Summer waned and the air became cool. The sunflowers transformed from bright yellow to dun colored as they dried. The smell of apples permeated the house while Seal’s mom baked them into pies for local sales. The giant bags of flour now had a better use than securing the kitchen floor. Seal adjusted to life in middle school, but not as quickly as her parents hoped. She liked every teacher except her science teacher, Mr. Minn.
Mr. Minn was old. Older than granddad old. He hunched at the shoulder like he had a taught string pulling him towards his shoes. He talked slowly through his nose, while simultaneously looking down at you from it, giving him a snooty look. He had droopy eyes that tricked you into thinking he was asleep and he smelled like overcooked Brussels sprouts. He should have retired years ago.
He still segregated girls from boys, into groups of four, facing one another. Seal shared her table with three girls. They came from the other elementary school in the county. They were close friends, and they decided from the first day to exclude Seal. No, not exclude her. Treat her like dirt.
Being back after a year proved a trial. The only person who wanted to be her friend was Javin. As if that was not enough, she had these three girls picking on her. The three girls looked over at her and raised their eyebrows before giggling quietly, their faces nearly pressed together.
During lab periods, Seal worked alone. Not a terrible arrangement, given their treatment of her. Seal made herself more conspicuous because of Paintchip. She had won out, keeping the doll as a compromise for going back to school. Some students teased her early on, but they stopped when they found out she lost her younger sister.
Seal did not know it, but she had Javin to thank for telling people about the doll’s significance. But the three mean girls didn’t relent in their teasing, especially over Paintchip. They also had a nickname for her, although it had not caught on with the other students yet.
“Hey Haunt,” Jenn led. The other two, Hadley and Ellie, mimicked in unison, “Hey Haunt.”
“Do you only own one change of clothing?” Jenn asked her. Seal wore black, as always. She ignored the question.
Jenn turned to Hadley, “do you think she ever washes that dress?”
Hadley leaned forward and made sniffing noises, “Oh definitely not.” She wafted her hand under her nose, and they all laughed together. They always had a routine. Seal thought they planned how to tease her after school together. Mondays seemed to be the worst. Maybe the weekends gave them more time to be creative.
On this Monday six days before Halloween, Seal had her worst day yet. The school hung cardboard cutout of pumpkins and cornstalks to decorate for the harvest season. Seal felt waves of anxiety wash over her. She rushed to the nurse’s office, complaining of pain in her arm. The nurse took her pulse and told her she would be okay and sent her back to class. In between periods, Seal returned to the empty room. She grabbed her bookbag and rushed out. Science and the weekly lab session was next.
Seal sat down in class. The last to arrive. The three girls made faces at one another, shifting their eyes as if conveying a secret code. They did not acknowledge her at all. Their inattention made her uneasy. Seal took notes while Mr. Minn taught them about how to measure calories.
“A calorie is a unit of energy. We measure a calorie by the amount of heat it takes to raise the temperature of one kilogram of water by 1 degree Celsius.” He read this from an old book, paragraph after paragraph. Seal took notes, paraphrasing and marking off what she did not understand. The three girls watched her. Jenn winked, making Seal feel uneasy. When the first half of class ended, Seal shoved her books into her bag.
On the way to the lab, Seal opened the inside pocket of her bag. Empty. It should never be empty. Her left arm throbbed. She stopped in the hallway and spilled all the contents of the bag onto the floor. She felt inside, over and over, until she finally accepted Paintchip was missing. She shoved the spilled contents back into the bag, bending her notebook and half ripping pages. She rushed to the lab.
When she arrived the three bullies sat primly in their assigned places. They ignored Seal.
“Where is she?” Seal demanded.
“Where is who?” Jenn asked. “We are all here now. There is Hadley and there is Ellie, plain as day.”
“My sister’s doll. Where is it?”
“We don’t know where your dolly is. Sure you didn’t leave it in your bed this morning while mommy changed your diapers?”
Ellie chimed in, “Maybe your doll ran away because she thought you were too weird.”
