The Lonely Girl

Welcome to my first story published on Lit. I have not written anything that wasn't work related since high school, which was many years ago, so I'm sure there is plenty of room for improvement in my writing and storytelling.

I know this is Lit, but there is no sex in this story. It is written as a Romance.

The idea for this story started with the thought of how unfair life can be to good people who truly don't deserve it. I let the rest of the story develop as I wrote it.

Most of this story is fabricated. The faces and names of those that inhabit the portions that are true have been lost to time. This story originates from the bullying I endured, the bullying I dealt out, and the shame I feel for both.

Trigger warning: Suicide, a whole lot of bullying.

The Lonely Girl

Claire was sitting in what she thought of as her spot on the shore of the pond. Not because of any particular claim of ownership, she owned all the land for several acres in every direction, but because this is where she always came to sit when the weather permitted. She had been doing it for years, so the ground and grass in this area were well worn. If she knew she was going to be here for a while, on the weekend for instance, she would bring a blanket and lay it down. The rest of the shore around the pond was well overgrown. Having it tended to never occurred to her because this is how it had always been since she was a little girl. There was plenty of shade in her spot for the majority of the day. The exception being in the morning when the sun would rise over the eastern trees on the opposite side of the pond. There was nothing particularly exceptional about the area. It wasn't uniquely beautiful or special. What it did provide was solitude. She never had to worry about being bothered by anyone. Even when her parents were alive, they stopped coming here once she became a teenager and they no longer worried about her making her way home on time.

Today she didn't have a blanket. Just a book to keep her company. For about a year in her teens she would occasionally bring a sketchbook and have a go at drawing the nature around her. Eventually she realized that she didn't have a particular talent for it, nor did she find it very fulfilling and gave it up. She brought the book with her today out of habit. It sat next to her unopened while she stared at the opposite shore. The faint breeze in the tree canopy overhead as well as the brooks that fed and drained the pond were the only sounds today.

The weight of the anniversary and the memories it brought back pressed on her. She was distracted for a moment, trying to comprehend how a memory could manifest what felt like a physical pain in her chest...but it was momentary, and she went back to visions of her parents. Visions of opening the front door of her house two years ago today to two police officers. Visions of the worried look on the officers when she didn't react when they told her that her parents were gone. They had stayed longer than either party would have wished to ensure that she wasn't going to harm herself. Her lack of reaction was so unsettling to them that if her parents had passed due to foul play, they would have immediately considered her a suspect. But it wasn't the case. Her parent's passed in plane crash on one of the small island-hopping aircraft used in the Caribbean. She would learn later that it was caused by metal fatigue in the main wing spar of the plane due to one too many hard landings and not enough proper inspections. How that information was supposed to help her she never understood, but the lawyers felt she should know.

Knowing how this event would affect her, if she were transplanted back, she would have bawled her eyes out. At the time she just felt numb. Feeling numb was her default. When your life was as hard as Claire's, numbness was a safety net. It wasn't hard in the traditional sense though. Claire's parents were exceptionally well off. Not through inheritance, but through shear hard work and talent in the tech field. They weren't flashy tech entrepreneurs; they were the brains behind the scenes that got projects over the finish line when companies were getting desperate. Because of this they were paid large hourly rates. Since they weren't flashy people, they simply invested their money smartly, which was another talent they possessed. The only splurging they did was to buy several hundred acres of land on the outskirts of town when Claire was still a little girl. They built a modest home on the property and left the rest to nature. Claire and her father had found the pond on one of their walks they would take around the property when she was still a little girl.

Living on the outskirts of town and having so much property surround them, meant there were few opportunities to meet other children. The thought of trying to find friends to play with for Claire had not occurred to her parents and they would have been hard pressed to start a conversation with fellow parents if the opportunity had arisen. They just weren't outgoing people.

Because of this her years before school were spent playing alone. Her mother worked from home during those early years. Her father would as well when the contract allowed. Some clients insisted on him being onsite given the rates they were paying for him. Whether it occurred to the clients that they rarely interacted with him onsite past the initial introductions is unknown. There was always a technical sales rep that handled the client interaction. Some clients would insist he attend the design review meetings, but the smarter ones realized he didn't interact with them during those meetings any way and they were getting more productivity if they just let him get on with the work. The consulting company, knowing how he worked, always sent their best sales reps with him for this reason. The rep would relay the designs and handle any back-and-forth questions with the clients. As Claire got older, her parents worked from home more and more. Whether because of repeat customers, word of mouth, or just trusting the consulting company they both worked for, the clients came to understand that they received just as much, if not more productivity when they worked from home.

Being at home meant her parents were in her lives, but it was almost on the periphery. As if they were all ghosts from different times haunting the same house. Her parent's interactions between each other weren't much different. They were both only children. They were each other's first and last partners. Frankly if it hadn't been for a chance encounter in the school library during their sophomore year of college, it is doubtful they would have ever dated or married.

