Page 11 of The Island Villa

She felt herself turn pink with anticipatory pleasure. One day, when she’d had her first book published, she’d look back on this moment. She might even credit her English teacher for inspiring her to write uplifting fiction. Books that didn’t make you want to fall under a train or swallow arsenic along with the heroine.

Perhaps she’d dedicate her first book to her teacher. To Miss Barrett, who started it all.

The teacher waited until the door closed and then thrust Catherine her paper.

Catherine stared at the words scrawled at the top of the page.

D. Fail. See me!

Fail? How could it possibly be a fail? She’d written from her heart, poured her feelings all over the page. This was the first time she’d written a story down, and the first time she’d ever shown her work to anyone. She’d loved it. Writing it had given her a high she’d never felt before. Fail?

Pleasure turned to pain. Every part of her burned with humiliation. It was like being dipped in acid. Her hands shook on the paper.

“I don’t understand.”

Miss Barrett was red in the face. “What made you write a story like this?”

How was she supposed to answer that? “Like what?”

She’d written a romance. The topic had been together, and her story had felt appropriate. The girl sitting next to her had written about a cat and a mouse, but Catherine couldn’t see any way that would make an interesting story.

“It’s...” Miss Barrett cleared her throat and crossed her legs. “I want to know why you wrote this particular story. Have you girls been watching something? Reading something you shouldn’t?”

“No.” Catherine, who liked to anticipate the direction of trouble so that she could avoid it, had no idea where this conversation was going.

“Then where did the idea come from?”

“My brain.”

“But what, or who, put such a thing into your brain?”

Was she asking where stories and characters came from? Catherine had no idea. They appeared, fully formed, and lived their lives vividly inside her head. She’d assumed it was the same for everyone but judging from the way Miss Barrett was looking at her, evidently not.

“I like to make up stories.”

Miss Barrett’s mouth flattened into a thin line. “You have no talent for it, Catherine. This—” she waved a hand at Catherine’s offending story “—is trash. Worthless. Whatever you’re imagining, it is better off remaining inside your head. You will never be a writer. Give up, now.”

Worthless. So many people used that word around her it had to be true.

Her confidence had died that day. She’d stumbled through the rest of the afternoon and later, devastated and humiliated, she’d slunk back to the dormitory only to find all the girls sitting on her bed, waiting for her. One of them, Jane, always the ringleader, was holding Catherine’s essay.

Miss Barrett’s words were still ringing in her head. This is trash. You’ll never be a writer.

Catherine knew she’d never forget those words, but she’d consoled herself with the knowledge that no one but her and the teacher would ever know.

She’d been as wrong about that as she’d been about everything else.

Somehow the other girls had got hold of her story and read it, which proved that even though you thought you’d hit rock bottom, you could always sink lower. When they’d teased her for always missing the ball, she’d told herself it didn’t matter. When she’d come last in a race or sang out of tune, she’d told herself that didn’t matter either.

But writing? Stories? They mattered. They were everything. The world inside her head was everything, and now it was exposed to the full mockery of others.

No doubt they’d find a new way to torture her. And it would be worse than hair pulling, or the time they’d dropped her books into the toilet, because it was personal. Her writing was personal. She should never have shared it.

Jane, the ringleader, had appointed herself spokesperson.

“Catherine Swift, whoever would have thought it?”

Too miserable to respond, Catherine had stood still and waited for them to have their fun and took comfort from the knowledge that they couldn’t hurt her more than she was already hurting. She felt small, and wounded, and insignificant.

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