For the oddest second I almost feel envy that Brian gets to see a different part of the house as he is carried out in the wrathful hand of our teenage tormentor.
That’s how much I want out of this room.
I stumble back over to the others, still reeling from the situation that was very nearly had.
“Are you okay?” says Kelly, helping me into a seat. I nod.
“I’m fine. Is she…” I say, indicating over at Anna. Gina is sitting by her, rubbing her shoulders to calm her. She didn’t take Brian’s little scene up there too well. I’m sure it’s not a pleasant thing to watch helplessly as your boyfriend and soon to be baby daddy is almost eaten alive by a crazed 150 foot tall teenaged girl. Anna’s eyes are red, but she’s not crying. It looks like SHE actually did go into shock. Kelly and I return to her.
“Anna?” whispers Kelly, touching her chin. “It’s okay. It’s fine. She just took Brian to get cleaned up. It’s okay,” she says. Anna shakes her head no a few times, her lip quivering, but doesn’t say anything.
“She… she almost…”
“No she didn’t!” says Kelly, not wanting her to get the words out for fear she’ll have a breakdown. It’s a terrible thing to have to think about, and we need to get it out of Anna’s head if she’s going to stay strong. She has to at this point, with another life inside of her.
“She almost…” she says, swallowing hard, the next word barely coming out because of the dryness in her throat. “…ate him…”
“That’s not true. She was just trying to teach him a lesson. You saw. She wasn’t going to…” frantically continues Kelly, trying to cut her off.
“Yes she did!” says Anna suddenly. “She had him up there. You… you… you saw her… she licked her lips… she… she showed her teeth. She was going to put him… inside. Like he was a little piece of meat. Oh my God, she was GOING to do it! She was going to, don’t you see? We’re all… we’re all just pieces of food to her,” she says hysterically, her voice cracking frantically, finally doubling over and descending into sobs. Kelly kneels beside her, whispering into her ear along with Gina.
I feel more helpless at this second than five minutes ago when Julia was ready to squeeze the life from my pathetic body between her thumb and palm. I really don’t know what I can do. I wish I could help, but I honestly cannot even fathom what’s just happened. I sit down, stressed. And I finally start to realize what Brian was talking about.
We can’t go on like this. Something has to happen soon.
The silence, muddled only by the quiet sobs of Anna and the comforting whispers of Gina and Kelly, is finally broken when the door slams back open and Julia walks back in, her fist clenched in its normal, more gentle way around Brian. She sits at the table, and her eye catches me; almost immediately her fingers are twisting around my desk, yanking it out of the way so that her fingers can move with renewed zeal at my defenseless person. Her fingers snake underneath my desk, lifting it up, her palm enveloping around me still in my chair, her thumb tapping the desk to the ground with a simple motion. I’m up in the air again in no time, but I can definitely feel a difference in the way she’s holding me. It’s not the tense, rougher hold of a matter of minutes ago. It’s back to its softer grip, where I am free to wiggle around while she holds me in a comfortable position. I breathe a small sigh of relief.
At this particular moment, I’m reasonably confident Julia’s not going to swallow me.
It’s something to be thankful for, right now at least.
She takes the both of us back to eye level and actually opens her palm but leaves her fingers in an upright position so we can lean against them like a chair. Of course, it’s also to make sure we look her in the face at all times.
“Okay, now that we’re all…” she starts, clearing her throat and breaking eye contact for just a second. “…calmed down, let’s talk for a second.”
There is a slight movement forward as she leans back in her swivel chair and crosses her bare leg before adjusting her grip on us.
“I am VERY…” she says, doing the light squeeze on us. “VERY. Disappointed in the two of you. I’ve come to expect better from all of you, and here you are, just going against everything I’ve tried to teach you. I almost feel like…” she says, rolling her head back in a relaxed way, sighing deeply and letting the air out. “I’ve failed. Now, do you two feel that way? Do you feel like this happened because I haven’t been doing a good job of taking care of you?”
Both of us nod our heads no in quick succession, following it up with surprised and confused no’s, as if she’s crazy to think such a thing.
“That’s nice of you to say so, but I really think I have. I really think I’ve failed. And I don’t want to fail. So, to make sure you learn your lesson, I’m enforcing a strict policy now. The NEXT time this happens, I will be…” she says, clicking her tongue in her mouth absentmindedly, as if she was talking about the most mundane thing. “… forced to take more drastic action. And I don’t think either of you WANT that, do you?” she says, raising her eyebrows up. We both shake no continuously once again, saying no. She smiles sweetly at us, emitting a low chuckle of adoration.
“I didn’t think so. And I don’t want to have to do it, either. So, let’s all just take a deep breath…” she says, and does it. We do it too, because we know if she doesn’t feel our chests rising in her palm, she’s going to object. “AND let it out. Good. Okay. Now, just for today, since we’ve already gone through a lot, I’m going to leave it at a detention. Be grateful it’s just that,” she says sternly, as if reprimanding students. I know what she wants now, but the words feel like poison in my throat.
“Thank you,” we both say nicely, putting up big fake grins. She smiles back.
“You’re welcome. Now, let’s all get back to the day’s lesson…” she says, setting us back in the classroom.
And damn it, if all of us aren’t forced to sit down in our desks and do math problems as if we DIDN’T just have our gigantic captor threatening to swallow us like shrimp if we took another step in the wrong direction…