi-darkness of the room. A thin ray of blinding gold pierced through a crack in the cream-colored blinds and shined on Carrina’s eye. With an irritated frown, the six-year-old rolled over. The stream of sun followed, as if it had glitched like a video game. She covered her head to keep it away, but the blanket heated up like an oven.

Groaning, the girl threw the blanket off and sat up. Bushy raven hair popped out in all directions and poked her coal black eyes. Everything seemed as brown as the desert she lived in: the carpet, her bed, the bookshelf—even the white walls had a brownish hue. Going to the brown drawers, she pulled out a sparkly pink shirt and pink checkered skirt. Slipping them on, she tackled her wild locks. It didn’t go too well.

Sometime around 8:15, her mother blew in the door, a whirlwind of perfume and hairspray. “Carrina, what are you wearing?” She set lacquered nails on jutting hips. “Where's your uniform?”

Carrina sank into her bed. “I don't want it.” She frowned until the edges of her lips almost touched the bottom of her jaw. “It's ugly.”

The woman rolled her shadowy eyes. “Put your uniform on.” She snatched it out of the closet and tossed it on the bed. “Don't give me a bad time, or I'll spank you.” She bustled out.

Lower lip trembling in disgust and fear of a spank, Carrina removed her pretty clothes and struggled into the straitjacket—er, uniform. Now she was just as thirsty-looking as her room. She poked around for her shoes. It wasn't like she was in any rush. If she could be late all month, she could certainly be late today.

“Carrina,” her mother shouted from the kitchen, “hurry up!”

“I can't find my shoes,” Carrina said.

“You just can't find your shoes because you're afraid of that girl at school.” The woman returned with even more perfume and make-up. She yanked Carrina's white shoes out from under the bed. “Learn to stand up to her.”

Carrina twisted the bottom of her shirt into a ball around her fist. “Can I stay home today?”

“No. I have to go to the store and all you'll do is beg for things.” She said it as if that were the only reason Carrina couldn’t stay home. “Sit down. Remember you're making a book today?”

Carrina hopped onto her bed as her mom knelt to put her shoes on for her. “Will it have a leather cover and that gold stuff on the sides?”

The woman shoved one shoe on, making Carrina’s knee jerk to her chest. “Don't expect too much. You're only six.” She grabbed Carrina’s other foot and pushed the other shoe on. The wily woman took her hand and rushed out the door. “You’re going to be so late. Why do you wake up so late? Set your alarm! I haven't even got my earrings on.” With that, the over-dressed woman swung Carrina into the front seat of the white ford. She hit the gas with her leopard high heels and zoomed towards Carrina's school.

“You have to fight back,” said her mother for the umpteenth time.

“I'll get in trouble,” Carrina mumbled. It was no use talking to her mom. The woman was a fiery spark that shot all over the place without catching a breath. She’d run people over if not for the law. Sometimes she forgot that Carrina existed, or so Carrina thought.

Screeching to a halt in front of the school, Carrina's mother leaned over, pushed the door open, and pecked Carrina on the cheek. She shoved her onto the sidewalk. Before Carrina knew it, the white ford had sped away.

Carrina stared at the big buildings and empty schoolyard. The swings still rocked from recess in the dead air. The windows in the classrooms were lit, each a world of its own, tucked safely away from the deadness outside. Carrina meandered onto the quiet campus. Hopefully a dog might decide to eat her, but there were no dogs today.

She was a sad, tardy little girl when she opened the heavy metal door of the classroom and walked in. She halted and stared at the class. Something wasn’t right. The posters on the walls looked different, and the kids were all wrong. Goodness, even the teacher was in the wrong room. Did everybody get lost?

The strange teacher smirked at her. “What is it?”

Carrina stared. Everybody stared back.

“Are you new?” The teacher sounded rather sarcastic.

“Where's Mrs. Grant?” said Carrina. This had to be a substitute, and the kids, too. They were substitute kids. Or she was in some alternate universe.

“Mrs. Grant's in room twenty-four.” The teacher’s grin grew wider. “This is room fourteen.”

Carrina’s eyes widened. Heat ran up her neck, across her face and down to the tips of her wild curls. Thirty or so strange eyes bore into her as she backed out, pushed the door open and slid like a snake outside. Would her mom be upset if she walked home right now and buried herself in the backyard? But a dog might eat her before she reached the house.

