Kingdom of Arzialla by Marilyn Arias (story reading txt) 📕

want to tag along?”
“Depends. What are you going to do there?” Caitlin asks with her mouth completely full.
“Has my uncle ever taught you manners?” I cringed my nose at her.
“Yes. I just like to see you disgusted,” she chuckles.
“You just love to do that, don’t you?” I ask her, not really expecting an answer. I turn to Chris as I take the milk carton off of Caitlin’s tray and start sipping on it. “I don’t care what you do. I’ll go. I’ve got nothing better to do for the next twenty minutes anyways.”
“Alrighty then,” he said. He glanced to the side like he noticed something and then back to me as if he remembered something he’s been wanting to tell me. “You know, I’ve heard rumors that someone’s after you.”
I almost choke on my milk.
It’s rare for someone to have a crush on me. At least as far as I know. “Who?”
He motions his chin toward the same direction that he glanced at and I followed his gaze. I found a guy seemingly stare at me and then cooly look away when I looked at him. He had dark brown, spiked hair and he wore a green jacket. I believe his name’s Jason. I do have to admit he’s handsome. And he sits next to be in Biology…
“Him?” I asked Chris, making sure I’m not looking at the wrong guy.
“Mhm,” he nodded. “You’re lucky. He’s cute.”
Yes, Chris is gay.
“How are you sure he likes me?”
“People are talking about it.”
I give him a look like saying “And that’s good enough proof?”
“What?” he asks.
“Nothing,” I shook my head.

We headed to the music room and when we got there, we found it full of instruments. Besides Chris, it was all of our first time going into the music room since none of us have Band or Orchestra or Chorus. The first thing that caught my eye was the grand piano that sat almost in the middle of the room. I suddenly have this urge to go to it. Like it’s calling me.
“Check this out!” Megen says as she rushes over to the piano. Looks like I’m not the only one that’s fascinated with the piano. She sits down and starts banging the keys. It hurts my ears and my hands fly to my ears. Since I was still holding my almost empty milk carton with my right hand, my poor right ear’s not so lucky as my left.
“Megen!” I try to shout over the noise.
“Oops. Sorry,” she apologizes, remembering how sensitive my hearing can be.
“Just don’t cause trouble. I’m not sure if we are supposed to be here and I just want to check something really quick,” he says. Chris is a good pianist who seems to only know how to play songs by Evanescense.
“No promises!” Caitlin says with an evil smile as she examines all the other instruments.
I roll my eyes and glance at the piano again. Suddenly, an image of shelves full of books and a man playing a piano appears in my head. Like a memory…
“Do you like the piano?” a man’s voice echoed in my mind. He had an accent that wasn’t from anywhere in this world and I could hear a soft, soothing lullaby being played in the piano. "Do you like it? The song. Do you like it?”

Suddenly, my hands are just itching to touch the piano that sat in front of me.
“C-can I try something?” I asked Megen.
She stood up and I took my seat in front of the piano. I placed my milk carton on the floor before adjusting the seat to a comfortable place and placed my fingers on the keys.
What am I doing? I asked myself. Then I could see a pair of hands get placed where my hands were. Not on them but, like, through them. Like a ghost’s. A ghost of a man, actually. My heart races from the thought of a ghost being inside of me but then the fingers started silently playing the piano. Something was telling me to just mimick them. I moved my fingers with his and I started playing the lullaby that I remembered. I watched the hands gracefully touch the keys and, with great concentration, I followed them.

“Wow! I never knew you can play the piano, Anna,” Megen interrupted me.
She startled me so much out of my concentration that I banged onto the keys and I realized how I was actually playing the piano. Me. Someone who never touched one before. I looked at my hands and found the boy’s hands gone.
“Never did I,” I murmured.
“What was that?” she asked.
“Nothing,” I faked a smile at her. I began to feel a sickening feeling at the pit of my stomach. “I need to use the restroom.”
I stood up and rushed through the room.
“You okay?” Chris asked just as I opened the door.
“Yeah. I forgot I’m lactose intolerant,” I lied as I shut the door behind me.
I went to the closest restroom that I could find and entered to find a group of about ten girls blocking the small hall that leads to the bathroom stalls and sinks. The entire bathroom stunk of cigarettes and the girls giggled and chatted. They seemed to not notice me and I just stood there, waiting for them to. After seemingly five minutes, one finally glanced at me, looked up and down at me, and then continued ignoring me.
Umm… What?

