Garden Wall

• Kavya Katta, Grade 9
• Short Story
• 2011

That wall. That accursed garden wall. Since I had entered high school, I had become obsessed with climbing over the neatly arranged fortress of ornate bricks.
I didn’t succeed.
I could smell the fresh, clean scent coming from the other side. That promise of someplace better tantalised me, tortured me until I was collapsing of agony.
I pleaded for the gardenkeeper (how could a wondrous place like that not have someone tending to its wellbeing?) to let me in, to bring me over the wall into the promise of happiness and dreams.
I didn’t get a response.
After a while, I got bored of this little game. I turned on my heel and walked away, deciding to deal with my current life. The garden was too alluring a place, a place just out of my reach.
But some days, it was too much. Some days, I longed for that magnificent stretch of tranquil greenery. The one place that smelt like home.
I wasn’t used to this; trying to face my world instead of trying to escape to a better place. Sometimes, it made me feel strong. Sometimes, I felt like I could have a place in this world. That elusive little garden over the wall was pushed to the back of my mind.
Never truly forgotten, but out of the way as much as I could deal with.
But sometimes, I wasn’t strong. Sometimes, I returned to the shadowy barrier and tried. I scrambled up until my knees were scraped and my elbows were shaking with the exertion.
I fell.
I always fell.
No matter how hard I tried.
It didn’t matter whether I was panting and wheezing or just lightly breathing.
I always fell.
Always.
It wasn’t fair. Some days, I could hear the airy laughter and glittering chatter from over the wall. They had been let in. Let over. Why couldn’t I? Did the gardenkeeper have something against me? Didn’t he want me to be in a better place? Didn’t he like me?
He wouldn’t be the first.
The wall was plaguing my mind. Taking over my every thought. I couldn’t eat, I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t even breathe when the wall was on my mind. I wanted that garden.
I needed the garden.
Facing my world was too much. I decided to end it, once and for all. With a steady breath, I tensed my muscles. I prepared to leap into the unknown and over the wall, into the secret garden.
I jumped.
I made it.
I was finally over that wretched wall.
Inside the garden.
It was everything that I’d dreamed it would be. Sparkling with colour and life. Transparent people stared at me from their various positions.
Then the gardenkeeper (I knew it was him, he exuded power and radiance) looked at me with warm amber eyes. Lifting his chin, he spoke.
“You shouldn’t be here.”
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The broken body lay slumped in the bathroom, half leaning on the mahogany cupboard. She’d been depressed for weeks, but no one had thought much of it. The faint scars on her wrists, ignored.
And now it was too late.
Her once bright green eyes stared at seemingly nothing. A glassy, vacant stare. Blood leaked out of the gash on her wrist, pooling on the stark white tile and matting in her long brown hair.
Her lips were twisted into a final, triumphant smile.