“I will not talk back to the playground monitor.”
“I will not talk back to the playground monitor.”
“I will not talk back...”
Winni wrinkled her nose as she looked at her third page of sentences. The jelly pencil grip didn’t help her aching fingers as she drew more letters, her stomach growling in protest of having to stay after school.
Her legs swung back and forth under the desk. Mrs. Stanmore sat at the front of the room, her big pale wooden desk looming on the left-hand side. The chalkboard behind her spanned the whole wall like some sort of black void. Grey chalk stains still covered it, the marks not hiding the math they’d struggled against just an hour before.
“...to the playground monitor.”
“I will not talk back to the playground monitor.”
She felt her cheeks flushing. The pencil scratched on the paper, letter after letter the same. It was always the same. Only when her hand started to ache did she release her fist. Tears filled her eyes.
The fifth graders were the problem. It wasn’t her. She and Kate and Ivy had offered to let them join in their playground game. They’d offered, and the boys had said no.
“I will not talk back to the playground monitor.”
The Monitor had been wrong. Her eyes narrowed at the letters on the page, the way the blue lines contained them like prison bars. Mrs. Stanmore cleared her throat. Winni looked up, but her teacher still studied a book on her desk. Only the scratching of her pencil on paper and the quiet ticking of the black and white clock made any noise.
She looked down. Only five more sentences to go. Five sentences until freedom.
Scratching away, Winni’s thoughts wandered back to recess. The fifth graders had lied about their game. They’d lied, said that she had been excluding the boys. All Winni had done was correct the recess monitor when she'd told them to include the boys. Tears filled her eyes again. The woman had been wrong.
Winni had been right.
“...talk back to the playground monitor.”
Done. Winni pushed out her chair, sliding on the rough brown and black speckled carpet. Mrs. Stanmore looked up and smiled.
“All done?” she asked.
Winni nodded. She didn’t speak. Winni worried that if she opened her mouth, her voice would crack and tears would fall. She didn’t understand why the monitor had gotten so angry; she’d been wrong. Winni had just pointed it out.
She placed the loose-leaf sheets in her teacher’s hand. All she wanted to do was run. Only a few weeks into school and she’d already had to stay after. She could just see her parents’ frowning faces in her mind as she’d called them from the office and said she’d be staying after school.
“You have a way home, right Winni?” Mrs. Stanmore asked. The woman spun in her chair, facing her head-on. She smiled. “The office handled that?”
“Yes,” Winni said. Her throat clenched. Penny had never gotten in trouble at school. Their parents talked about that sometimes. “My dad’s coming later.”
Later. She didn’t know when, but it meant going to after-school care. She hated the kids there; Madison and June and Santiago always stayed after and they made fun of her name. Her throat tightened.
Mrs. Stanmore nodded. “Good. Then I’ll see you tomorrow, okay? Be safe.”
She nodded. With a last glance at the classroom where 25 identical, light wooden desks sat empty, she left the room. A silence had settled over the hallways. White cinderblock walls covered in children’s artwork and bulletin boards of well wishes and welcome backs stretched for what seemed like an endless number of steps. Winni adjusted her grip on her tie-dye backpack. It weighed her down, pulling on her like it was filled with stones.
Not stones, just workbooks. Might as well have been stones though. She sniffed back a few tears and started down the hall towards the auditorium. She decided not to go to aftercare. She was already in trouble with the teachers; what did it matter if she went to the costume closet instead of the cafeteria?
Her Mary Janes pounded against the gray tile floor. Each step echoed in the hallways. Glancing left and then right, she looked into the dark, abandoned classrooms of Music, Art, Science. At the end of the hallway, she shoved on the blue double doors to the stairwell. She heaved them open together, slipping in between.
What did it matter, if she broke all the rules? Anger filled her again. What did it matter? They would just make her write stupid sentences that were wrong. She didn’t talk back to the playground monitor. She’d corrected her.
School was stupid. She hurried down the stairs, gripping the metal railing. Each step made her bag bounce. School was stupid.
Even thinking it made her smile. It was stupid. It didn’t make sense that grownups would try to teach them things and then get mad when they used their knowledge. The fifth grade boys had lied. Lying was wrong, so Winni had corrected their lie.
A final thud sounded through the stairwell as she reached the bottom. Shoving the doors open, she broke into the first floor. Voices made her pause. She looked forward, where the hallway opened to a large square area with a potted tree and an exit to the outdoors. A few eighth graders stood by one of the walls, watched by their teacher, stapling artwork to a bulletin board. Their laughter hid her footsteps as she ducked left down another, shorter hallway.
School was stupid, adults were stupid, boys were stupid. Heat filled her face as she hurried to one of her favorite sets of doors. These were heavy wooden ones, their metal handles fitting in her palm with ease. She tugged.
Darkness greeted her. She could still see, the little ceiling lights in the theater auditorium giving off just enough light for her to run down the few steps to the red-orange carpet. Winni loved the auditorium.
