Director Cut

ELIZABETH ARMSTRONG

At the age of fourteen, my parents sent me to this boarding school because they said it was too hard to care for me, so leaving me to a bunch of nuns seemed like a better idea to them.

As surprising as it sounds, my family was really wealthy. Yes, rich Brazilians, it's not common to hear that. My father was Brazil's most famous lawyer, Emerson Silvestre, and my mom, Eduarda, was also Brazil's favourite citizen. She was the biggest singer of the time and well, if you put it together, they did make a lot of money. But that does not mean they were good parents.

I barely saw them. My mom didn’t want to take care of me because she was going around cities giving shows, and my dad said he was the man of the house, and supposedly, the man of the house is not supposed to take care of a child. So I would spend most of the time with my uncle.

Don't get me wrong, it is not like I did not like it. I personally preferred it, way much more.

At the age of five or six, it was when I realised I was safer there with him, instead of my parents.

My mom would always come home drunk and high … and if I talked to her or she just realised I was around she would hit me, and my dad, instead of doing anything, he would just laugh or agree with my mom. He would say that this was the best way to educate a child.

It has been like this for at least nine years. When I turned fourteen, everything changed. I was finally free from them.

As I said before, they sent me to Hatfield Pathaway Boarding School, an all-girls school, somewhere outside of London. I remember like it was yesterday when I first arrived there. It was cold, really cold, winter had just started and the first snowflake fell on the tip of my nose. Of course, my parents were not there, they just gave me some tickets, a bag, and sent me off … like they always did.

But I was happy, I was far, far away from them.

Once there, a lady called Kinsey Davies picked me up at the airport. She was old, around the age of seventy, she was weak and small, her hands were shaking due to the weather. I tried to offer her my coat, but she rejected, saying it would be rude to accept it, since I'm not from around and I could easily catch a cold. But I insisted, until she finally accepted it. “You know kid, if your parents see this, they will not like it” She suggested looking around to find them. “No, don’t worry, they are not here.”

“Where are they ?”

“They stayed in Brazil”

“So you came alone ?!”

“Yes”

“What a brave kid ! Well, let's get going then, so don’t stand here in the cold for so long.”

She was the only person who was truly nice to me in that school for the rest of the coming years … Well, there was one more person.

“This is going to be your room until you graduate. Most of the other teachers don’t like it when the girls decorate it. But don’t worry, as your counsellor, we can keep it our little secret !” She whispered to me, while giving a soft and innocent smile.

As I reached for the doorknob, before opening the door, Miss Davies remembered something. “Oh yeah, I completely forgot to tell you sweetie. You will have a roommate. Her name is Elizabeth, she is also arriving today. You two will share dorms, so I hope you two can get along '' She implied, still with that innocent look in her face. She then patted my head and left.

Once in, I saw how the room was divided in two. There were no walls in between, but it was equally separated, one bed on the right side and the other on the left. I took the right side and started getting in place. I was going to stay in the place for four straight years, so I had to feel comfortable. I opened my bag and took all my posters, books, record players, all of them, and placed them on the walls, ovulating the shelves and filling my part of the room, completely covered by my vibes. Just like every kid at those times, I liked movies, especially romance ones … and horror movies too. At the time, my favourite movie was Doctor Zhivago, an epic, a romance, and a story. It tells the story of Russian people forced to live through the many tragedies of the first half of the twentieth century. My favourite part was how they talked about the emotional trials of love in its most complicated forms. Another one of my favourites was Psycho, a classic. So, of course, I hung all of the posters up just beside my bed.

After setting up everything, I took a book and sat right in front of the window. Our room had this magical long window that reached the floor. You could not open it, but it showed a big lake right in front of the school. At the moment, the lake was frozen, so the first thing I wanted to do was go ice skating. In Brazil it is normally really hot, it is impossible to do something like that, so that was the second thing on my to-do list.

The first thing was to meet that supposed miss Elizabeth.

She is probably one of those rich girls who has everything, because daddy gives her everything she wants. I thought.

Then suddenly a beautiful tall girl walked in, her hair was strawberry blonde and it tumbled over her shoulders, her outlook was bubbly, bringing this cheerful energy to the empty room. Her enticing malt-musing mountain eyes gazed at me, over her lilac soft heart-shaped lips.

She was alluring, appealing, charming. Every single compliment came to my mind when I first saw her. Without even noticing, she was already standing up right in front of me with one hand stretching for me to shake it. “Hello, my name is Elizabeth. Elizabeth Armstrong''

A set of dazzling, angel-white teeth gleamed, as she gave me a gummy smile.

