Sophie Littlefield - Banished

But when Milla struck the vault, momentum carried her into the side, and the impact sent her flying backward. She fell on her back, and I winced at the sound her shoulders made as they struck the springboard-that had to hurt-but then there was another thud and a reverberation I could feel through my feet on the hardwood gym floor, as her head bounced off the edge of the springboard.

The two girls at the front of the line jumped back with little shrieks, and then there was a second when no one moved as Milla rolled gently to a stop at the base of the springboard, her arms flopped out at her sides.

Someone screamed.

Ms. Turnbull and Mr. C came running, but I got to Milla first. I didn’t even know I was moving until I was crouched by her side, reaching for her hand, but Ms. Turnbull slapped my hand out of the way.

“Don’t touch!” she screamed, even though Mr. C bent down and picked up the same hand I’d been reaching for.

I backed away, but I didn’t want to. There was something inside me, some roiling force, that was making my fingers itch to touch Milla, that was sending the blood in my veins surging through my body with hot insistence. I wanted-no, I needed -to help, to put my hands on Milla. Even as I realized how bizarre my impulse was, I had to fight not to act on it.

I stepped back into the silent crowd of kids making a circle around the vault. Ms. Turnbull and Mr. C talked in hushed voices, feeling for a pulse and waving their hands in front of Milla’s eyes, which were open but unblinking. Ms. Turnbull put her face close to Milla’s as though she was going to kiss her on the lips, but then she turned away.

“She’s breathing,” we all heard her say.

“She’s unconscious,” Mr. C said in a panicked voice. I saw the flyaway ends of the hair he combed over his freckled scalp trembling as he crab-walked away from Milla’s body like she was on fire, and I realized he had no idea what to do, despite all the years he’d taught us basic CPR.

“I’m going to go call.” Ms. Turnbull scrambled to her feet and sprinted toward the gym teachers’ office.

In the seconds it took for me to break away from the crowd of kids and rush to Milla, there was not a single sound in the gym. No one spoke, or coughed, or called my name. No one tried to stop me. But when I picked up Milla’s cool, limp hand with its ragged fingernails and rough calluses, I stopped hearing anything else anyway.

At least, I heard nothing in the gym. Inside my head a strange whispered chorus started up, a murmured chant that made no sense.

A second later, my vision went. I don’t think I closed my eyes, but everything else disappeared and it was as though I was looking into time going forward and backward at once, like I’d jumped off a cliff and hovered somewhere in black empty space.

“Milla,” I whispered. I felt my lips move, so I was pretty sure I’d actually spoken, and then I had that same blood-rushing feeling again, like every bit of energy inside me was being pushed to my fingertips, where it dissipated into Milla’s body.

I let go of her hand and my fingers moved over her neck and face until they found her scalp, which was hot and damp, the hair plastered across a long bump that swelled under my touch. The rushing sensation intensified, and my own heart seemed to slow and falter, and I started to sway, but somehow I couldn’t let go, couldn’t stop touching Milla’s injured body. Just when I felt like I had exhausted the last of my will, something shoved me hard and I fell onto my shoulder. My vision and hearing returned instantly.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Ms. Turnbull screamed, her face purple and her hand raised high as though she was about to hit me. Maybe she would have, except that Milla, lying at her feet, rolled over and threw up.

It turned out to be a good thing because Ms. Turnbull forgot all about me. Milla sat up, wiping her mouth against her sleeve, hiccuped a couple of times and looked like she was going to cry, but as Ms. Turnbull shouted questions at her she answered them, in a voice too low and mumbly for the rest of us to hear.

I retreated back into the crowd of kids. A couple of them started to ask me what had happened, but then the door to the gym burst open and Mr. Macklin, the vice principal, came in and started yelling at all of us to go to the locker rooms and get dressed for next period, that everything was under control and none of our concern.

I went with the rest of them, but I couldn’t help glancing back over my shoulder at Milla, who was trying to stand up even while Ms. Turnbull pushed her back down to the floor.

Milla was watching me. The look she gave me was hard to understand: fear battling contempt, with barely a trace of gratitude.

The only emotion completely absent from her face was surprise.

THAT AFTERNOON I walked to the grocery store rather than riding the bus. I needed to walk; my mind was unsettled because of what had happened in gym. I couldn’t stop playing it over and over in my head: the sound Milla’s head made hitting the floor; the way her skin felt under my fingers; the blinding, swirling feeling when I touched her.

When I got home, carrying grocery bags the last mile, Rascal bounded across the yard to meet me. He was part blue tick, part beagle, part something else. Gram got him from one of her customers after some stray got through a fence and impregnated a prize hound. The customer was going to drown the whole litter, but Gram took a shine to Rascal. For a while, anyway-she got tired of him when he wasn’t a puppy anymore.

He nuzzled my hand, then slipped in the door and went straight to Chub, who was sitting in front of an open kitchen cabinet, playing with the pots and pans while the lids rolled around on the floor.

“Russo!” Chub exclaimed, clapping his hands and throwing his arms around Rascal.

“Russo” was one of Chub’s better words. He called me Hayee, and he could say “wah” for “water,” and “chah” for “chair.” Other things he had his own special names for, sounds that had nothing to do with the actual word, like “shoshah” for “flower” and “bobbo” for “truck.” Most of the time, he didn’t make words at all, just hummed, sounds rising and falling like a song only he could hear.

I knew that there was something wrong with Chub. I tried to figure it out by doing research on the Internet, but there were so many causes of developmental delays, I didn’t even know where to start. I knew that eventually the social workers were going to demand he be tested, but I wasn’t anxious for that day to arrive because I was afraid they’d put him in some group home for kids like him. And I didn’t want Chub to go. Ever. Besides Rascal, he was all I had to love.

When Chub first came to live with us, Gram changed. She spent time with him every day, murmuring softly to him while I did the chores, holding up toys and flash cards and trying to get him to talk. Those were good days. If Chub did something new, if he crawled toward Gram or reached for the shiny blocks she held up, she felt like celebrating; she turned off the TV and didn’t drink as much and even complimented me on whatever I made for dinner.

But when he had a bad day, when he wouldn’t repeat the sounds she made, or ate dirt from the yard, Gram seemed to sink a little lower in her chair. As I got more and more attached to Chub, I realized that Gram saw him as a project, an experiment. And when she couldn’t fix what was wrong with him, she lost interest.

Within a couple of months, she was back to spending her days in the chair, watching TV and smoking. She began drinking earlier in the day and barely paid any attention to Chub, but she kept cashing the checks the state sent for his care, and he became mine to look after just like Rascal had.