Alice slipped behind the bushes at the edge of the playground and squirmed under the place where the chainlink fence had curled up from the ground. She wasn’t supposed to leave the school grounds, but frankly, she didn’t care. All she really cared about was getting away from the children who tormented her every day all through recess and lunch and anytime the teachers couldn’t see them. Telling on the tormenters hadn’t worked. Some of the teachers just said it couldn’t be that bad, they didn’t see anything happening, and she should learn to take a little teasing. Other teachers said that the children she was blaming were good children who wouldn’t do things like that. Still other teachers said that, well, the children clearly had problems and she should just ignore them. None of the people she told were willing to help her.Alice had finally given up trying to get help - the children tormented her even worse, and the teachers were getting annoyed with her. This time, she just wouldn’t be there for them to mistreat.
The waistband on her jeans caught briefly on the lower edge of the fence, but an extra wiggle freed it and Alice was on the other side. She wasn’t safe yet, though, not until she had found a place where she couldn’t be seen from the school yard or the house whose yard she had invaded. She crawled around quietly under the lilac bushes that bordered the yard, and found the perfect spot just a short distance away, in a corner that was backed by a garage. She found a space between the building and the bush that was just her size. The children who played near the bushes in the school yard wouldn’t be able to see her here, and neither would the home owner.
Alice curled up in the dead leaves under the bush and sighed. The peace was so welcome. She stretched and her hand encountered something cool and smooth. It didn’t quite feel like a stone, so she picked it up to have a look at it.
It was a snail’s shell. The occupant of the shell was clearly long gone; it was dry and quite clean inside. All that was left was the lovely curling spiral of the shell itself. Alice traced the spiral with her finger, marveling at the simple beauty of the design. She was always doing things like that, finding things pretty or interesting that the other children dismissed - that was one of the reasons they teased her so. With no one to bother her, she took in the delicate colors of the shell, and then began to wonder what it would be like to have your house carried along on your back like that, with you at all times, so you could tuck up into it whenever things got difficult.
Some unpleasant sounds penetrated her reverie, and Alice heard the voices of the children who usually bothered her the most. They were poking around in the bushes near where she had crawled under the fence; one of them had apparently seen her in the area before she made her escape.
“I know I saw her over here somewhere… Hey, do you think she could have crawled under the fence?”
“Nah, she’s way too much of a scaredy-cat to leave the school yard. She might get in trouble! Ooohh!” The last was in a sing-song, mocking tone.
The voices didn’t go away. The children apparently settled down to talk nearby. Even though she was not currently on their list of topics, she still cringed to hear them so close to her. She squeezed her eyes shut and tried to imagine herself away from there, someplace safe…someplace they could never find her…she opened her eyes again and there was the snail shell in front of her. “Lucky snails,” she thought.
Then she wondered what it would be like if she were small enough to hide in a snail shell. Tiny, safe, sheltered…Alice traced her fingers along the spiral again and again and then closed her eyes to imagine herself there. In her mind, she shrank in size, the bushes growing taller and taller and the leaves she was lying on becoming bigger than she was.
She stood at the entrance to the snail shell, and the top of it stood high above her. She was delighted to see that the shell was pristine inside, thanks no doubt to ants that had cleaned it out thoroughly.
She could still hear the children talking nearby - it now sounded like they were making plans about what they would do to her when they caught her - and so, inside her imagination, she stepped inside the shell where the children would never find her. She imagined the peace and serenity of the shell, and the safety. In the distance she heard thunder rumble and she delighted to think of the shelter of the little shell. She imagined walking the spiral deep into the shell, reaching out to brush the smooth, curved walls with her fingertips, rounding curve after curve and then coming to a small chamber at the end. She imagined sitting down there in the dim light that filtered through the shell, and resting. There was silence there, and peace, and the shell was clean and cool and smooth. She thought how nice it would be to lie down here safe where no one could hurt her, in the snail shell under the lilac tree on the far side of the fence. Relaxing completely in the feeling of safety, Alice fell deeply asleep, curled under the lilac bush with the snail shell clutched in her hand.
The bell rang to signal the end of recess and still Alice slept on. She was smiling in her sleep; in her dreams she was safe inside the snail shell where no one could find her and no one could hurt her.
Back in the classroom, the children sat at their desks; Alice’s alone was empty.
“Where’s Alice?” asked the teacher. “Does anyone know where Alice is?”
The children shrugged and mumbled. The ones who had been tormenting her said, “Maybe she ran away. She’s like that, you know.” They thought they could get her in trouble that way.
“No, I don’t know,” said the teacher, who was clearly annoyed. “Alice is very reliable and is usually the first in line. Besides,” she added suspiciously, Alice’s complaints running through her head, “why would she want to run away?”
The children who had been doing the tormenting may have squirmed a little in their seats, but they said nothing further.
The children all fell silent, until one child, deciding to tell in spite of the bullies, said, “She was probably trying to get away from them,” and she pointed at the worst of the offenders.
The bullies protested loudly and immediately, but the other children, feeling guilty from either participating in the tormenting or ignoring the problem, and emboldened by the first child’s openness, began to pour it all out to the teacher.
The teacher was upset. Alice had tried to tell people and clearly she had not only not been exaggerating, she hadn’t told the adults the full scope of the problem. Quickly, she called the office and let them know that they had a missing child - and why the child was probably missing.
Meanwhile, Alice slept on, a smile curving her lips as she dreamt of the peace within the snail shell. Thunder was rumbling closer, but she was too comfortable in her feelings of safety at last to notice.
The school organized a search of the building and school grounds. The wind was blowing now, and it drowned out their calls to Alice. Alice was sheltered in her little corner and didn’t notice anything. As the thunder boomed and the wind blew, the adults at the school realized that Alice wasn’t there, and went inside to call her parents and the police.
Alice grew a little bit chilly and curled up into a tighter ball, but still she slept, happy in her peace.
Alice’s parents arrived at the school, torn between worry for their child and anger that things had gotten this out of hand and terrified that their child was missing. The police arrived and took her description just as the rain began to come down in floods and torrents. The thunder crashed and the wind howled.
“She won’t want to be out in this,” people said, “She’ll come running back now.” But she didn’t.
The police visited all of the houses that bordered the school and asked the people who lived in them to be on the lookout for Alice. The lady who owned the house whose yard Alice was hiding in even looked in her garage for the missing little girl. She couldn’t imagine that Alice would be out in that terrible storm.
Meanwhile, in her dream, Alice heard the plunk of raindrops on the snail shell and felt safer and warmer than ever.
At the school more and more of the story of Alice came out. Everyone was outraged -both with the children for their cruelty and with themselves for their blindness and their lack of belief of poor Alice.
As the storm finally bumbled off and the rain slowed, the school day came to an end. Alice still wasn’t to be found.
The lady who owned the house whose yard Alice had hidden in let her dog out into the yard when the rain let up. To her surprise, he began barking and ran around the side of the garage. Curious, she followed him.
When she followed him behind the garage, he began sniffing in the corner underneath one of the lilac bushes. She pulled him aside and was startled to find Alice curled up there, sound asleep. Strangely, she was perfectly dry in the dripping undergrowth. The snail shell was still clutched in her hand, and she was still smiling as she opened her sleepy eyes.
- She Wolf © 2007
