The floor to ceiling windows in the field house building where I attended Nursery School ran along one wall.
They were arched at the top. Light streamed in. One was a door that opened out to the playground beyond.
I loved to skip. Having just mastered this feat of coordination, I was glad when Mrs. McMasters put a record on the record player and we would skip and run and hop around the table in the center of the room. I tried to stay ahead of everyone, taking big skipping strides, knees high.
One day as the music played, Eleanor Creston lost her balance and ran right into one of the tall windows.
There was shattered glass everywhere, blood, screaming. I was horrified to watch Mrs. McMasters hold my favorite cloth painting smock up to Eleanor's face.
Eleanor and I attended school together for the next seven years. A long thin line with eight, short, perpendicular lines through it was etched on her pale cheek starting at the outside corner of her right eye. Looking at her, the images flashed before me again and again. The broken glass, the horror on my teacher's face, my smock now red with blood.
2 comments:
Wow. What an awful memory to hold in for all these years.
I remember (later) a kid falling head first off the jungle gym and an ambulance coming.
Artfully done. Set the scene then BAM!
Leaves the reader with a jarring sense of shock at what happens as much as is possible reflecting what you must have felt.
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