Jena Jenkins- Green High School

She was running.

That was all Naomi could remember from her dream last night - that she had been

running, and fast. As she stood brushing her platinum blond hair, carefully running the neon pink

brush down each and every strand, she struggled to recall from what, exactly, she had been

running. Ultimately ending up at a loss, Naomi gently set the bright brush down on the bathroom

counter, and walked out to complete her preparations for school. She only really had one thing

left to do - to put on her jet black platform shoes. In truth, she was already rather tall to begin

with - nearly 5' 11" - and the additional height boost made her feel embarrassed, but her current

boyfriend liked it when she made herself even taller, despite the fact that he himself was only

5' 3". So everyday Naomi put on the tallest shoes that she had, even buying a few new pairs, to

please him.

With her black platforms securely on her feet, Naomi hopped back up, giving herself one

last look in the mirror, to ensure immaculance. As her cerulean eyes reflected back at her, she

made one last effort to remember what had been chasing her in her dream the night before. Still

unsuccessful, she frowned at herself in the mirror, and sprinted away to wait for her boyfriend to

take her to school.

----------------

She was running.

As Aloisia charged through the streets, pushing herself to go faster and faster, she stole a

quick look behind her. They were still there, laughing and taunting, picking up cans and trash as

they went to chuck at her. Aloisia wanted to stop, to cry, but she refused to, at least until they

would finally get bored and leave. They would, eventually. They always did.

At last, a half hour later, Aloisia got a brief period of rest; she had escaped for the time

being, due to some clever maneuvering on her part. She curled up into a ball, placing her head on

top of her knees, panting and crying at the same time. After several minutes in this state, Aloisia

lifted her head up, and brushed her disoriented deep brown hair from her equally disoriented deep

brown eyes. She wiped a streak of blood from her cheek that was emerging from a successful can

strike, and wiped the blood across the yellow star on her sleeve, watching as the drops seeped

into the fabric. After taking a deep breath a minute later, Aloisia stood up, ready to continue her

perilous trek to school. It looked like she would be late today.

----------------

Naomi ran her graceful fingers through the dark hair of her boyfriend, sitting in front of

her in class. He recoiled from the touch, turning around slightly to give her a deadly glare. Naomi

knew that he hated it when she touched his hair, but it was so soft, she couldn't help herself

sometimes. She always cursed herself later for doing it; she was lucky to be dating him at all, (he

was the self-proclaimed King of the School, after all,) and she didn't want to ruin things with her

petty wants.

After class, Naomi apologized to him in hallway, and though he still looked agitated, he

said he would forgive her. "Just don't do it again," was all he said.

By lunchtime though, he was wholly himself again, cheerful, and laughing with his

princely friends. As she spooned lime jello into his mouth, a small mass of deep cedar hair and

baggy clothes passed by the table, heading toward the nearby trash disposal units. The mass

threw a brown paper bag into one of the units, and started to walk back to the table of its origin.

Naomi's boyfriend and boyfriend's crew paused in their current stream of laughter to unsubtly

whisper insults of "freak" and "loser" to the mass. The mass, picking up its pace to escape the

taunts, dropped a book in its rush. Although realizing this, the mass did not turn around to pick it

back up. Naomi, while her boyfriend was still chuckling over his spectularly original insults,

picked up the book, and flipped through the pages; it was about a young girl amidst the

Holocaust. Before she could really get into it though, Naomi's boyfriend nudged her to continue

feeding him, and she slipped the book into her bag, out of sight.

----------------

A little before noon, Aloisia started making her way back home to her parents shop.

Soldiers had just come and order all the students to go home; considering that they were lighting

the building on fire as they were leaving, Aloisia imagined she would now be spending a lot of

time at home, helping her parents in their store.

As Aloisia walked around straightening the things on the store's shelves, an old childhood

friend of hers, Helena, entered the store. Helena had heard about what had happened to Aloisia's

and many other kids' schools that day, and had skipped class herself to see how she was doing.

Helena, with sandy blond hair and crisp sapphire eyes, wasn't Jewish.

The two friends went into the back of shop, where the excess stock was, and talked for a

long time, until it was about the time that Helena's school would be letting out. Helena then got

up and headed home, telling Aloisia that she would try to sneak back again later that week.

----------------

Throwing her backpack on the floor and plopping down on her bed, Naomi closed her

eyes and let her mind wander for a moment. Suddenly, she thought of the book that Lydia, (aka

"the mass",) had dropped earlier that day, and pulled it out of her bag. She began reading it; she

didn't really know why, something to pass the time until Phineas, (aka "her boyfriend") called

with the night's hangout, she supposed, because she normally hated to read. Even so, she was a

fast reader, and it was a short book, and so by the time that Phineas did finally call, she was

almost a quarter of the way through it. She put it into her purse as Phineas pulled into her

driveway, and then headed out the door and into his car; he hated having to wait for her.

A half hour later found Naomi, Phineas, and the same faces from lunch now sitting in a

local fast food joint. After another ten minutes had passed, Naomi noticed a familiar face in the

form of Lydia, pouring over the night's homework, fries disappearing behind cedar hair every so

often. When Phineas and his gang started to leave, passing by Lydia's table, Naomi pulled the

book from her purse, and held it out to her. Lydia looked up at her.

