Lily, the Brave - By Katherine Hodges Page 0,5

clean too,” added Lily.

“We know, Lily,” Jackson mumbled.

Lily was pretty sure they did know. They were very responsible for their age, but it seemed they sometimes forgot things when they were having fun. Lily wheeled herself into the living room. On her way to her bedroom, a picture on the wall caught her eye. It was her mom with her sisters, Jenny and Candice. They were all teenagers sitting on the porch of a white Victorian house. Flowers clung around the porch railings and down to the ground where they curved and grew around the base of the house. You could tell it was summertime because each girl had that summer “glow”, AKA sweat. They each had rounded scoops of ice cream in delicate glass dishes. Off to the left was an old woman who looked on at them in the most loving way imaginable. Her thin lips curved into a pleasant smile. This was her great grandmother. Lily had never met her, but she had heard many lovely stories about her life. She looked back at her mother’s girlish figure. It had been almost two weeks since the dream. She had nearly forgotten it. Lily wished so much that her mother were still with her. She wished that every day, even though she knew it wasn’t possible. The only place she would see her mother was in her dreams. As the tears began to fall she could almost hear what her mother would say if she were right there with her. “Oh, honey, don’t cry! I am right here, and everything is going to be okay”. But everything wasn’t okay, and Lily wondered if she would ever really be “okay”. She quickly wiped her tears from her stained cheeks when she heard her aunt pull into the driveway. If Jenny heard so much as a sniffle, her own water works would turn on to full blast and she would be crying and moody the rest of the evening.

Lily hurried off to her room to finish what little homework she had. Lily had finished most of it with Malaya during lunch. They didn’t have anything else to do. Their lunches had disappeared, and they didn’t have extra money with them to buy it from the cafeteria. Slade had struck once again. He somehow rigged half the lockers in the north hall so they wouldn’t shut. Most students didn’t want to carry around all their textbooks, sack lunches and other personal items so most just chose to leave their belongings unsecure. There were only four lunches stolen, but other items went missing too. A watch, several homework assignments and English papers, a snow globe of the statue of liberty, and a magnetic mirror. Supposedly there wasn’t enough evidence to convict Dean, Slade or any of their buddies, but everyone knows they did it. Who else would? While the lockers were being repaired, they were given temporary lockers in the west hall. Of course they had to be in the same hall as “Dean’s gang”. Now they were far more at risk of being tormented by the vandal himself. Lily was hoping he would take pity on a poor orphan in a wheel chair. Malaya didn’t think it would matter if they were Mother Teresa, he would still find something to ridicule or make a joke about. Was it even possible for him to resist the slightest teasing or jest? She would soon find out.

Chapter 4

The following morning when Lily and Malaya approached their new lockers, there was no Slade in sight. They each breathed a sigh of relief and went to work organizing their new space. When it was time for class, Malaya crept off down the hall toward algebra mouthing the words, “good luck”. Lily responded with a silent, “you too”. With Malaya now gone, Lily was left alone to fend for herself. It wasn’t that she couldn’t handle herself on her own, but she had never been particularly assertive. She wasn’t brave like her friend. Malaya had a strength and confidence that Lily didn’t naturally have. Lily had always been on the shy side, and she didn’t like conflict. She was easily bullied, as she had been in elementary school several times. She didn’t stand up for herself. She would just agree or say nothing and hope the bully would move on. Sometimes that had worked, but sometimes it didn’t.

Lily patiently waited for the hallway to clear up so there was more room to maneuver her wheel chair. She