Lost & Found: Chapter 5: ABC all over again

(Note for those who haven't read the other chapters (Click the 'View novel' button); I am Leon. When I mention the name Leon I'm refering to myself in third person, since I'm telling this from Henri's point of view. When I mention Sinbad, that's Sinbad the sailor, Henri's Hero.)

Things aren’t always as they seem on the surface, an as long as you’re hearing my voice in your head and heeding my words, you’re never going to get the full picture of what’s going on here . There’s two of us in this story, so far anyway, myself and Henri. For that reason I thought it would only be fair to tell things from her point of view once in a while. I guess that means I have to describe her as a person, rather than a nightmarish doll-child of the first four chapters.

On January the 3rd Henri stood at the gates of her new nursery school. Her job was to be well behaved for Leon, and that meant not letting on just how nervous she was when he dropped her off outside school that morning.

She stared around the yard waiting for something to happen. All the other kids where playing games, or standing with their parents. When she turned around, Henri found that Leon had already sped off in another direction.

A soft sounding bell rung. All the children in the playground started to swarm in through two huge, arch-shaped doors. Henri followed them, but she’d barely stepped into the door when the remarkably skinny lady who had rung the bell stopped her.

‘Hello.’ She smiled. ‘What’s your name?’

‘Hen-ri-et-ta.’ Henri said. This lady was a teacher, she assumed.

‘You’re new, aren’t you?’ Henri stared at her for a moment. She sounded and acted kind, but her eyes where a narrow shape that didn’t seem to match the rest of her face. ‘My name is Leah, I’m your new teacher. If you just wait there a moment I’ll take you to our classroom.’

Once the other children had gone in Leah held out her hand, and Henri took it gladly. Hands where good things to Henri. People who hold your hand look after you. They take you places, and make sure you don’t get lost or hurt. Henri held this hand tight, and it led her a short way down the corridor to the first classroom. The corridor was painted purple, and right along the walls of the corridor multi-coloured butterflies cast painted shadows onto the walls. The design fascinated her, but only for as long as she could linger before Leah said ‘come on sweetie,’ and pulled her in through a sunny-yellow door.

Inside, the classroom that was more like a beehive fell into a sudden hush, with as much peculiarity as if an actual beehive suddenly stopped in its tracks. Henri tensed her shoulders and lowered her head. Tiny whispers drifted across the classroom and she knew they were all about her.

She clutched the hand tighter and tried to stand behind Leah.

‘Don’t worry.’ Leah laughed. ‘They won’t bite.’

‘Shaun bites.’ Maria said. Those around her giggled. Right then Henri wished some giant monster would come and swallow her up, and then Sinbad would come and rescue her once everything was over.

She was given a seat at the green table, which, like the other five tables in the room, was self-proclaimed to be the best. That’s where she met Maria and Conner.

Maria was a pale girl with black hair that was as smooth as silk, and reminded Henri of a horse's tail, (the soft kind on the doll horses she used to have.) She had a remarkably pretty, doll-like face, and the scowl of an old hen.

Connor turned up every morning looking like a shiny new pin. By break time his hair was like a mop, his clothes where dirty and he had smudges of either mud or ink on his cheeks. He would have been well on his way to becoming a proper young man if it wasn’t for his love of sport and all things messy.

‘My daddy sells cars,’ Maria informed her immediately after she had sat down. ‘He knows all the rich people.’

Conner lent in to whisper to her. They’d been sitting in the classroom for half an hour and already he had a smudge of felt tip pen on his ear- even though they had been colouring in crayon. ‘My dad says her dad tried to rip him off.’

‘What does that mean?’ Henri asked.

‘It means…’ Maria said loudly, and lifted her chin. ‘That Connor’s Daddy couldn’t afford a new car, and my Daddy only sells the news ones.’

‘That’s what her Dad says anyway.’

‘Insolent.’ Maria barked.

‘You don’t even know what that means!’

‘Neither do you!’

‘Yes I do.’ He rubbed his nose with his sleeve.

‘What does it mean then?’

‘It, um…’ Connor squinted in thought, before bursting out with ‘I’m not telling you!’

Whilst they where arguing Henri looked around the unfamiliar room. This was new school, she decided.

When lunchtime came around the other children all grabbed a lunch box each and sat at their desk.

‘Okay, let’s eat.’ Leah said. Everyone else started to eat. Henri stared at the empty desk in front of her and started to worry. Just the thought of not having something to eat intensified her hunger and made her want to cry. ‘Henrietta?’ Leah put one hand on her shoulder and knelt by the table. ‘Did you forget to bring your lunch today?’

Henri looked around the room again. Leon didn’t make lunch for her. She shook her head and her lip started to tremble. What if she had to go all day without food? What if she starved? ‘It’s okay, it’s okay.’ Leah smiled brightly. ‘I’ll go see what we’ve got for you.’

The school has a clever, but not very sustainable system. In the staff room there was a selection of treats with far off sell-by dates, stored in paper bags. They where kept in the event that someone forgot their lunch.

Henri was going to have to get used to the dry, sweet tastes. She was going to have to get used to a lot of things.

Henri had messy hair, and the bare basics of her school uniform. She didn’t have her own pencil case, never brought her own lunch, and spoke different to everyone else.

It seemed that even though she was quickly accepting her new surroundings; her new surroundings were not so quick to accept her.

At the end of the day Leon was twenty minutes late. He arrived out of breath, where he looked down at her with that smile. That smile was fake. She knew the difference.

She knew that’s the smile he had when he hated her.