"You, um, dropped this earlier today, uh, during lunch," Naomi explained. Lydia stared at

her, then at the book, with a twinge of suspicion. After letting a few seconds of deliberation pass,

Lydia cautiously reached out, and snatched the book from Naomi's hands. Lydia mumbled a

"thank you", and began flipping through the pages, searching for damage, occasionally eyeing

Naomi, who still stood there.

Completing her flipping, Lydia finally turned full-on to Naomi, the six-pointed star

around her neck clanging against the table with the force of her head turning. "What do you

want?"

Naomi fidgeted. "I, well...I read part of it. It was really...um, well, it was scary."

Lydia continued studying Naomi with uncertainty. "Its my grandmother's story," she

finally said. She turned the book to its back cover, and pointed to the picture of the girl with the

deep brown hair and deep brown eyes. "That's her, when she was young."

Suddenly realizing that his woman was not at his side, Phineas turned around to see her

with Lydia. He stomped over, immediately followed by his court. "What are you doing? Let's

go."

Naomi turned her sky-colored eyes to meet his grass-colored ones. "I was returning a

book." She smiled softly, and gestured to Lydia.

Dropping his gaze, Phineas looked at the book, clutched in Lydia's hands, and then up at

Lydia herself. He smiled, wide and hard.

As Naomi layed in bed that night, thinking about the look on Phineas's face as he tore

apart Lydia's book, and ripped the six-pointed star from around her neck, she found that she at

last could recall what she had been running from the night before, in her dream.

It had been a monster.

----------------

The next morning, Aloisia wrapped her hands in bandages; she had been picking up the

broken glass from the invasion of her parents' store the night before, and had cut her hands

several times in the process. Helena walked in, having skipped school again, and embraced her

friend, kissing both her hands, to help them heal. She was scared for her friend; really scared. She

told her that she had heard, from her parents, rumors. Bad rumors. They needed to get away, far

away, and soon.

Helena told her friend that she had nowhere to go; besides, what if the rumors weren't

true? She would be okay.

Helena didn't believe Aloisia any more than Aloisia did. She told Aloisia that she had a

plan; if things got bad, like the rumors she heard, then she should come to her house, with her

parents. She would hide them; she knew the perfect place. Not even her own parents would know

they were there.

Aloisia hugged her friend one last time before she left. Yet, Helena had to go; her parents

would punish her if they knew where she was.

----------------

The next day, Naomi anxiously looked for Lydia at school. She didn't know why. She

didn't see her for a long time; she began to worry that, perhaps, she wasn't coming that day, or

any other. It wasn't like anyone would miss her if she didn't come. At last though, she saw her in

the hallway, switching out books at her locker. When Naomi approached her, she quickly turned

her face away, and tried to hurry up.

"Please go away. Phineas will come looking for you, if you don't. And find me," Lydia

begged as she closed her locker.

"I'm sorry, I didn't know he would-"

"Yes, you did know."

Lydia was right, of course. Naomi did know. She suddenly wondered why Phineas only

ever dated tall, blond, blue-eyed girls...

Speaking of the devil, Phineas came storming down the hallway at that moment, angry at

Naomi for not having trailed after him after class like a dog, and spying the perfect outlet for that

anger...

----------------

Aloisia screamed as her parents struggled in the soldiers' grasps. Her mother freed herself

enough to shove Aloisia through the window and down two floors into the street, just as another

soldier reached out to carry her off, too. Aloisia hit the pavement hard, and wanted to just lay

there, lay there and cry, but she knew she couldn't do that, she knew she had to run. Like the

other day. So she did.

She took every backstreet that she could; fortunately, she was excellent at disappearing

amongst the streets. In ten minutes time she had reached Helena's house, and tapped lightly on

her bedroom window. Understanding without a word, Helena opened her window up, and pulled

Aloisia into her room. She pushed aside her bed, and lifted up a few floorboards that she had

slowly been loosening over the past few days, and helped Aloisia down into the hole she had also

been digging over the past few days. Helena handed her friend a handkerchief, to dry her silent

tears, then put the floorboards back into place and shoved her bed back over top. She would have

to remember to ask her mother for some extra breakfast tomorrow morning...

----------------

Naomi sat in the school's infirmary, pressing an ice-pack to her swollen cheek, both the

school's nurse and Lydia fussing over her. When the nurse finally left to tell the principal, who

was dealing with Phineas, about how Naomi was doing, Lydia stepped right in front of Naomi,

boldly looking at her and demanding, "Why did you do that?"

"He was going to hit you."

"And instead he hit you."

"A good trade off for you, I'd say."

Lydia moved her face within an inch of Naomi's, looking right into Naomi's startled

cerulean eyes. Lydia let a half-smile slip across her lips, and pulled her face back. "I get it. Trying

to be like Helena, eh?"

A half-smile also began to curl on Naomi's lips. Although she knew that it was a

reference from Lydia's book, she feigned ignorance. "Who?" she asked innocently.

"You know."

"I do?"

"Yeah, you do."

Naomi's half-smiled transformed into a full one. "Yeah, I do." She paused. "I think I

finally get it, too."