Finding the Ground Beneath the Feet - стр. 2

That’s when I really wanted to die, but Katya and her dad managed to find me. Katya was in a wheelchair because she could no longer walk. I could. Walking was very painful, but I walked – anything but not a wheelchair because girls in wheelchairs were treated here like…

«Mariana, do you want to live with us?», Katya’s dad asked, and I cried, but for some reason, he wasn’t allowed to take me.

My friend cried too, but the angry women wouldn’t let them take me away anyway. It was because of some numbers. I had to stay in the orphanage where no one wanted me, although Katya and her father came to see me… I was told that Katya’s father didn’t have enough money for both of us. At that moment, I hated the mean women who counted the money and didn’t see me behind it or something else… Did they really think I felt better there, where no one wanted me?

There was a library at the orphanage, so I read books there. One of them really fascinated me. It wasn’t about a girl but a boy, and nobody wanted him just like me. That boy, Willy, lived in the orphanage, and they hated him there and didn’t like him. As for me, they just didn’t like me, but nobody cared. In the book, there was a nanny – an angry woman who liked to beat Willy. He didn’t like it, I don’t know why… I would have agreed to be beaten just to feel needed. Then, it turned out that Willy was chosen to be taken to the magic academy, where they taught everyone to heal. I suppose they could take me too – the academy was magical, wasn’t it? I thought I was wrong to think it was just a fairytale because Willy’s mum and dad got in someone’s way. They were killed for it, but the boy wasn’t killed for some reason.

There were a lot of stairs at the academy, and some ’fenke’ would throw Willy down the stairs – he must have wanted to kill him, but I didn’t understand who it was or why. I’m not very clever, really. They knew that at school too, that’s why they called me bad words and «cripple’, but I knew I was going to die anyway, so it didn’t matter. Sometimes I wanted to be Willy Schmidt or Ingrid Schiller from the book because they were friends and, most importantly, they weren’t in constant pain. Also, I wanted to see the Grasvangtal Academy, to learn what the Forest of Fairy Tales and Mount Rübetzal were all about. It must be very beautiful. This book became my favorite, although it was about Germany, where I’ve never been and never will. Because I will die. I was told so – every day could be my last, so I waited for it because I didn’t have the strength for anything else.

I was disappointed in everything… Yesterday, I think I died again. I don’t remember what happened yesterday, but it doesn’t matter. For too long, the only friends I had were books. And Katya, of course. I read book after book as if I was carried away to other worlds, but apparently, my time had come. I knew I was going to die…

Did Mariana have a chance to survive? She certainly had. If not for the depression, not for a very difficult course of the illness, not for the indifference… The girl died and went on her new journey, hoping that it would not be painful or at least that it would be warm there. Perhaps, whoever is judging us has decided that she deserves not only a new chance but also a new challenge.