Nancy K. Duplechain - Dark Trilogy 03 - Dark Legacy by Nancy K. Duplechain Page B

come to your
house while you’re sleeping. Know what I’m gonna do? I’m gonna fill your bed
with rats and mice.”
    Almost there.
Don’t run. It’ll be worse if you run.
    “And you know
who’s gonna stop me?” continued Logan. “Not your mom and dad! They
couldn’t stop anything . They suck at being cops!” The other kids
all laughed. “Maybe that little retard friend of yours will save
you.”
    More laughter.
    Lyla rounded on
Logan and punched him in the face, clipping his nose. He would have fallen to
the ground if Bobby hadn’t caught him. He felt his nose and checked his hand.
There was blood coming from his left nostril.
    “Lyla!”
It was Miss Lydia from near the gym.
    Taylor pushed
Lyla down and kicked her leg. “You stupid freak!”
    Lyla grabbed a
handful of dirt and threw it in Taylor’s face, getting some in her eyes. Taylor
screamed.
    Lyla started to
get up, but Logan tackled her, and the two started going at it: hair pulling,
fists flying, yelling, kicking, biting.
    Just before Miss
Lydia and Miss Dorris arrived to break up the fight, Lyla grabbed a handful of
dirt and shoved it in Logan’s face. He swallowed some of it and rolled over in
a coughing fit.
     
    ***
     
    Lyla sat in the
plastic chair in the hall, staring at the floor outside the nurse’s office.
Logan was treated first because he was in worse shape. When the nurse was
finished with him, he was sent to the principal’s office to wait for one of his
parents to come pick him up. Taylor was mostly fine, but Miss Lydia took her to
the girl’s restroom to flush her eyes with water.
    Lyla had gotten
the lecture about fighting from Miss Dorris, who sat in another plastic chair,
waiting for the nurse to come out and get Lyla. Miss Dorris, two years from
retirement, scolded Lyla for starting the fight, telling her that violence is
not an option when others are calling you names. She concluded the lecture with
the old saying, “Sticks and stone may break your bones, but names will
never hurt.”
    Liar .
    Nurse Philip had
left his position at the school to work at a hospital in Shreveport at the
beginning of the school year. Lyla was sad to see him go. She had been in one
other fight before this (the first of many to come over the next couple of
years), and Nurse Philip was sympathetic, saying that he used to be bullied,
too. He joked around with her and told her to keep her head up. She even
thought he was pretty cute.
    There was a new
nurse whom Lyla had never met. She was very pretty. Long blond hair, blue-eyed,
gorgeous smile, about thirty. When she stepped into the hall to call Lyla into
her office, a heavy French accent fell from her lips.
    “Go ahead
and sit up here,” she said, patting the paper-lined patient table.
    Lyla set her
booksack down, boosted herself up and waited while the nurse—Eloise, according
to her school badge—gathered her materials. The office smelled different from
the last time she was there. Nurse Eloise wore a ton of flowery perfume, but
there was something else beyond the scent of gardenias. It reminded her of the
time she and Jonathan dug for earth worms on the edge of a meadow once when
their parents took them fishing. There were wild gardenias nearby. After they
had collected enough worms, they went to pick some flowers, but found a wasp
nest. They screamed and laughed as they ran away, lucky that they hadn’t gotten
stung.
    “So,”
said Eloise, “You seem to have won your fight, no?”
    Lyla, who was
mentally still in a meadow digging for earth worms, said, “What?”
    She brought some
cotton balls and alcohol to the silver tray near the table. Lyla winced when
she saw the alcohol. “You won your fight I believe,” said Eloise,
taking Lyla’s chin in her gloved hand and gently turning her head to the side.
“The other boy looked worse. You just have a little cut below your eye and
some swelling. Not too bad, no?”
    Lyla shrugged
and stared at the floor.
    Eloise smiled
and patted her knee.