She ran up the main aisle to her left, tapping each row of seats as she sped by. Her backpack hit her back after each foot hit the ground. No one else was there. After a full loop around the bottom section, she came to stand before the black stage.
It loomed above her, the stage itself starting nearly at her height and made of wood painted black like night. Small scuff marks riddled it. They reminded Winni of the chalk stains on the board in her classroom. But where those chalk stains had hid math, a language she didn’t understand, Winni understood the stage.
She took off her backpack. With a huff, she threw it onto the stage. Winni understood it. She took hold of the edge of the wood, the rough slats beneath her fingers comforting. Winni heaved. She pulled herself up there, onto that stage that she understood so much more than the world outside of it.
School was stupid, but the stage made sense. In it she could be anyone. As she grinned, looking out at the empty, dark seats that stretched nearly forever, Winni took a deep breath. The scent of pinewood and acrylic paint filled her nose. They’d started building the set for Peter Pan already.
Winni looked out again. With a grin, she spun, grabbing her backpack and tugging it along as she ran upstage right. Stage directions always confused her. Upstage right was the back left from the audience. But she supposed it was theater. In theater, anything could happen.
The black curtains dividing various parts of the stage became her portal. She slipped between them, imagining the spotlights flooding the stage, the curtains her only refuge. Her fingers brushed them. Ripples of the curtains reminded her of ripples in a pond as she did so. They were smooth, silent.
Only her breathing and careful steps made noise. She didn’t dare speak, afraid to break the spell. So she melted into the darkness of offstage. Winni picked her way over wires and ropes, through chairs and half-built pinewood trees. Then she came to her favorite door in the entire world.
Black, just like the dividing curtains and the floors, it blended in with the magic of offstage. But it opened to a whole other world. She grasped the round, metal handle and turned. Winni paused. Then she pushed.
The lights came on. Soft, yellowed from old bulbs. In that little room, no bigger than half her classroom, she found the costumes. They’d been collected over the years, with every play bringing in new ones for Winni to run her fingers through.
She forgot about math and stupid recess monitors. Instead, she breathed in the scent of leather and pine. Winni let the door nearly close, not wanting to get locked in. The other side of the room had another exit, but it wasn’t always open. It led down to the pale white room they used for make-up during theater productions and from there, the kitchen. Of all the places to get locked in, this scared her least. But she was still careful.
Winni moved further in. The shelves of hats and props lined the wall before her. Pirate tricorns, berets, masquerade masks bedazzled and beaded hung from little hooks or sat on repurposed bookshelves. To their right, rows of swords and rapiers, wands and wizard staves peeked out of barrels and boxes. She took a deep breath.
She smiled, turning to her right. The first row of dresses, the ones in the front fitting the youngest and the tallest ones in the back, rippled like the curtains as she ran her hand over them. She’d worn some. The black witch’s dress at the front had been hers in first grade. Half way back she found the princess dress she’d used the previous year.
Moving further in, Winni stepped between the rows of outfits. She let them flank her, brushing her arms that were restrained by her uniform’s tight, long-sleeved white blouse. Here, she could breathe. She could be anyone, do anything. Fairies and knights, trees and horses, Mrs. Claus and reindeers, they were all hers for the taking.
Voices pulled her out of her trance. She could hear them. They were speaking too loud for the theater. Words traveled far on stage and off. Winni froze, fear gripping her heart and making it hard to breathe.
“She never showed?”
“You know Winni is always in here when she can help it.”
“This girl is going to be the death of me.”
Two voices. One Mrs. Stanmore. The other, she couldn’t identify. She glanced around, wishing there was a light switch nearby to turn off the lights in the costume closet that were little less than a spotlight on her. But she couldn’t find it. The lights turned on with movement.
Winni scrambled. She tripped over a wooden sword, stumbling to the ground. Pain shot through her knees but she stifled her cry. She couldn’t stifle her tears, though, as she pushed herself back up and towards the far door. She didn’t want to write more stupid sentences. She just wanted to be left alone with the stage and the ghosts there to play.
By some miracle, the door was unlocked. She rushed forward, pausing only to heave it closed behind her as quiet as she could. A bright white hallway, decorated only sparsely with playbills from previous years, nearly blinded her. Flinging her backpack over her shoulders, Winni dashed on. It took only a few moments to reach the right-hand turn to the make-up room.
Another door, another bright flash of light as the motion activation came on. A few rows of tables blocked her path. They sat empty, all the power tools, paints, and make-up stored neatly along the walls. Winni gritted her teeth and ran forward.
She slammed into the door that led to the kitchen. It opened with a groan, and instead of bright white cinderblock walls and bulletin boards she found flickering overhead lights that looked straight out of a horror movie. Dark flooring, bumpy to be nonslip, stretched onwards until another right turn. Winni took a deep breath. The scent of garbage filled her nose and she nearly gagged.
Stupid school. She tore forward. The grey walls seemed to close in the further from the stage she got. Winni hurtled right. Her feet pounded against the ground. All she wanted was to be left alone. Why couldn’t they leave her alone?
