Hopeless Maddy

Prologue

Miss Peters sat alone in the far corner of the teacher's lounge, reading and re-reading the yellow lined paper in front of her. There had to be another clue that she was missing, some key part that she could not yet understand.

Five pages of messy fourth grade handwriting and several misspelled words had passed. But she still could not find any answers concerning her student.

Madeira Gerard, when she saw that name on her roster just after summer vacation had started, Miss Peters pictured a lovely little girl with bright bouncing blonde locks and a sweet young smile. The name was so pretty, she fell in love with this student before they had even met.

A homely mousy haired girl raised her hand though when she called Madeira's name that fall, her face blank and emotionally drained. The eyes alone on that child made her heart sore, because it looked like behind those eyes this girl was ready to die.

"What are you working on?" Mrs. Lambert asked half-heartedly as she sat down with her fresh cup of coffee.

Miss Peters sighed as she set the stapled pages down on the table. Running her hand through her hair she avoided Mrs. Lambert's gaze while she thought of the best way to answer.

"I have this student..."

"Is it that Gerard girl?" Lambert interrupted. Miss. Peters didn't have to answer, for Mrs. Lambert already knew exactly what she was facing.

"Had her in my class a few years back," Lambert began. "She used to play with a couple of boys back then on the monkey bars. They had this horrid little game they would play where the boys would be aliens and she would 'kill' them by knocking them off the top of the bars. They stopped eventually, the boy's mothers got sick of their sons coming home with bruises I guess. So what has she done now?"

"It's this story," Miss Peters held up the manuscript in demonstration and handed it over. "I assigned a creative writing project last week, and this is what she came up with."

"Townsfolk burnt to death by dragons, women being hanged?" Mrs. Lambert scoffed as she read, "she certainly has gotten much more vivid ideas since she was in my class."

"That's after I had already told her to take out all of the gore. I think I'll have to set her up for some counseling, this is just so wrong for a child to be imagining!"

Mrs. Lambert jumped at the suggestion and immediately ran to sit at the other end of the table. Taking hold of Miss Peters chin she made sure their eyes met before she began.

"Now you listen to me, there is nothing you can do for that child. Her mother will shut you down from any angle you hit. I tried in every way I could to get her into counseling for the aftermath of the divorce and her father's disappearance, and I tried like hell to have her family investigated for any kind of abuse. They came up with nothing."

"But there has to be something!" Miss Peters insisted. Letting go of her colleagues chin, Mrs. Lambert sighed and shook her head.

"Take my advice Lenora, the best thing you could do for that child is to leave her alone. You'll only make it worse on the both of you if you force this. Besides, knowing the things on T.V. these days, all of this morbidity probably came from there."

Without another word Mrs. Lambert left the lounge with her Styrofoam cup, and Miss Peters sat alone with the manuscript again.

"There has to be something." She whispered to herself. Miss Peters picked up the manuscript again and began to read.