Claire knew her parents had loved her, but the apple did not fall far from the tree. They were reserved, emotive of their love for her only in the privacy of their home and in a halting way that would only make sense if you viewed it as a caricature. Like if one could imagine an alien that did not understand human emotions were asked to act out love after reading its definition from a dictionary.

When her troubles at school started, they would go and quietly express their concerns to the administration. They never pushed; it was not their way. The thought of confronting the parents of the other children never occurred to them and would not have gone well even if it had.

A rustling of the leaves caught her attention. Claire watched as a squirrel darted about looking for nuts in the undergrowth. The frantic movements an odd backdrop to the serenity of the pond. She turned her attention back to the ripples. If she had any friends, they may have asked why she wasn't mourning at their grave. They had no relatives within hundreds of miles of them, so there were no family plots in the area. Her parents, while organized and meticulous, did not think it necessary to make funeral arrangements or detail where they wanted to be buried. When they passed, Claire did some research and found that she lived in one of the states where it was fairly easy to bury someone on your property. She hired a funeral director to assist and had a modest marker placed at the site. Being eminently practical, the thought of mourning where she had buried the remnants of their bodies did not occur to her. She would come to her spot and think of them.

Eventually her thoughts ran their course and she started feeling restless. She rolled herself forward onto the balls of her feet and stood. Wiping the dirt and grass from her jeans she leaned over and picked up the book she had brought for company. Having made the journey back and forth between her home and the pond several times a week for most of her life meant the walk back was done on autopilot. She had long stopped noticing the scenery around her on the journey and it had just become background.

Claire dropped the book off inside her house and grabbed her gardening gloves from the mud room. She headed out the side door and toward her garden. It was a nice distraction for her. After all, there were only so many books you could read. She started making donations of books to the town library every six months or so after the library shelves in her house could handle no more and she found that she had started piling them up on various end tables and nooks. Many people have a cat lady in their town. If people knew of her habits, she would be the book lady.

Her parents had been fastidious in their neatness, and she was no different. It was a quandary for her as the thought of throwing away a book was as alien as seeing a pig fly. The solution presented itself when she saw a table outside the market in town. It had been setup by the town library looking for donations. She spoke briefly to one of the kind older women who were working the table finding that they were looking for donations of books or money. She ended up giving both.

She had started her garden a few hundred feet from the house on the edge of the woods. It still got plenty of sun throughout the day and the collection of plants and vegetables had grown rather haphazardly over the last two years as she found the act of tending to it brought some stability to her thoughts.

The first year was a steep learning curve. Finding joy when something she planted had started to sprout and then sorrow literally the next day when critters had eaten it was a tough lesson. Some internet research on the best methods for fencing off the garden, online deliveries of supplies and quite a bit of sweat had a serviceable fence up for her garden. There were still many issues she had to overcome throughout the year and her harvest that year was small, but it being just her, she didn't need much anyway. Still, she bought more supplies and expanded the fencing and garden the following year. The harvest was bigger that year and she had learned enough that she was confident this year it would be bigger still.

Claire slowly became aware that the line of shade created by the trees had slowly crept its way across her garden, signaling that it was getting late in the afternoon. She gathered her gardening tools and headed back towards the house, making sure to secure the gate on her way through it. She cleaned the tools under the spicket outside the side door and headed back in the house, diverting to drop the tools and gloves off along the way.

She washed her hands thoroughly and dug into her refrigerator for the ingredients to make a salad. She didn't have anything yet from her garden to put in it, but that would change soon enough. She always made enough to last her for several meals. It's what her mother always did and to her it made perfect sense. The recipe was her mother's as well. It was a hearty recipe made with arugula and spinach as well as walnuts and red onions. She turned the oven on to 350 and pulled out the chicken breasts she would bake and then cube up to put as a topper on the salad.

She ate her salad in silence at the breakfast nook in her kitchen. There was a dining room that hadn't been used since her parents were alive and even then only sparingly. She only went into the family room as a means to get to other parts of her home and she would be hard pressed to remember the last time the tv that hung from the wall had been turned on. Her parents had spent most of their time in front of monitors throughout the day. To then spend their evening staring at yet another screen seemed silly. They would occasionally watch movies as a family, but even those occurrences became increasingly rare as Claire became a teenager. Choosing instead to spend their time reading or taking hikes on their property either alone or as a family.

She washed the dishes and made her way upstairs. She glanced to the right when she reached the top of the stairs at the open door of her parents' room. She left it open so that the air would circulate through, but she never entered it anymore. The last time she had been in the room was right after they passed when she went into their safe to get their will.

She turned left abruptly as if it would leave the memory in her wake and no longer invade her mind, making her way through her bedroom and into her ensuite bathroom. She turned on the shower and let it warm up while she stripped off her clothes.