Another hallway down and she entered the correct room.

“You see?” Mrs. Grant said. “I told you she’d be here.” The students roared with laughter.

Carrina’s eye twitched. “What?” She sat down at her desk. Of course it had to be in the middle of the room so everyone could laugh and point. No uniform could hide their horrid expressions or suppress the fact that half of them were bullies. It just tricked everyone into thinking that they were good little children.

Jimmy, who sat next to her, said, “Mrs. Grant said that you’d be late so she marked you here anyway.”

Carrina beamed. She had totally lucked out! Plus, she was in the right room. Everything was good. No one need know of the escapade in the other hall.

“When are we making the books?” Carrina said.

“After lunch.” His blonde hair bobbed around his head.

Carrina’s eyes sparkled. She had seen so many big books with great leather covers and golden words. She had held many as big as her, smelled their musty pages and read the beautiful words written across them. Of course she didn't know half of what she was reading, but it didn't matter. She was going to make a complicated book that no one could understand! What marvels would she write between those pages! People would find it centuries from now, in an old castle, and…

Mrs. Grant tapped her shoulder. “Carrina…Carrina!”

Carrina jumped. The woman seemed to tower to the ceiling. Her dark blue dress with the tiny red flowers encompassed the whole of Carrina's view. Goodness, Mrs. Grant's grimacing teeth were extra yellow today.

“Why didn’t you answer me?” Mrs. Grant drummed the desk with a bent ruler. “And why aren't you doing your math?”

“M-my math?” Carrina stared at the math paper with its incoherent black numbers. Where did that come from? “I thought math was at ten.” She could just see her boisterous mother in her mind's eye with a spank in her hard hand. The spank looked kind of green and globby with yellow eyes. But spanks shouldn't be green and globby, because they hurt, so a spank should have really looked like a...

“Carrina!” Mrs. Grant smacked the desk with the ruler. “It is ten, it’s past ten!” Snickers chortled though the room. Mrs. Grant glared and they shut up. Little Jimmy almost slammed his face into his math paper and scribbled: 1+5= appols. Carrina always knew he was a bad speller.

Mrs. Grant snatched up the empty math paper. “Come to the front of the class.” She slapped the paper on a lone desk and stood beside it.

Carrina's face reddened. The desk was right in front of Crystal whose spoiled gray eyes gazed at her like a wolf ready to pounce. She sneered at Carrina and stuck her tongue out. For some reason, Mrs. Grant didn't catch that. She never caught anything important. It had to be because of that hideous dress.

Gripping the edge of her desk, Carrina pushed herself up. Her chair grated across the hard gray carpet. Sneering, laughing eyes glanced her way as she made the green mile to the lonesome desk. She sat down in front of the rabid wolf. The chewed pencil in that grubby slender hand didn’t scrape the math paper like the other pencils. The wolf was watching.

As soon as Mrs. Grant turned her back, Crystal poked Carrina with the pencil. Carrina bit her lip and stared at the math paper. The pencil tip gouged into her shoulder and then her arm. It slid across her back. Crystal giggled and Carrina knew that the wolf had drawn on her shirt. Paper crinkled. Ppft sounded from those thin pale lips and something landed in Carrina’s hair. The girl’s mouth tightened, but Crystal might beat her up if she did anything.

Suddenly, Crystal started pulling the paper out of Carrina's bushy locks.

“That's very nice of you, Crystal,” Mrs. Grant said kindly, and then her voiced sharpened. “How are you doing, Carrina?” She scrutinized Carrina's paper with beady eyes. She almost seemed disappointed as she straightened up. “Everyone, line up for lunch. Carrina, you line up last.”

“I'll wait with her,” Crystal said as Carrina glanced fearfully at her.

Mrs. Grant smiled. “You're a good girl, Crystal.” She left them there to oversee the other students.

Crystal eyed Carrina with her little weasel face. “How come you don't fix your hair? You look ugly. Are you stupid? Don't you know how to brush your hair?”

Carrina twisted the end of her shirt into a ball. “I do brush it.”

“You're lying.” Crystal pointed at Carrina’s face and almost poked her eye. “Mrs. Grant, Carrina's a liar!”

