The Countryside
By Signe Robertson, 2008-03-19
My name is Rachel. I live with my father, who works all the time, with some weird projects. Even if I was interested in his work, he would probably never have the time to explain it to me, since he works constantly. Anyway, my aunt, that is my father's sister, got sick and had to live in a hospital a while, so she asked my father to look after her three-year old daughter, Gina.
Of course, he said he could take care of her, which means, I was stuck looking after her all the time. Also, my father had this huge project going on and he said it would be the best if we would rent this big house in the countryside, I could relax there with Gina and he could have lots of space to work on this new project, whatever it was this time.
So, we packed our bags and went there, my father promised he would look after Gina a few hours every day, so that I could get some time to relax in the countryside for once. He really meant it, he is a great dad. So, he would work on his project and I would look after Gina and sometimes he would look after Gina and I could just relax for once.
I needed to relax a bit. For a few weeks I had just looked after Gina. I'm only twenty-one years old, I don't go to school or work, but I'm used to helping out at home, as my father is often busy obsessing about his new work projects and stuff. Me and my father have always gotten along well.
So, this countryside house I was talking about, it was a big house, much bigger than the little apartment we were used to. There was a weird school nearby, very old-fashioned, the principal even lived in a simple room in the school. His sister, who was a teacher at the school, also lived in a room at the school.
The principal had an eighteen-year old daughter named Zilla and his sister, the teacher had an eighteen-year old daughter named Pamela and a four-year old son named Harry. Zilla and Pamela went to the same school, yes, the weird school, there were only a few classes, it was really strange how they planned it.
You see, there was a pre-school right next to the school, for children between one and six, I would drop Gina off there sometimes, they were cool with it, they said it was OK, without even registering her, we didn't even have to pay any money, these people were really nice, they were aware we didn't have too much money and didn't know how long we'd stay in the countryside anyway.
In the actual school, there was one classroom for grades 1-3, one for 4-6, one for 7-9 and one for 10-12. Zilla and Pamela would both begin grade 12, after the summer vacation. As you might have understood already, Zilla and Pamela were cousins, Pamela was just one week older than Zilla and they looked almost like twins.
They were both the same height, had long brown hair and brown eyes. Zilla was just ever-so-slightly thinner than Pamela and had straight, light-brown hair, while Pamela's hair was darker and sort of wavy. Pamela and Zilla spent almost all their time together and they would look after Harry as well.
I quickly became friends with these girls and we would sit and talk about everything and nothing, while we were watching Harry and Gina play. Once, Harry threw sand at my sweet innocent little Gina and I ran over and lifted him up. "Hey, you can't throw sand at her! She's very sensitive and she's smaller than you!"
Pamela quickly ran up to me and said "Don't yell at my little brother like that! He is just a child, he doesn't know what he's doing!" Zilla would meddle between us and try to get us to be friends and it always worked, Zilla was such a sweet girl, not at all as passionate and bitchy as me and Pamela.
When we arrived to the countryside, you see, it was just in the end of the summer vacation, so Zilla and Pamela would just get back to school a few days after we arrived there. Pamela told me "Come into the classroom with us, it's really fun! They'll probably let you sit there and listen, our school is so great!"
Well, however enthusiastic Pamela sounded, school didn't seem like so much fun to me, but anyway, we dropped the little ones off at the pre-school and I followed the girls into the school. Zilla walked slowly and looked kind of sad, so I looked at her face and she said to me "Pamela's mom is the teacher. That's why she thinks school is so great. But my aunt isn't very nice to me. I like to skip class and just hide out somewhere."
Before I knew it, she grabbed my hand and took me outside, without Pamela even noticing it. Somebody else noticed though and apparently told the teacher on her. The teacher always got so angry at Zilla when she ran away, Zilla told me, that she would personally go out and just grab her hand and drag her back to the classroom.
I had heard Pamela talk about her cousin as her father's disappointment, she was a rebel, always doing what she felt like "But she's my cousin and I love her as she is", she said. Zilla and I were running away from the school, I didn't really understand why, I barely knew Zilla and I didn't know why it was so important for her to escape her teacher, who was by the way her own aunt, but Zilla was a nice girl and she looked seriously afraid of her teacher.
So, I followed her and we tried to run away somewhere, but there weren't really many places around to hide, I guess the escape wasn't so well planned. Zilla looked at me with terror in her face, saying she heard her aunt coming. So, she pulled me down in the high grass and we kept really low there among the wild grass and plants.
It wasn't too comfortable of course, grass and leaves and stones and dirt, but Zilla seemed seriously afraid and held me tight. I heard the teacher as well and I guessed this wasn't a good hiding place. Zilla looked me in the face and I looked back. I leaned towards her and kissed her, stupid me, kissing a girl, not even boys like me, surely a girl wouldn't like me.