I narrowed my eyes at them and continued to wait. A minute passed and they’re still acting stupid. I gave up.
“Uh, excuse me?” I said.
They broke in silence and the first few that stood in front of me looked at me with attitudes. They all had they’re hairs seemingly professionally done and their faces caked in makeup. They all wore high-heels, skin tight blouses and either short skirts or ripped up skinny jeans.
One, blond with a doll face, inhaled her cigarette long and slow, faced me, and blew smoke at my face. My nose burned from the smell and intensity of it and I coughed for air. “Can we help you?”
I let out my last couple coughs before speaking. “Isn’t it kind of obvious? I mean, it is a restroom, afterall.”
“Oh! You want to take a potty?” she spoke like I was a baby.
I pursed my lips. “No, I came to join the party and become a slut like all of you.”
They looked at each other like they could not believe I actually called them sluts. The blond one didn’t seem to have been disturbed as much as the others.
“Well, we all wouldn’t want to be freaks here, either,” she said.
I gave out a fake, confused half-smile. “Pardon me?”
“Have you looked at yourself in the mirror, lately? I mean, did you get yourself that fugly elf ear surgery and think it’d make you look pretty or cool?”
I swear, if everything in this world were all cartoons, my nostrils and ears would be steaming. I try not to show my embarrassment and anger, though.
“Well, I’m sure you make a lot of money,” I told her with a smile.
She flipped her blond hair and smiled. “How do you know?”
“I don’t. Let’s just say you look the type to give any guy a good night for some cash, if you know what I mean,” I winked at her.
Her smile dropped and her nostrils flared, but then her smile came back quicker than it did going away. But more evil.
“Oh, really? Well, come in and join the fun,” she said as she grabbed my arm and shoved me against the wall.
“Let go of me!” I shouted. Of course, she didn’t. As the bell rang, she took one last puff from her cigarette before striking it onto my collar bone. I screamed from the burn and I kicked my converse shoe into her bare leg. The pain was enough to distract her and to break myself free. I bolted to the door and I rushed out to run into a wall. I wanted to run farther, scared they’d go after me, but the burn hurt so much that I didn’t want to move. Instead, I slid down to the floor and started sobbing.
“Anna?” Caitlin’s voice screamed and I heard footsteps stomp rapidly closer to me.
“Anna! What happened to you?” Megen asked worriedly as she dropped next to me.
Just then, that’s when the girls came out.
“Well, nice meeting you, Anna,” the blond girl said as she started walking away with a sassy smirk.
“Taylor!” a guy’s voice screamed. The girl spun around to find Jason rushing to her. He grabbed her arms and shook her. “What have you done?”
“Freakin’ freshy here thought she was all that,” she snorted.
“I’ll get help,” Chris told Caitlin and Megen.
Just as he was rushing away, the sound of a hard slap against somebody’s face echoed all throughout the halls. I looked up to see Taylor’s head to the side and Jason’s hand in the air. Jason slapped Taylor? It wasn’t long before a huge crowd started gathering to see what’s happening.
“What’s going on here!” an administrator comes in.

I was taken to the nurse’s and then sent home afterwards. When I arrived home, I went to the bathroom to wash my face and to check the burn. It was raw and red. After taking a shower and making sure to put burn cream on my stinging wound, I looked up into the mirror and saw how pitiful and sad I looked with the burn. Great, another scar... Like dad always says, "Every scar has a history." I hope nobody asks me how I got it. I'm sure there will. And I won't be proud or willing to tell the story. And then I started to remembered what Taylor said.
“…did you get yourself that fugly elf ear surgery…?”

I looked at my ears and found them to be indeed pointy. Were they always like this? I asked myself.
The next day, I went to school with my burn bandaged and my hair down, covering my ears. After noticing them, I felt ashamed and embarrassed from never realizing how abnormal they looked and from showing the world for Lord knows how long without knowing it. Maybe that’s why people looked at me like I was a freak? Well, obviously I am if one person called me one, whether they’re someone like Taylor or not…
I was sent to the administrator’s office almost as soon as class started. I nervously entered the room to find Jason and Taylor sitting in front of Mr. Rashford’s desk.
“Take a seat,” he told me. The only seat was next to Jason. I sat down, not really caring anymore of whether or not the rumor of him liking me is true. “So describe to me what happened.”
I opened my mouth to start speaking but then I looked at Taylor. She sat there with her bare, shaved legs crossed and she was nonchalantly checking her perfectly manicured nails. She had a faint bruise on her left cheek but she acted like it was nothing. It looked as though this wasn’t her first time visiting this room in an occassion like this. I brought my attention back to Mr. Rashford. “Basically, I wanted to use the restroom, Taylor and her group wouldn’t let me, pushed me against the wall and burned me with a cigarette.”
“You were supposed to be at lunch, correct?”
I hesitated. “Yes.”
“Why did you go to a restroom that’s far from the cafeteria?” he asked.
Crap…
“Because I wanted to use the time that I’d be at the cafeteria to practice playing the piano. And since I needed to use the restroom, the