Mrs. Grant ignored the outburst. “Line up, girls.” Children would be children!

Carrina lined up first, but Crystal knocked her back with her butt and cut in front of her. “You have to be last.” Her nose pinched up.

Carrina sucked the sudden tears back in. If she cried, Crystal would laugh. Everyone would make fun of her, except Jimmy. Why couldn't she stand by Jimmy? He glanced back at her with his light blue eyes, and then at Crystal who grimaced at him. He quickly looked away. Crystal would love an excuse to pound his tiny frame. Last time, Crystal had said he had on lipstick before shoving dirt into his mouth.

They marched to the cafeteria, but as was Mrs. Grant's custom, she stopped at the restrooms first. Carrina’s tiny bladder squealed for relief, but how embarrassing to be the only one who needed to pee! And she was starving! The restrooms would only slow them down. She was at the end of the line and might get stuck with the fish sandwich.

Mrs. Grant scanned the students. “Does anyone need to go?”

Carrina looked around. If someone else went, she would, too. But no one had to. How inconsiderate these people were! Didn't they know she had to pee? Crystal might follow her into the bathroom. What was she going to do?

Amidst her panicked thoughts, Mrs. Grant said, “All right, let's go.” She walked off and the students followed. Carrina was going to die, she knew it. She couldn't hold it. But she couldn't tell Mrs. Grant that she needed to pee, not when Mrs. Grant had already given her the chance. Mrs. Grant might scold her. She already had it in for her.

In the midst of this awful panic, Carrina couldn't hold it. Her pants grew wet and warm as a horrific puddle formed beneath her feet, filling her white shoes. Carrina's heart stopped. Maybe an alien would fly over and kidnap her. But no alien came. They didn't want to pick up a wet girl. Maybe someone else would get blamed for it. If enough people walked over the wet, someone would get blamed. That's what happened to Taylor last time. But last time wasn't this time. That stupid Crystal, who didn't have the decency to get run over, suddenly shouted, “Ew! Carrina peed on herself!”

“YUCK!” The students formed a semicircle around her. Now she stood alone in a puddle of pee, the centerpiece of humiliation. Carrina couldn't move or think. Her social life was officially canceled. Nothing would ever be the same again. She would have to move away to escape her disgrace.

Mrs. Grant stared at the ceiling. “Carrina!” This kid was driving her insane! “Go to the nurse.”

Carrina tried to appear calm and collected as she walked away, but Crystal's voice rang out over the lines of students heading to lunch. “Carrina peed on herself!”

The masses turned and looked. They pointed, they laughed, they cried out in disgust, they called her names, but no teacher lifted a finger to silence them. Tears dribbled down Carrina’s cheeks and she started to run. She stumbled into the office, hoping for some kind of compassion, or at least mercy.

The nurse’s face screwed up as if she had poured salt on a lemon and had eaten it whole. “What happened?”

Carrina’s mouth moved, but no sound came out.

A teacher getting a band-aid pointed ruthlessly out, “She's peed on herself.” Her grating voice was loud enough for the aliens in space to hear it. Where were they, anyway?

Sighing, the nurse went to the closet and yanked out a pair of yellow corduroys and brown sandals. The travesty of it all! These were the ugliest pants ever created. For sure everyone would know she had peed on herself. These were pee-pants and they were the color of pee, too. How could she face humanity? What was for lunch? Hopefully it wasn't something good if she had to miss it.

Thrown out on the playground with no lunch, Carrina made the mistake of wandering by the big tree by the swings. Crystal lurked around that tree the way roaches lurk around trash bins. The mongrel’s chortle caught Carrina’s ears.

“She peed all over the place!” Crystal had to stop to catch her nasty breath. A dot of pizza sauce touched the corner of her mouth. “It was all in her shoes. Ew, here she comes! Look at her!” Crystal's minions pointed, making disgusted faces. They moved away from her and told everyone else to do the same.

Carrina tried to hide, but her pants were too bright and too yellow. Before her humiliation hit its peak the whistle blew.

As they headed back inside, Crystal still whispered about Carrina and brats kept pointing. Carrina hated them! Would that they would all get run over! Only Jimmy was her friend because Jimmy had peed on himself, too, once.

“You can sit back at your desk now, Carrina,” said Mrs. Grant.