After her shower, she wiped some of the steam off the mirror and stared at her face. Not due to any vanity, but just to check and make sure she got off all the dirt from the afternoons' gardening session. Wiping the steam from her glasses she put them on and checked again to make sure.

Staring back at her was a face some might call plain. Objectively she was not ugly by any stretch, but she lacked any defining features that other folks sometimes possess that make them stand out. She had a button nose and a sprinkling of freckles that were so light, it was doubtful that anyone other than her and her parents knew they were there. Her eyes were a deep brown. It was a deepness that many folks could get lost in, except that she had an ability to keep hers expressionless and thus dull the effect they may otherwise have had.

She had small ears that many would call cute if they had seen them. More often than not they were hidden by a mane of wavy brown hair that was now approaching the middle of her back. Her mother used to trim her hair for her every few months. Since her passing she had just let it go. She had never been to a hair salon or stylist and wouldn't know what to ask for even if she did.

Her mother had never worn makeup and neither had she. She was aware that many girls and women did. She overheard the topic discussed by the girls at school, but given their treatment of her, anything they partook in she would try to avoid. It also seemed the purpose of it was to draw attention to oneself. Something she wanted to avoid at all costs.

She dried off her small waif-like body and headed into her bedroom to her dresser. Pulling out a t-shirt and panties, she put them on, pulled back the covers and slipped into bed.

While this day may have been sadder than others for her, it was no different in that she was always alone with her thoughts. Her hikes and working in her garden were usually enough to tire her out so that sleep came relatively quickly. This evening was different though. She had always been alone. When she was young it was because of where her parents lived and their lack of awareness that they should perhaps socialize their child. Early in school she was alone because she did not understand how to interact with other children. Then as school progressed, she was alone because she was shunned. There is no cruelty like childhood cruelty and the popular kids had set their sights on her. The other children started avoiding her so as not to be included in their cruelty. Finally, she was alone by choice. Just better to avoid everyone and thus hopefully avoid the abuse.

It wasn't until her parents were gone that she realized what loneliness was. She had no frame of reference until then. She had no lasting friendships growing up, no one to count on or confide in. There were only her parents. It wasn't until they were gone that she realized the comfort of just their presence had provided her. Now the loneliness was a constant. Like putting one too many blankets on a cold night it was a slight weight that always pressed on her. For the first time in many years, since she had learned to offer no reaction to the torments she endured through childhood, she wept.

*****

Tuesday was grocery day. Claire liked having a routine. She found that Tuesday mornings were the least busy at her local market. Immediately after her parents passing, she had been terrified to go to the market. She ordered her groceries online for a while but found that the produce was never as fresh as she felt it should be. Gradually her fear subsided as she realized through trial and error that very few people were at the grocery store at 8 am on a Tuesday and none were early-twenties folks that were the demographic of her childhood tormenters...until today.

She had just turned into one of the aisles when she realized she had forgotten to grab a container of arborio rice. She had recently taken to trying new recipes once a week and the rice was necessary for a saffron risotto she was going to attempt. She left her cart and headed back towards the previous aisle. Looking down at her list she realized that she may have to ask which aisle the saffron was in as she had never purchased it before and had no idea how it was packaged and hence, what she would be looking for. Turning the corner, she ran into, and bounced off of, what felt to her like a tree. Fixing her glasses which had become askew during the collision, she was in the process of blurting out an apology when she looked up from the chest she collided with and was now staring at and into a face filled with concern. The sounds of apology ceased as all the air left her lungs in a gasp. She took a small step back and then a larger one as terror started to take hold of her. The face she was staring at change from concern to perplexity and finally to realization.

"Clai..."

Before he could even finish her name she had taken two solid steps further backward, turned and ran. She ran through the self-checkout out, through the doors and then through the parking lot to her car. She fumbled her keys from her coat pocket, hit the unlock button, got in the car and sped out of the parking lot. Her breath came in deep, hyperventilating gasps. It wasn't until she was halfway home that she calmed down enough that her breathing returned to some semblance of normalcy. Then the tears came, followed by great wracking sobs. Her tears and nose ran down her face and onto her shirt. No amount of rubbing her face on her sleeve could stop it. She hadn't cried in years and here she was balling her eyes out for the second time in a week.

When Claire arrived home, she contemplated just climbing into bed and trying to sleep away the pain. But she knew that would be setting her up for a sleepless, miserable, night. So she changed her shirt, grabbed a different coat and headed towards her spot.

*****

Kyle sat in his truck, holding the grocery list Claire had dropped, dumbfounded by what he had witnessed. He had not seen Claire since the last few weeks of high school when she disappeared. She barely looked any older now. She had the same innocent, shy sweetness to her that he found appealing when he had first met her. But that look had changed in a blink as the realization hit her. He had seen people scared before, but Claire wasn't scared, she was terrified. Why? They had spoken a few times since the incident in high school. He thought the conversations had been pleasant enough. He may have even made an effort to get to know her better if she hadn't disappeared.