Ignorance

• Kavya Katta, Grade 9, Mt Waverley Secondary College
• Short Story
• 2011

Excellence Award in the 'Step Write Up 2011' competition

When she stood up in class for the first time and said her name, she was ignored.
When she showed everyone the little silver dagger that was strapped to her belt, she was ignored.
When she sat in the corner at lunch, listening to her iPod, silvery white fringe dipping into her dark jade eyes, she was ignored.
When she had a seizure, collapsing behind the wall convulsing and thrashing, she was ignored.
So when someone had come up behind her and surprised her, and she had drawn the dagger and stabbed him in a way of greeting (after all, wasn't that how they did it in the old spy movies?), she was surprised.
Someone, for the first time, had looked at her. Someone, for the first time, had said her name. Someone, for the first time, had taken her hand, had made her feel as if she wasn’t alone.
When the men and women in the blue suits came to take her away, she let the dagger clatter to the ground, splashing little crimson droplets over the stark white flooring.
A clueless grin swept over her face, as she stared into the shocked, panicked faces of her former classmates and teachers. A feeling of belonging and acceptance slid over her.
She, Hayden Watson, was no longer ignored.
We never expected Hayden to be the one to do it. It was predicted that someone would be responsible (I mean, in our rat-trap of a school, it wasn't that hard to predict), but not her.
Not sweet, gentle, crazy, innocent Hayden.
Sure, she hung out by herself, but she was kind of like a little sister to all of us. We never ignored her, not really.
We didn’t, couldn’t, understand the reasons behind the plastic dagger strapped to her waist at all times (as if she'd just come out of an assassin movie or something), behind her clothes, behind her frequent disappearances. We didn’t understand how to connect with her, how to bring her out of that unique shell and figure out who she was. She was that elusive mystery just out of reach.
We didn’t understand her.
When Brandon lay in the corridors, blood seeping from a hole in his chest, we thought it was another prank. He pulled them often, to scare visitors to the school.
But when we noticed Hayden standing above him, the not-so-plastic-after-all dagger covered in Brandon’s blood clenched tightly in her hand, the truth came out.
Hayden was a murderer.
“Hayden!” Alyssa called, makeup-stained tears brimming over her eyelids and dripping down her cheeks in black smudgy trails.
I grabbed Hayden’s hand to stop her from running away, and an eerie but innocent smile spread over her face.
When a police escort of seven trained individuals arrived at our school, they assessed the damage quickly and left, not caring for the feelings of us.
They took her hand out of mine roughly. Hayden didn’t respond; she was in a sort of daze, a sort of trance. The dagger clattered out of her stone grip, and they bagged it indifferently, not caring what it meant.
When she was gone, we all cried. We cried for the loss of Brandon, the loss of Hayden’s innocence, and for our deadly mistake.
We cried for our ignorance of Hayden Watson.