When I had kissed her, she just looked at me and smiled and I smiled back, but then suddenly she was pulled out of my arms. The teacher had found us and grabbed Zilla and I looked at them both. "Zilla! You're a shame to the family and a shame to our nice little school. Always running away - And I see you have corrupted the girl from the old house nearby. You're always embarrassing me and my brother! No wonder your mother died giving birth to you. She would probably be ashamed if she saw her little girl grow up to this little rebel. Can't even go to school like her friends."
Zilla's aunt smacked Zilla in the face and then held her in a hard grip and led her back to school. I don't understand why she had to be so rough with her. Anyway, I thought it was best to follow Pamela's advice and start going to school with them from now on, if not just to keep an eye on Zilla, so her aunt wouldn't humiliate or hurt her somehow.
Things went on very casually after that, me, Pamela and Zilla did everything together, we were always three, nearly always looking after the children. Pamela really liked to talk a lot, she was always leading every conversation and me and Zilla would just look at each other a little bit and say a few things once in a while.
We would just sit and take it easy, eat some ice cream under the hot sun, look after the children and talk a bit, that way everything was fine and surely if we just stuck to Pamela, Zilla wouldn't get into any more trouble. Pamela would talk a lot and we would just let her go on and just put in a few comments now and then.
"So, as you can see, my taste in clothes is just great, I know it's summer, but still, black is never wrong and it is tacky to show too much skin, I don't know how you girls can mix colors like that, I mean, a red t-shirt and a green skirt, those colors don't even match! If you wear a red t-shirt you should have a red skirt, a black skirt, a denim skirt... ...Or a pair of jeans."
Whatever. We just let her ramble about her fashion stuff. Nobody wants to wear a black t-shirt with a bra under and a sweater and a pair of jeans under the hot sun, I don't care if it looks more proper that way, me and Zilla would just wear a top or t-shirt with a skirt or a pair of shorts to it, it's warm, nobody cares about fashion or covering up skin, it is warm in August and September, the sun is so hot, you even sweat wearing a bikini, we had to go swimming at least once a day.
So things were pretty good. We spent all time together, when we got up in the morning we would drop the kids off at the pre-school and go to school together and then we would spend our afternoons looking after the children, watching them play, making sure they got food and baths - And of course we would talk a lot with each other. One day, when it was very dry, a fire had started in the school, it was dry and windy in the air and the fire spread quickly.
I could tell this school wasn't well organized, the teachers panicked and weren't sure of how to evacuate the children. As I told you, the school was small and old-fashioned, but it had two floors and a basement and also, there was a pre-school right next to it. The fire and smoke spread quickly, people were panicking and the teachers couldn't decide how we should evacuate.
I panicked as well, I thought of Gina and I ran over to the pre-school, luckily I managed to get out quickly, I guess because I wasn't afraid of running through the smoke, I just tried to avoid inhaling it. Gina was safe, the pre-school was much better organized than the school. I helped getting the pre-school children out, really, the fire hadn't spread to that building at all, but we made sure to take the children somewhere safe.
Everybody in the small countryside community had heard about the fire, which spread quickly in the hot dry winds and people with cars, yes, even a few buses came to take all the people from the school and the few houses nearby to a farm, which was remotely nearby, but safe from the fire. There was a man from there, who had fallen in love with a Swedish woman a long time ago and moved to Sweden with her, they had a son together named Örjan. When the man's father died, he inherited a farm from him and they all moved to live on the farm and Örjan went to school in the same class as Pamela and Zilla.
So, it was good that we had the farm to escape to. Maybe it seems weird how a fire could spread so quickly, but that happens sometimes in the warm and windy countryside, where people just live their simple lives and aren't very well prepared for emergencies. You would think that as dry as it was, people would be more careful and prepare themselves more for things like this, I mean, if a fire would start somehow, it is quite predictable it would spread quickly, but I guess people were way too busy living their little country-side-family-lives.
Finally, we were all safe at the farm, some people who had panicked and not been able to escape the fire quickly, had got burns and some girls were upset about clothes being ruined by the smoke. I had Gina in my arms and I looked around for all the people I knew. Dad was there, Pamela, Harry, lots of familiar faces. I didn't see Zilla though. Maybe she didn't make it. Or maybe she finally ran away. Yes, a fire would be a good opportunity to escape, especially as panicky as people were there. Nobody would have been angry at her if they didn't find her. I know one thing though, she didn't start the fire, she would never hurt anybody.
So, I sat there with Gina in my arms and I thought to myself, Zilla ran away, she ran away somewhere far away where her dad and aunt wouldn't look for her. She probably caught a ride with somebody, somebody who had not yet heard of the fire, yes, she probably just said she had somewhere to go or something and just hitchhiked far away from this little community. That is what happened. I hugged little Gina and smiled.
