“Billy!” A skinny boy perked up at Mrs. May’s call. “Be a good boy and take care of Henry on his first day, would you?”
“Sure thing, Mrs. M!”
The kid, Billy, stood and extended a hand to me in greeting. He gestured to the vacant desk beside his and I gratefully sank into the attached seat.
So far, the boarding school had a completely different vibe to the public one I was accustomed to. There was no jeering or obvious bullying and, perhaps the most jarring of all, everyone listened to the teachers with respect.
Billy himself was all smiles, and somehow managed to bring my rampant nerves under control with an infectious enthusiasm. I couldn’t see how anyone could possibly think him lame or weird, so I immediately had him pegged as a popular kid even despite his grubby appearance.
As if to prove my point, one of the bigger kids draped an arm over Billy’s shoulders.
“Hey, new kid!” He addressed me with a wave. “It was Henry, right? Nice to meet you. My name’s Johnny but my friends call me JJ.”
I eeked out a greeting, trying my best to sound cool and laid back. I seemed to have done alright because JJ smiled before turning to Billy.
“You looking forward to the game later Bill?”
Billy grinned from ear to ear. “You bet I am!”
“Are you part of a team or something?” I asked.
JJ ruffled Billy’s sandy hair. “Are you kidding? He’s the star player!”
Everyone within earshot laughed at that, so I thought it best to laugh along with them. Not wanting to seem like I didn’t get the joke.
“See you out there.” JJ returned to his seat.
A few minutes before the bell was set to ring for lunch, Mrs. May dismissed Billy and I.
“You ought to have a head start since it’s your first day,” she told me.
We grabbed our bags and slung them over our shoulders, but as I got up to leave I noticed an abrupt change in atmosphere. The room was deathly silent.
I paused at the door and stole a glance back. There wasn’t a soul in the classroom that wasn’t staring intently at Billy’s back.
If he noticed, he hid it well. He was already walking briskly down the hall and whistling the tune of some upbeat theme song. I caught up and asked him about the stares.
“Oh, you’ll see,” he said as we walked. “They’re just impatient is all.”
Billy showed me around the cafeteria and even offered up some tips and tricks to get extra food out of the dinner ladies. When the bell rang and a storm of shoes echoed through the corridors, he led me to the edge of a huge field at the rear of the school.
“Come on, I’ll show you where we play the game!” He called back to me as he jogged up ahead. Whatever this game was, he seemed very excited to play. I had my fingers crossed for soccer.
We came to a stop at the center of the field. At our feet lay a length of blue tarp held in place with bricks that sat on each of its corners. I couldn’t make out any markings to indicate a playing field of any kind, so I assumed that Billy’s game must have something to do with the misshapen lump concealed beneath the tarp.
He crouched and cleared the heavy bricks from the two nearest corners, before throwing back the cover to reveal a porcelain doll about the size of your average preschooler.
It was adorned with a patchy jumble of mismatched clothes and I couldn’t help but admire the artistry of its detail. Though I found the gentle smile to be somewhat unsettling, it was impossible to deny its objective beauty.
Footsteps vibrating up though the dirt wrenched me from my stupor. I turned to see what must have been every student in attendance rushing toward us as one gargantuan unit.
“Seriously,” I said, intimidated by the sight. “What is this game?”
Billy seemed giddy with anticipation as he took the doll carefully in his arms and held it out in the direction of the stampeding crowd. “I do hope you join in.”
JJ headed the pack. As soon as he stepped into range he wrapped both hands around the doll’s neck and tore it from Billy’s grasp, throwing it hard against the ground. I shouted in protest and tried to wedge myself in between JJ and the doll but a dozen kids had already circled the pair. I was aghast. What madness could have driven him to ruin a thing as intricate as that?
Through gaps in the crowd I watched the barbaric scene unfold. JJ repeatedly brought his foot down on the defenceless doll with a primal glee in his eyes, and the spectators drunk in the meaningless violence with a hunger. A younger girl broke free of the circling spectators with a sharpened pencil raised to the sky. She swung it in a downward arc, burying it straight into the doll’s painted eyeball. I was shocked to see something dark and red gushing freely from the wound.
The way the doll reacted to the blows didn’t sit right with me either. It was a doll, of that I was sure, but from afar I could have easily been fooled.
