Page 92 of Mad Mabel

I lay down. He did too.

I’d finally found my Gilbert Blythe.

59

It’s fair to say that my life hasn’t been short of horrors, but there is one particular moment that stands out in my mind.

It was the end of the school day, and I was getting my bike out of the shed. I’d hung back to allow the majority of kids to get their bikes, to avoid running into people. Usually, Christos would have waited for me, but he had left earlier because he had a shift at the fish-and-chips shop.

The problem with this was that, when Billy showed up, no one was around.

“Mad Mabel.”

I was bent over, unchaining my bike. An image of him forcing me into the toilet cubicle crossed my mind.

“Want to go to the sports shed?” he said. “Isn’t that where you and Loukas used to do your thing? Or will any shed do? The bike shed works for me.”

I stood and attempted to wheel my bike around him toward the shed door.

“Hey!” he said. “I was talking to you. Don’t walk away from me.”

He grabbed the wheel of my bike, stopping me. “You’re not going anywhere.”

He stood between me and the door. Billy was taller than me, and stronger. He pulled my bike toward him, pulling me with it. I let go of the bike and turned toward the back of the shed, but he grabbed my shoulder. I heard my bike clatter to the ground.

It didn’t make sense to fight him, I knew this much. Instead, I let him spin me by my shoulder, and using this momentum, I surged toward him, propelled by my full body weight. His face morphed from mild amusement to surprise, then finally fear, as he fell backward. Unfortunately, that was the moment that Christos appeared behind him. Billy’s head connected with Christos’s on the way down… then Christos’s head connected with the asphalt.

60

NOW

As a person who has experienced her fair share of painful emotions, I speak with some authority when I say that you’d be hard-pressed to find a more painful emotion than humiliation. With my neighbors gathered in front of my vandalized house, I fight the urge to shoo them away like stray cats.

I’ve always taken pride in being a good neighbor. A low-maintenance neighbor. A neighbor who said good morning, who kept the garden presentable, who even—on one occasion—scaled a fence in a rescue effort. I’d kept my head down and my nose out of trouble. It was in my interests to do this, of course, to maintain my anonymity. But now it appeared that both my anonymity and my status as a low-maintenance neighbor were under threat.

“It’ll be kids,” Peter declares. “They watch too much rubbish on those devices these days. They need to play more sport, that’s the problem.”

“I hate sport.” Persephone scrunches up her nose. “Too sweaty.”

Peter nods sagely, as if this proves his point.

“Yes, just kids mucking about,” Roxanne says. “We’re lucky it didn’t happen to the whole street.”

Odd people. They all know very well it’s not kids who’ve watched too many screens and it’s not a random act of vandalism. Perhaps they’ve all gone mad?

“I’ve got some turps somewhere, Else,” Peter says. “I’ll clean it up for you.”

“Nonsense,” I tell him. “I’ll do it.”

“It’s no trouble,” he says. “Joan will help, won’t you?”

She nods enthusiastically.

Knock me down with a feather.

“Probably worth speaking to the police, anyway,” Roxanne says. “I can come with you, if you like.”

I’m touched by the generosity of my neighbors, especially as it’s clear to everyone that this isn’t going away. If anything, interest is growing. Which means, more than likely, there will be a next time.