Free The Death of Bees by Lisa O'Donnell Page A

they’re possessed of, but no chalk smells, shame. I saw the fourth-year art display, a lot of jugs with apples, a pair of ballet slippers with a rose, and a nice tapestry of a ladybug. To tell the truth I was glad to get out of the place and when I did I saw this huge poster of a carving knife with a cross through it. NO WEAPONS , it said. Then another, like a traffic sign: NO DRUGS ON SCHOOL PREMISES , with a picture of pills and needles and a cigarette burning. Honest to God, it would make your head spin off its shoulders.
    I wonder about these kids. Take that Kim for instance. She’s gay and not even eighteen and has freedoms I could only dream of. I could never have told my parents I was gay at eighteen, they’d have died of shame, it was information trickled toward them and over many years. As for her schoolteachers, she’s in a gay support group and they meet after PE.
    Marnie is obviously someone of importance in their little pack, all of them attracted to the damage they share and the pains they’ve known. Urban living has certainly hardened them. The neglect and the poverty, it steals so much from children, forcing them to snatch whatever’s offered them—and how they grab at the things put upon them by strangers, the unnatural comforts and abhorrent cruelties.
    I’d like to take Marnie and Nelly far from here, but they don’t even own a passport, it’s like they’re stuck on this irascible road until Marnie turns sixteen, but then what? A legal entitlement to a life on welfare. It’s not to be leaned on, nor aspired to, there is more to them than that and if God grants me the time to make amends for an unfortunate boy set upon by me, I hope to show them.

Nelly
    I curl up in a ball and scream. Mr. Domble doesn’t know what to do with me and fetches the nurse. I silently fold the agony inside. They fetch Marnie. I grab for her, pulling at her shoulders, stretching at her V-neck. She grabs for my hands and pushes them away. She tells me to calm down. I feel a sop and a baby. I try to forget about them in the garden, really I do, but I can’t, they live always in my head and so vividly. I see Izzy over Marnie’s shoulder and I see Gene. I want to scream, but Marnie’s eyes forbid it. She pulls me to my feet and we are allowed to go home.
    â€œLennie is asking questions,” I tell her.
    She ignores me and it fills me with fear.
    â€œLennie wishes to know their whereabouts,” I persist. “But how can I tell him when he is teaching me Chopin?”
    â€œYou keep throwing fits like that then everyone is going to find out,” she barks.
    Our life is a calamity and I feel so damn angry these days. Perhaps on account of the things that cannot be ignored, deeds forced upon me by others. Oh damn Marnie, damn her to hell with her temper. I am thoroughly pained.

Marnie
    S he’d had a fit in the library and I had to take her home. She looked a right tit. She almost pulled my jersey off. I lifted her from the floor and nervously wiped her dress down. It was dusty. Mrs. MacLeod let us leave early.
    Walking out of the school I held her hand. I couldn’t help it. I hate her when she’s like this but I feel other things too. She was shaking like a leaf and deep down I wanted to hug it all away, but the very thought made me feel uncomfortable and I was shamed by it.
    When I look up at the voices yelling from the school windows and I see Nelly’s classmates and they’re shouting out “Freak” and “Weirdo,” I am full of rage. I try to remember faces and plan to beat the offenders to a pulp. She is my sister and they have no right. When we get to Lennie’s house I put her on the sofa. I tell Lennie she’s had a fit at school. I explain to him she is prone to fits and he just accepts it, not a single question from him and I am so grateful. It’s exhausting reaching for answers all the time. Nelly falls