Kufritka Ilgudrusk part 2

Here's a little bit more of the story, as it takes its vague shape in that most awhirl and overflowing bundle of colorful sparks, my mind. You can quote me.

Well, okay. I complain, but I guess I don't have it all that bad. My situation could be worse. I mean, since I'm quiet and don't attract much attention, my name doesn't get asked too much, and I don't get into many sticky and embarrassing situations. My policy is just to keep my head down, not to raise my hand in class or volunteer for anything, and to basically remain perfectly unnoticed.

My rather bitter and unofficial nickname for this policy is "Politique Discrète".

French is my favorite class, because Mademoiselle actually understands that some students should not, under any circumstances, be called on for any reason. (The fact that we get to choose our own "French names" to use for everything doesn't hurt, either.)

If I had ever allowed myself to think the impossible - that there was anyone else in the world with a name as strange as mine - I must have assumed that the same tendency to keep out of the spotlight at all costs held true with them, as well.

To use a time-honored and cheesy cliché, oh, how wrong I was.

Before I begin relating the story you are probably not even at all interested in hearing, I must explain something. Tuesday has always been an unlucky day for me. I don't know why, I

don't know how, but it's a fact that if something can go weirdly wrong in my life, it always,

without fail, happens on a Tuesday. It's become such a concrete fact to me that I no longer try

to investigate or explain it. Back in fifth grade - before I adopted Politique Discrète - I tried to

use this Tuesday phenomenon as a science project.

Through some twist of cosmic fate - or was it just the very law I was trying to confirm? - the science fair fell on, yes, a Tuesday. So far that day, nothing unusual had happened, but I knew something would. The Tuesday coincidence had never failed me yet; I had complete faith in my theory. However, my teacher thought differently.

"Honey," she told me condescendingly, "you can't prove this."

"But I can!" I cried, trying in vain to show her my charts, my graphs and diagrams and research, which all seemed perfectly logical to me. But she just shook her head.

"It just can't be possible," she said. "It doesn't follow the scientific method. And besides, the theory is ludicrous. Strange things occurring every Tuesday? It isn't possible." I tried to argue, getting gradually angrier and angrier and more and more hurt. "Miss, it is possible! See, right here, my bar graph - "

"You are wrong about this, Kuffie." She cut me off in a dangerous tone, using the stupid nickname that she had given me when she couldn't pronounce Kufritka. I hated it. Kuffie? Seriously?

"You are wrong about this. You obviously haven't understood a thing I've been teaching the class. I'm afraid I'm going to have to give you a zero on the assignment." She pulled out a red marker and scrawled a big messy O across the corner of the neat posterboard I had worked so diligently on, taking such pains to get it straight and perfect. I wanted to cry.

"Please, Kuffie, take your seat."

Slowly, sadly, I turned around and shuffled weakly back to my little desk, tears in my eyes. I shoved my posterboard under the seat, not taking care to keep it clean. What was the use, once she had ruined it with that stupid red marker?

I put my head down, hiding in the soft blackness of my folded arms until the end of the day. After leaving the school building at three o'clock, I plodded dejectedly toward home, my little rubber boots squeaking on the sidewalk and the defaced board rolled up carelessly under my arm. I lived, along with around fifty other kids, in the austere, gray-bricked building they called Amber Westcott Children's Home. I knew better, however. Under that fancy four-word title was only an orphanage.

It had rained earlier in the day, and puddles dotted the concrete. Other kids splashed and frolicked happily in the tiny ponds. I kept my head down and kept walking, my rolled-up board chafing my side. Going a little faster, I turned the corner, my eyes on the ground, and concentrated on walking.

Leftrightleftrightpitpatpitpat. The reassuring rhythm drilled comfortingly into my ears and settled in my head, driving out memories of my horrible day. I became so hypnotized by the drumbeats of my little rubbers that I have to admit, what happened next was mostly my fault. I closed my eyes for a second.

