The letter came in the mail on a particularly horrible day. The sky was almost black, even though it was four in the afternoon in the middle of July and the rain fell as if it was emptying buckets of water onto the neighborhood. It was cold as well as windy, and Sheila felt unusually bored for a Saturday. It was too wet to go outside and this new house had nothing good to play with on the inside. She stared out the window and watched the raindrops race down the glass, as if they were tears running down her cheeks in the reflection. She let out a sigh and her father looked up from the paper he was reading. "Why don't you unpack your box in your room or help your mother in the kitchen?" he asked her.
Sheila didn't say anything but ran from the window and up the stairs to her new room, closing the door behind her. Flopping on the bed beside her box, she couldn't help but notice how dull the ceiling looked, with it's beige fan and single flickering light bulb with a little metal chain dangling from the side to turn it on and off. Glow in the dark stars would look nice up there, she thought. Or if she removed the ceiling, she could see the real stars at night. A clap of thunder sounded, rattling the fan, a small drop of rain water from a small leak shook off a blade and landed on the bed, a wet spot growing on her blanket. Maybe she should keep the ceiling.
Sheila Droon was an unusual little girl. She was intelligent for a thirteen year old, yet she was shy and didn't like to talk unless it was important. She used to talk a lot but everyone thought what she had to say was dumb and irrelevant so she stopped. The teachers in school always thought she was stupid, yet she always marked well, even on the hardest assessments. She always seemed angry and was unpredictable at times. They had her tested to make sure she was in the right state of mind, and she did receive positive results for dyslexia, bipolar disorder, as well as what the doctor said was an "over-active imagination." Sheila didn’t look like she had any problems though. She was actually quite the opposite in appearance. She seemed a little too skinny for her frame and was on the short side, only five foot. The doctors guessed she had at least three more inches to grow, but not much more than that. Her hair was blonde and choppy. She cut it herself in the mirror with safety scissors, and her mom took them away, not trusting what she could do with them. The bangs that usually were short had grown long and covered one of her eyes. And her eyes were her most remarkable feature. Bright blue with purple and grey bursting from them, surrounded by thick eyelashes and sharp eyebrows. They were beautiful and mystifying, yet most people turned away from her gaze, unable to notice them. She made them feel uncomfortable. She looked always angry, but it was more a defeated expression, one from never being appreciated and heard. She was very pale and her skin was soft, with calluses on the soles of her feet for running around barefoot all the time. She didn't care for shoes. Everyone said she was an unusual little girl and she knew that they did, but she didn’t mind. She thought they just weren’t the right people for her.
Up in her room, Sheila opened the cardboard flaps of her box and pulled out the item laying on top, a small figurine of a dog. It was a german Shepard, standing at attention, just for her. Her parents would never let her have any pets since they thought she would kill it accidently. All she wanted was a companion, but nobody believed she could care for one. Sighing, she placed it on the windowsill near where her head would be when she slept. If she lay on her side and looked out the window, she could see the silhouette.
The books came out next. A copy of The Hobbit and Sherlock Holmes and the Hound of the Baskervilles. She stood them up in the window as well. The only things remaining in the box were clothes. Sheila dumped them on her bed and spread them out in a huge mash of clothes, nothing neatened. In a sudden spurt if energy, she spun in circles in the center of her room until she ran out of breath and then flopped to the floor. The rain let up a bit, and everything was an eerie quiet. She could hear her father walk into the kitchen and her mother's clatter of dishes stopped. She sat still on the cold wooden floor, straining her ears to listen in on their conversation. "I got the mail," Mr. Droon said, and Sheila could imagine him holding up the envelopes and magazines that came through the little slot in the door, wet and wrinkled from the downpour.
"Is there anything important we should look at?" Mrs. Droon asked, the clattering starting up again as she lost interest in her husband’s entrance into the kitchen and returned to putting away the pots and pans.
“Nothing much. A few catalogs, a new insurance bill, and some boarding school brochure."
"A boarding school?"
Sheila lay down on the floor, listening harder, determined to pick up every detail she could that her parents would say next.
"Yes."
"What's it called?"
"Winding Hollow Academy. It claims that all students are selectively picked from around the country. I highly doubt that."
“Would it be expensive?"
"You can't be serious, Carla. She's our little girl."
"she's just a foster child."
“Carla, she's our daughter."
Sheila's dad's voice sounded shocked. "She'd be fine. It's not like she has anybody here. She has no personal connections."
A silence followed. Sheila curled into a ball, tucking her knees into her sweater and pulling her arms out of sleeves to hug her legs tight against her chest. Boarding school sounded scary, like a prison far away where she would never see her parents. Her father spoke again but his voice got lower and Sheila pushed her ear against the floorboards, barely making out his next few words.
"But would it be the best for her to go off and live with new strangers?"
"Does it matter? As long as we don't tell her, she should be fine. How much did you say was?"
“I didn't."
"How much would it be?"
“Free."
"Free?"
"It says it would be free."
"Then let's sign her up."
All clattering stopped and Sheila inhaled sharply as she sat up. "Carla!" Sheila shrieked, shoving her little empty box off the bed and onto the floor.
She threw open her bedroom door with a slam, knocking the one painting on the wall to the ground with the force. Tears streamed down her cheeks and a shrill scream came out of her mouth, echoing in the hallway and carrying down the stairs. She barreled down the stairs at a breakneck pace. Her parents watched dumbfounded as she came sprinting into the kitchen and grabbed her mother's leg, crying hysterically. "Don't send me away, please, I'll be a better girl, I'll do better, please please please don't get rid of me!" she sobbed into her mother's skirt.
"It was just a suggestion, now off," Mr. Droon snapped, trying to pull his daughter off his wife.
“Don't lie to me!" Sheila wailed.
The high pitched screaming continued as she was pried off and carried upstairs. In one swift motion, Mr. Droon placed Sheila on her bed and stepped out of the room, closing the door and locking it shut. Screams echoed from inside along with thuds and banging noises as she hurled her things around the room. The neighbors called and complained but the Droons reassured them that the tantrum would be over soon. The neighbors grumbled, but hung up and didn’t bother calling again as the hours of hysterics passed. The fit lasted until two in the morning when out of sheer exhaustion, Sheila fell asleep in a crumpled heap on the floor by the door. Mr. Droon turned to his wife in the bed. "We need to get her straightened out," he murmured, the rattling sound in his head beginning to fade away.
"I'll confirm with the school that she'll go," his wife mumbled back, rolling over and falling asleep aware of the frozen silence created by the absence of the desperate pleas to avoid being sent away.
And the next day Mrs. Droon called Winding Hollow Academy. And Sheila Droon was enlisted to start in September.