A Black Heart

• Chelsea Mellington, Grade 6
• Short Story
• 2007

The little girl stared out of the window only seeing darkness, which had been a screaming mass of blearing sirens only hours earlier. The accident was one she would never forget, one that left a hole in her newly formed and blackened heart.
She was to be taken away, now that she had no one to live with. Her last remaining loved one, killed in the accident. She was to be sent to a boarding school in France with the money she will receive from the family will.
Later that night she walked the long flight of stairs that seemed to her now an endless passage of pain and sorrow. When she reached her bedroom she laid her stiffened and hollow head on her bed and cried herself to sleep.
In the morning her bags were packed and she was sent on a plane to France. Her family was a very wealthy family so she was enrolled in a very expensive, very posh school. She was to have a room of her own and to have whatever she desired.
When she first arrived she wouldn’t speak to a living soul. Nobody heard her speak and people began to spread rumours and whisper behind her back.
“What a weird little child,” the teachers would say as they sat and ate their lunches.
She was very sad at boarding school, she had no friends and no family, but one day things started to change. After Friday assembly the little girl was on her way to go to her first class for the morning, when she heard it. She heard it call for her with a soft and silent meow. She followed the strange noise, where she saw a small cat innocently peering up at her and meowing. It was a different sort of cat. It was not domestic, but feral. It was very tiny and it was completely black. It had big, green round eyes and a delicate tail. It looked very magical. The girl felt a need for the cat and the cat appeared to need her too. She decided to keep the cat. She would have to sneak it into her dorm and keep it hidden in her room, since there was the no pets policy.
She took off her coat and shivered in the cold frosty air, she then carefully picked up the cat and wrapped it in her coat. She briskly hurried back to her room and locked the door. She gently placed the cat on her bed and watched it stretch its hind legs.
“Thank you,” said the cat.
“You can speak English?” The little girl asked amazingly.
“Yes,” said the cat.
From that day on the little girl was quite happy because she now had a special friend to love, although she still had a black heart. On her graduation she found a new home with a long lost Aunt and went to live with her and took her cat.