The final door stood five steps down, not far ahead. If she could get into the kitchen, she could sneak into the cafeteria. No one would be the wiser. The stupid school would get her where they wanted. Anger filled her chest again.
She flew down the stairs. Winni burst through the door, barely noticing the weight. She skidded past a massive metal shelving unit. Almost there. She was almost there, just a little more. She rounded another appliance.
And smacked into Connor. They both tumbled to the floor.
“Ow!” he said. He lay opposite her, grabbing at his side. “What the heck!”
“Connor!” She looked at him wide-eyed. Why was he in the kitchen? What was he doing with the sink? “Didn’t you go home?”
Before he could answer, a giggle sounded. Winni froze, eyes widening as she scrambled to sit up on the russet tile floor. Her back ached from landing on her books but the sound, distinctly female and not coming from Connor’s slightly bloodied lip, drew all her attention. It came from the sink.
She looked right, where it loomed up stainless steel and practically in her face. Then she glanced back at Connor. He massaged his left elbow slowly. But he followed her gaze to the sink and stopped the motion. He scrambled up.
“Connor… what the…?”
The voice again. Winni’s eyes widened and she copied Connor, grabbing onto the metal shelves to her right. Her jaw dropped.
The massive sink, so large that Winni found it entirely unnecessary, was filled threequarters of the way up. The water swirled in circles slowly, unnaturally. Just below the surface, she saw a face. It stared back at her as if the depths of the sink held a real person, staring up.
Water wasn’t supposed to have faces.
Connor still didn’t speak. His left hand gripped the side of the sink. But he just watched Winni closely. He released a breath. “Winni?”
“Why is there a face?” she demanded.
The face was feminine, skin unnaturally pale, tinted pink when it turned to watch her, and eyes green as Winni’s peridot birthstone. Winni felt like she was looking at a reflection in a cloudy mirror, except the reflection wasn’t her own.
“Winni, this is Lady Vivienne.” He poked the water. “Lady Vivienne, this is Winni.”
“The famous Winni Fitzpatrick?” The voice came through soft, like Lady Vivienne spoke from the back of the auditorium while Winni stood on the stage. “It’s an honor.”
“What the heck!” Winni nearly shrieked, stumbling back. She released the cold metal and grabbed her backpack strap instead. “What the heck!”
“What are you doing here?” Connor asked. He poked her, trying to get her to stop staring at the water.
Winni looked at him, trying to breathe. Why was she there? Why was... there was a woman in the sink and he wanted to know why she was there? She looked at the woman again who just grinned back. Winni couldn’t tell if she was old or young. She seemed both and neither all at once.
“Winni!” Connor grabbed her shoulders. He shook her for a moment. “Why were you running?”
“Mrs. Stanmore-”
They heard a door open. Connor stuttered. He glanced at Winni, then the sink, then at the back of the kitchen. It took only a moment before he looked at her again.
“Camelot is real. Avalon is real. This is the Lady of the Lake,” he said, gesturing to the sink lady. “I need to go home to my world. I need to go now.”
What? Winni stared at him like he was crazy. But the heeled shoes pounding against steps got louder, and another door opened, much closer. She froze. She looked at the sink. She looked at Connor.
He let go of her. Tossing his backpack into the sink, he didn’t even flinch as it disappeared. “Are you coming?”
Voices. She heard Mrs. Stanmore. She heard the other one, and their footsteps, and their hard laughter. She looked at the Lady of the Lake.
“Yes,” she said.
Connor grinned. He tapped her on the arm. “Great. Get in the sink.”
“What?”
“Get in the sink.”
They didn’t have much time. She could hear the adults speaking, could hear them complaining, could hear them hunting her. So she threw her backpack into the water. It disappeared.
“Go!”
She glanced at Connor and then gripped the edges of the sink. At first she slipped, trying to heave herself over the edge. But after a last push, and an extra shove from Connor, she flipped over and, screaming, landed in the water. She sank to the bottom.
And she kept sinking. Up became down as light disappeared from the top of the sink. Darkness engulfed her, ripples that were smooth against her skin like the stage curtains. She held her breath. Her lungs burned. As the light shone up from beneath her, Winni twisted.
Sunlight. It was sunlight. Rays filtered through the tingling water. Winni looked up. A hand broke through the top, pale, unnatural with a pink hue. Winni felt like her body was on fire. The hand grabbed hers. A tug pulled her towards the light. She struggled against the darkness that filled her vision. She tried to hold her breath. She tried, and she tried.
But in the end, she couldn’t. She took a breath. Instead of water, her lungs filled with air. And suddenly, as if the world had turned, she stepped out onto sand, rising from the lake as though she’d merely come up out of a set of stairs. Golden sand stretched onwards, broken only
by a grey castle wall covered in vines. At her feet, she found her tie-dye backpack. It was dry. She was dry.
Connor moved up beside her. He grinned. “Welcome to Avalon.”