"My best friend at the time, Calvin Benchley. The building site was fenced off, but it backed onto this strip of grass and dirt that we played at after school. Only time we ever really got to. We were only eleven, so, early nineties. Boys didn't play with girls unless they wanted to get shit for it. Didn't matter that I could've given most of 'em a black eye already. Or that most of the other girls thought I was a bully. I was pretty little Alice. Clearly too much of a wuss to play with the boys." She rolls her eyes again. Stupid kid stuff. "But Calvin was... different. We made friends 'cause he tried to shove past me in the hall one day and I stood right back up and pushed him back."
A kinship of young bullies, one a little better at hiding it than the other. Maybe they'd have grown out of it, the way so many kids do. Maybe they'd have grown up into decent people with no worse morals than the next person. Maybe, if things hadn't happened the way they did, Alice would still be Alice and Calvin would still be alive.
"So, we played out at that park every day. We used to take turns daring each other to do stuff. The other end backed onto the local Church with all its graves, and sometimes we'd dare the other to go climb a stone or steal something. But... most of the time we dared each other to go into the building site. We weren't supposed to. Both our parents had forbidden it a dozen times, told us to keep away from the druggies and squatters, but that never stopped us. And every time one of us took the dare we went a little deeper.
She breathes in slow and exhales much the same. "...that day, it was me that dared him. We'd heard shouting and crashing, some kind of fight. He really didn't want to do it. But I provoked him and called him names, a coward, until he felt like he had to to prove me wrong. Which is why everything that happened after that is my fault."
no subject
"My best friend at the time, Calvin Benchley. The building site was fenced off, but it backed onto this strip of grass and dirt that we played at after school. Only time we ever really got to. We were only eleven, so, early nineties. Boys didn't play with girls unless they wanted to get shit for it. Didn't matter that I could've given most of 'em a black eye already. Or that most of the other girls thought I was a bully. I was pretty little Alice. Clearly too much of a wuss to play with the boys." She rolls her eyes again. Stupid kid stuff. "But Calvin was... different. We made friends 'cause he tried to shove past me in the hall one day and I stood right back up and pushed him back."
A kinship of young bullies, one a little better at hiding it than the other. Maybe they'd have grown out of it, the way so many kids do. Maybe they'd have grown up into decent people with no worse morals than the next person. Maybe, if things hadn't happened the way they did, Alice would still be Alice and Calvin would still be alive.
"So, we played out at that park every day. We used to take turns daring each other to do stuff. The other end backed onto the local Church with all its graves, and sometimes we'd dare the other to go climb a stone or steal something. But... most of the time we dared each other to go into the building site. We weren't supposed to. Both our parents had forbidden it a dozen times, told us to keep away from the druggies and squatters, but that never stopped us. And every time one of us took the dare we went a little deeper.
She breathes in slow and exhales much the same. "...that day, it was me that dared him. We'd heard shouting and crashing, some kind of fight. He really didn't want to do it. But I provoked him and called him names, a coward, until he felt like he had to to prove me wrong. Which is why everything that happened after that is my fault."