SMACK! Next thing I knew, I had sat down hard on the wet concrete and was staring into a pair of bright hazel eyes.

The girl stared back at me. We sat there for a while, looking into each other's eyes, unmindful of the rainwater soaking into our jeans. It was strangely peaceful - two girls, close in age, sitting on a wet sidewalk without moving and simply regarding each other with an equally shrewd eye.

She spoke first. "Well," she said, hopping to her feet with a suddenness that startled me, "it's been real, but I gotta get on my way. Lots to do, you know."

It's been real? What in the world?

"I - " I began, struggling to my feet, "I - I don't - who are you? What's your name?"

She froze up, and her cheeks turned pink. She looked at the ground, one tattered sneaker scuffing awkwardly. "You'll laugh," she mumbled.

"I won't," I said quickly. I knew what that felt like.

"Yeah, you will," she insisted. "Everyone does." She sighed and straightened. "What's yours?"

Her question took me by surprise, which soon gave over to panic. Here it comes, I thought. Once I tell her, she'll be just like everyone else.

But somehow, this girl seemed different. Hadn't she, too, seemed embarrassed by her name? I felt, inexplicably, that telling her the six syllables that had caused me so much unhappiness would be the absolute right thing to do.

"Kufritka," I stated, with slightly wavy confidence. "Kufritka Ilgudrusk."

I steeled myself.

She grinned. "Cool!"

I was completely dumbfounded, rendered speechless by the girl's reaction. I said nothing, standing frozen with shock, until she broke the silence.

"Wulp, gotta go. Lots to do, you know. Lots." She smiled, and for a moment I wasn't wet or cold. The warm glow of her smile skipped around inside me, and slowly, I did what I hadn't for a long time. I smiled back.

The girl nodded as though we had come to some kind of agreement. Her curly hair bounced onto her face, and she brushed it brusquely back. "Good then," she said. "Bye, Kufritka."

She started off in the direction she had been going, and as she passed, I felt the warm aura that radiated from her. I remember being very sure, in that split second as she breezed by, that we would meet again. It was a wonderful, sure feeling, and so powerful that I stood there for a second with my eyes shut tight, listening to her footsteps receding off down the street. Then the strange girl had rounded the corner, and I was alone again.

I took a deep breath, opened my eyes, and turned to pick up my posterboard.

It wasn't there. The stretch of sidewalk was empty.

Hot frustration and fury rose in my stomach like the rotten oyster I had once eaten on a Children's Home weekend trip to the coast. She had taken my posterboard. Ruined as it was, it was still mine. And she had stolen it!

I couldn't believe it. I had trusted that girl! Even though we had only just met, even though I didn't even know her name or who she was or where she came from. I had trusted her. And she had turned out to be a thief. A low-down, no-good, rotten, nasty, posterboard thief.

The fury waned and paled into desolation - a deep, cold sadness that penetrated like a sudden icy wind. I trudged bleakly off on my way, finally giving myself over to tears.

In place of the warm, sure feeling that had washed over me as the girl passed was left a funereal gloom. I'd never get my precious posterboard back. I would never see the girl again. This seemed almost more tragic to me, for much as I hated her stupid guts for taking my project, I was sure that she was special. She was the first person I had ever met who hadn't laughed at my name. And now she was gone.

Every tiny scrap of confidence that I had ever had hidden away inside me shriveled, shuddered, and died. My heart retreated in on itself, curling and curdling into a tiny, cold shard deep inside me. I knew now there was no hope, there never would be hope, of being happy.

That night, in my rickety little bed on the second floor of Amber Westcott Children's Home, I cried for the last time. I would never cry again. I wanted never to speak again, either, but that would be impossible. Everyone had to talk sometimes. But I would do my very best to achieve the absolute minimum in every social aspect of life.

That was the moment I began Politique Discrète.

Well, readers? Waddya think? I worked hard on this section...you better have appreciated it, you ungrateful wretches. :)