Lady in Red
by Jessica Cockrell

Okay. I'm going to tell you now. I'm going to tell what really happened that day. I've never told anyone before. Why? I don't know. Lots of reasons; not one in particular. I'm going to ask you, beg you, to believe me; after all, why would I make up something like this? It doesn't exactly bring me fame or fortune or anything other than a potential psychiatric examination from a nice doc up at the Blue Meadows Home. If you choose not to believe me, fine. All I ask, then, is that you don't make the same mistake we did that day.

So here it is, after all these years. The truth.

The real truth.

I was in fourth grade when it happened, shy less than two weeks of my tenth birthday. I lived in a small town in West Texas called Smiley; in its entire history the population never topped thirty-five hundred. I attended West Plain Elementary School and had the best grades and the best behavior in the fourth grade class. I guess you could say I was a bit of a nerd. Go ahead, it's okay; everyone else sure said it.

Needless to say, I didn't have many friends. No one ever wants to hang around with the Class Nerd or the Class Goody-Two-Shoes. No one talked to me at lunchtime. Most days at recess I trailed along at the rear of whatever group was kind enough not to turn around and yell at me for following them, humiliating me in front of all of our peers. I would laugh at the group's jokes and listen attentively to conversations, adding understanding nods at the appropriate places. It was my desperate, but failed, attempt to make the other kids think I had real friends.

Of course, they knew I didn't. And I knew they knew. But I kept on my silly routine anyway. Sometimes being alone is a lot easier when you're surrounded by people.

It has been a good thirty years now. April of 1970. I'm not good with dates, and most of my childhood memories were lost or fading by the time I married at the ripe old age of twenty-five. But I do remember it was a Thursday. And I remember what happened that Thursday more clearly, more vividly than any other event of my entire life.

There was not a cloud to be seen in the huge expanse of sky that spread over the Texas Panhandle. The sun shone down brightly and delivered intense heat, pulling tiny sweat droplets to the surface of my skin as I walked in a single-file line with the rest of my classmates from the school building to the playground on the next block. Why they built the playground so far from the school is beyond me, but I suppose whoever decided upon that location had his reasons.

Mrs. Snell walked at the head of the line, leading us. She was dressed in a burgundy wool skirt and a cream-colored, long-sleeved silk blouse. Her auburn hair was pinned up in a pristine bun at the nape of her neck, revealing crystals of sweat on her skin. At the comer she paused, looking for cars, and made her daily statement: "Always look both ways before crossing the street, children. You wouldn't want to be killed by a car on your way to play, now would you?!" Mrs. Snell had a knack for bluntness. She was known for her habit of not only not beating around the bush, but jumping out from the bush, thus startling the bejesus out of whoever was innocently standing by. I believe her tactics were competent; I never crossed the street without looking both ways.

As we waited for Mrs. Snell to scan the road, the kids -- myself included -- began to stomp vigorously at the army of red ants occupying the fifteen-plus anthills at this comer. This was routine, as well. It's not like we enjoyed doing it, but it was difficult to stay still for more than a few seconds without the little buggers taking a personal tour of your shoes and legs. We were probably an odd sight to anyone looking on from a distance -- thirty-five nine- and ten-year-old children stomping madly at the sidewalk for no apparent reason.

There were actually thirty-six fourth graders, but one kid, whose name I cannot recall, refused to participate in the ritual killing. "Ants are God's creatures, too, you know," he would say in a better-than-thou tone.

"Maybe so," Danielle Bloom would always reply sharply while throwing one of her pigtails over her shoulder, "but if God really didn't want us to step on 'em he wouldn't make us so big and them so little and crawly." I'm not sure if I agree with her statement, but she did have a point.

The playground's four main components consisted of rusty monkey bars, a 10' by 10' wooden sandbox, a set of four kiddy swings, and a large central unit that had everything from curly slides to monkey bars to a wooden bridge. And if a child could not find entertainment in the above named materials, he or she could engage in a game of freeze tag or perhaps gossip under one of the large oak trees that provided playground shade and beauty.

That day I was in line behind Ben Adams, David Stevenson, and Emily Goodrum. I didn't like any of them much -- they came from money and let's just say they knew it -- but it looked like today they were going to be my only choice. Naturally, I began to eavesdrop on their conversation, plastering the usual I'm-really-interested-in-this look on my face.

"My brother said there's no such thing. It's just a stupid ghost story for babies, and I'm not a baby," David said.

"Well, my sister, Tina, told me that one time she said it with her friends at a slumber party, and they saw her in the mirror, and Tina is a grown-up, she's almost nineteen, and grown-ups are always right," Emily argued. "Or at least most of the time right." She tucked her long, sandy blonde hair behind her ears and stuck her nose in the air -- actions not uncommon to Emily.

Despite my careful listening, I did not know what they were debating. That didn't matter, though. It's not like I was part of the debate. Not yet.