Carrina plopped down beside Jimmy in relief. The middle of the room was better than the front.

Jimmy leaned over, and in as soothing a voice as possible, he said, “I don't like those pants either.”

Carrina’s face screwed up. She had a partner in pee, but he wore these pants, too?

“Class,” said Mrs. Grant, “we’re making a book now.”

Carrina looked up. The glory of the book wiped away Crystal’s nightmarish cruelty. The book was what Carrina had come to school for, why she didn't run off when sent to the nurse. Mrs. Grant handed out big wads of lined paper, and a piece of gray-blue construction paper.

“Fold all the paper in half the short way,” said Mrs. Grant. “Put the blue one on the outside. It’s the cover.”

Carrina yelped without thinking. “That's it?” She stared at the hideous folds of paper on her desk. “Where's the leather? Where's the pretty paper?”

“Were we supposed to have leather?” Jimmy said, folding one of his pieces into a triangle.

Carrina raised her hand.

“What is it, Carrina?” Mrs. Grant looked very tired.

“Aren't we supposed to have leather and gold paper and fancy writing?”

“No.”

Carrina's mouth fell open and she gazed at the piles of paper in dismay. She had been looking forward to this crud? This was the accumulation of her hopes and dreams, a pile of line paper covered by a gross blue-gray cover? And the inside was going to be filled with what, her crooked letters? No print, no beautiful art work, no royalties? What kind of a book was this?

Titters filled the room as Crystal murmured, “Stupid.”

Mrs. Grant didn't hear her. She never heard Crystal being a witch.

At the end of the day, Mrs. Grant had a surprise. “We're going to go outside. All of you have been very good and have gotten all your work done. Line up. Carrina, you have to sit on the wall.”

Crystal chortled and hopped to the front of the line, cutting Jimmy off who backed away from her as if she were a disease. In a few minutes, the playground spread before them, a cornucopia of fun and freedom. Carrina sat against the wall, wishing to sulk in peace, but Crystal and her minions descended.

“Hi, pee-girl!” Crystal stomped on Carrina's brown sandals. “Look at her ugly hair!”

Her minions pointed then flipped their braids and pigtails in their little fingers.

“Where's your boyfriend Jimmy?” Crystal looked at her friends, who laughed as if she were so funny. “He was wearing those pants last time, too! Carrina is wearing boy pants!” Her minions joined in until they were chanting “boy pants, boy pants, boy pants!”

Not far away, Mrs. Grant was rethinking her life and didn't notice anything.

Carrina stared at Crystal, tears welling to her eyes, and then something snapped. Manic rage burned up from her toes and into her heart. She had had enough of this brat! Before she knew it she had jumped to her feet and whacked Crystal across that pinched face. The brat staggered back in shock and pain. Her little victim had risen against her? She wasn't supposed to do that! And then Carrina tackled her down, beating on her face with all her might, tearing at Crystal's silky locks with feverish fingers. She ripped the shrieking girl’s buttons clean off before Mrs. Grant yanked her back.

She shouted into her face, “What's the matter with you?”

“I hate her,” Carrina screamed.

“You should be ashamed of yourself.” Mrs. Grant pulled Crystal to her feet and marched them both to the principal's office, which enjoined the nurse's office.

“I'm not,” said Carrina. “She deserved it!”

“Bullying is not allowed.”

Carrina didn't answer, but straightened her back, eying Crystal who cowered under her gaze. The wolf’s annoying bawls was music to Carrina's ears. The girl grinned. Maybe they would kick her out of school and she would never see these chumps again!

They entered the principal's office. They had a great hullabaloo about poor Crystal as every idiot in that office abased Carrina's behavior.

The vice principal stared at Carrina’s smug face. “She's not even sorry!”

“She's suspended,” growled the principal. “Call her mother.”

Mrs. Grant put Carrina inside the secretary’s office, and there Carrina waited, like a triumphant imp. About fifteen minutes later, her mother’s voice sounded outside. The principal and Mrs. Grant spoke. Where was Crystal?  Maybe she died? Carrina grinned.

The door opened and her mom came in, a smirk on her face. “Well, Carrina, it's time to go home.” She held out her hand, the long red nails glossy under the fluorescent lights. Carrina got primly up and took her hand. “That girl won't bother you anymore.”

Carrina smiled savagely.

The End