“I’m not joking,” Seal said. Tears welled in the corner of her eyes. One crawled all the way to her neck. She wiped it away.
“We don’t have your doll,” Hadley said. “Check the lost and found. I am sure someone turned it in.” The three of them looked at Seal with the same disgusted look, like messing with her was beneath them, even though that is all they ever did.
When Mr. Minn entered the lab, he ordered everyone to take a seat. “I have an important safety lesson for you today, so pay attention.”
They would learn how to measure calories, which meant using Bunsen burners. He handed them all a burner so old he probably used them when he was a student. Each pair of students also received a box containing items for the experiment. He handed out a pale cheese puff to each pair of partners, instructing that they were not to eat them.
“They are stale, anyway,” he bellowed to the entire class. After his rotation around the room, he still had to replace two cheese puffs. Mr. Minn walked to each station to help them light their burners and to check that they were wearing safety goggles. Hadley stood next to Seal and watched as Mr. Minn slowly lit their burner for them. Jenn and Ellie lit theirs on their own. Seal began pushing a paper clip into a cork, while Hadley filled a pop can with water.
An odd burning smell reached Seal’s nose. Jenn and Ellie were ahead of them, burning the cheese puff. Only it wasn’t the cheese puff. They held Paintchip over a high flame and a second flame formed on the doll’s leg. Seal ran towards them and grabbed the buckskin doll, wrapping her hand around the flame. It scorched her palm but doused the flame. The pain caused her to drop Paintchip to the floor. An acrid smell filled the room.
The mean girls laughed. Everyone else looked on, shocked. Seal felt only anger. She punched Jenn as hard as she could. Jenn toppled and Seal followed her. Ellie tried reaching in. Seal punched her too, catching her lip against her yellow teeth. Ellie tasted blood on her tongue. Seal straddled Jenn before Mr. Minn reached them and pulled her off. Seal screamed in primal anger. Tears ran fully down her face, dampening her collar. Paintchip lay abandoned on the floor.
The doll’s leg had warped from the flame, becoming shorter than the other. The leather clothing wrapping it became hard with tiny, charred wrinkles. If not for the protection of the leather, Paintchip would have fully gone up in the fire. Poof. Lost forever.
Jenn’s crying brought back Seal’s attention to her. Blood smeared across her bully’s nose like war paint. Seal looked at her burned hand covered in Jenn’s blood. She pulled away, breaking free from Mr. Minn. She grabbed the doll and ran from the classroom, leaving her bag behind.
She left school through a side door. It banged hard behind her; the sound echoed through the hallway. She ran across the playground, past the perimeter fence, and onto the county road. Trucks blew past her, blowing gravel against her legs, like they were the angry Wind spirit spitting at her. She kept running, going as fast as she could until she approached a dark object. Someone walked in the center of the road. That made her stop.
The figure lumbered toward her. It looked like an old person, hunched and wrapped in thick layers of clothing and loose robes. As it approached closer, her perspective changed. Seal could see that it wasn’t an old homeless person, but a bison. It ambled down the center, in no hurry. This bison, intelligence in its eyes, looked directly into hers like it could read her thoughts. She felt lost in the stare until a loud single chirp of a siren broke her concentration. She turned to see a patrol car parked behind her, lights flashing. A man inside talked into his radio. Seal turned to look at the bison. Only the empty road remained.
The police officer exited his vehicle and walked towards her. She recognized him as her school’s assigned officer. A silver name sewn into his dark navy uniform read B. Walker. He was Lakota too. Before Lt. Walker said a word, she turned towards his car. He followed Seal, hand on her shoulder, meant more to comfort than control. He spoke to her, but she ignored him. He opened the rear door for her, and he put his hand above her head. She crawled in and lay in a fetal position on his back seat. He drove her home.
Seal’s mother had been alerted and barely made it home before them. Seal ran past her open arms and into her room with the damaged Paintchip. She lay in Beth’s bed and cried until she fell asleep.