I’d seen enough. I spun away from the sickening sight and fought back bile as I picked my way through the crazed horde, scanning the horizon for a teacher.
I finally spotted Mrs. May’s tight grey bun bobbing in the distance and waved my arms to grab her attention.
“Over here!”
She paid me no mind as she shot by, bullied a path through the onlookers, and promptly stamped her boot heel into the doll’s nose, shattering its head like a coconut. My bag slipped from my shoulder as cheers filled the air.
The ‘game’ continued for a while longer, though I couldn’t see much of it after the gap carved by Mrs. May quickly filled. When the crowd finally dispersed, the doll was nothing more than a pile of torn clothes and a chunky red splatter staining the grass. JJ paused when he reached me, panting lightly as if from a brief workout.
“You have to try it out tomorrow. I know, it’s weird at first but… Just trust me.”
I flinched as he patted me on the back and left. A disheveled Mrs. May approached next.
“Don’t worry Henry,” she smiled in a way that I’m sure she thought was comforting. “Billy will work his magic and it’ll all be right as rain in the morning. You’ll have plenty more chances. Come on, let’s head back.”
I wanted to tear free of the vice-like grip she maintained on my upper arm but I wasn’t confident enough in my ability to scale the spiked fence in time. Billy was the only one who lingered on the field. He scurried across the blood soaked ground collecting fragments of the doll and throwing them into a plastic bag. I assumed the doll had been his, but he didn’t seem at all disappointed by its brutal demise.
The rest of the day passed in a disorienting blur. Everyone I met was painfully nice to me, there wasn’t a single altercation to speak of, and no one mentioned what happened at lunch. Billy didn’t return to lessons, and when night fell I found myself staring up at the dark mattress above me half-doubting he’d existed at all.
He should have occupied one of the countless beds that lined the sprawling dormitory, but as far as I could tell he wasn’t there either. The only thing I knew for certain anymore was that I needed a way out.
I sent my parents a frantic text begging them to pick me up, careful to keep my excuses vague. Despite the late hour, their reply came quick.
Nice try sport, but you’re not getting out of boarding school that easily! We’ve been through this a million times; you need to learn some discipline! These guys’ll straighten you out and make you into a proper young man. Treat everyone with respect, listen well in class, and we’ll see you in 6 weeks. Okay? We love you son.
A sudden voice cut through the darkness and the fright it gave sent the phone spinning from my hands. “We’re not supposed to be on our phones after lights out,” someone informed me politely.
Tears stung my eyes as I rolled on to my side, feigning sleep for the remainder of the night and dreading the approaching dawn.
I found Billy sitting at his desk the next morning with a familiar doll propped up in his lap. A few additional patches had been stitched into its miniature clothes, but aside from that there wasn’t a blemish to be seen on its polished skin. The others lined up to take turns complimenting Billy on his expert craftsmanship. JJ was practically drooling when he stepped up.
Again, Mrs. May dismissed Billy and I before the bell rang, and again I felt my heart plummet as the students swarmed the lifelike doll to smash its smiling face in.
It only took one spark for the kids to fall upon the doll like a shoal of feasting piranha. JJ jammed a ballpoint pen between its shoulder blades in the middle of class one day, and the ensuing bloodbath led to the entire class being evacuated to a new room for the rest of the day. Except for Billy anyway. He did what he always did, and stayed behind to clean up the mess.
The ruthless brutality of it all was forever playing on a loop in my head. Whether to blink or sleep, whenever my eyes closed I saw all the ways they pulled and clawed and hammered away at that thing. It was like a nightmare I couldn’t wake up from.
Yesterday, JJ held it in position in front of me.
“Come on,” he urged. “Just press your thumbs in its eyes real quick, it’ll feel amazing.” The doll lolled limp in his arms as I refused him once again.
Every day they grow more insistent. It’s as if they’re offended by my lack of enthusiasm, and I’m terrified of what might happen if I keep turning them down.
I can feel their eyes on me even as I type this in my bunk. Tomorrow might be the last chance they give me, but the very prospect is tearing me apart. I feel like once I cross that threshold there’ll be no turning back. I’ll be a monster, same as them. So please, I’m begging anyone who reads this…
Talk me out of it.