FUCK! WHAT IS HAPPENING TO ME? WHY CAN'T I TAKE MY EYES OFF HER?

“And you are ?”

…

Oh s**t, she is talking to me

“I am Luci — You can call me Lu” I responded as I shook her hand, not knowing I was not letting go. “s**t! I'm sorry”, as I finally let go. “You’re funny”, Elizabeth implied, while letting a little giggle out. “You can call me Lizzie then”

“Nice to meet you Lizzie”

“Nice to meet you too, Lu.”

I would never expect to feel that happy saying those words. I normally used to say that with other people, my parents used to throw me too when they got tired of playing with me. But this time it was different. This time I was actually glad I met her. And with that, time passed by and we got to know each other better.

Unlike me, she was not the best academically. The only classes she was good at were drama, history, physical education and, somehow, biology. She liked plants, not those boring flowers like every other girl around the campus. She enjoyed learning about the stories of trees, she thought it was really epic. “Lu, did you know that it takes around twenty-five years for a cork oak trunk to start to produce cork and be profitable ?!” She showed me. It's not like I really cared about it, but she seemed so excited about it that it made me happy to see her that way. “You could add that to one of your stories”, Lizzie suggested, handing me her notebook, where she wrote all of her favourite facts and all of the things that she discovered.

“Why would I add a cork tree to my stories ?!”

“I don’t know, it could be a talking tree or something.”

“Yeah, yeah, sure a talking tree.”

“I'm serious Lu!”

She was an introvert, a real introvert. In class, when she was scared of asking a question, she used to write it down on a paper and I would raise my hand, asking that exact question. When it came to doing group projects, everyone wanted to join us, not because I was smart, but because Lizzie was pretty popular, not only our grade idolised her, but everyone in school. The girls always wanted to talk to her, like if she was a celebrity, and I always needed to protect her. When a big group of girls gathered around us she would hide behind my back, as if I was her shield. The girls did not like that and started hating me somehow. They thought that an extravagant and beautiful girl like Elizabeth should not be hanging out with no-one, especially a kid from Brazil. When it came to sport, we had really similar tastes. Well, I mean kind of off. I liked to spend time playing volleyball and she used to play golf. The only sport that both of us liked to play together was tennis, which I did not see the point of because I always won every single match.

“Come on, at least pretend you let me win a point!”

“Nope”

…

Lizzie threw her racket to the floor and stared at me for a while. What the hell is this girl doing ?As she slowly started walking towards me, I noticed how she was picking up some balls from the floor. Knowing her, I had to run away. “Don’t you dare Lizzie!” I screamed slowly, taking a few steps back. “What, I didn’t hear you” She screamed back, charging her hand, prepared and ready to attack …

SHE DID NOT LIKE LOSING.

I started running. “Come back here you son of a bit—-“ But before she was able to attack me with her cannon balls, the principal interrupted our battle. “MISS ELIZABETH !” We both looked at each other trying to contain our laughs. “LANGUAGE” She kept on. After she left, we fell to the floor laughing. I laughed so much my stomach started hurting.

As we walked back to our dorm mocking the principal, we bumped into one of our classmates. “Are you guys also on your way to get the letters ?” Lizzie and I looked at each other confused.

“Our parents' letters !” The girl assured us.

After hearing the word parents, I immediately gave up and started heading to my room, but before I could walk away, she grabbed my wrist. Images of my dad and mother and their actions came back, but when I looked at that hand, that soft touch, the touch of the grass on a hot summer day, like roots coming out of the floor to wrap themselves around me, to protect me. That is what she did at that moment; protect me. I might be her shield, but she was my guardian angel. If you hit a shield hard enough, as many times as you possibly think of, it will break at some point. It was just an object that you use. But Elizabeth was not that. She also protected me, but she never broke, no matter how scared she was, no matter if she was standing behind that shield to not receive the attack, she still was able to protect me, it was her super power, and I adored it.

I loved it.

That is when I realised that I might be falling for her.

“It won’t hurt if we just go check” I looked at her, trying to hide the discomfort, but she definitely knew I did not want to go. “You are right … it is a waste of time” as she wrapped her hands with mine and walked me to our dorm.

One thing that we had in common was that none of our parents were present in our lives. But unlike me, Elizabeth had high hopes that one day they might show a little bit of appreciation towards her.

She and I.

We were all we had.

She was my family and I was hers.

After all, we were already sixteen, we were old enough to handle this type of thing. We could not just cry about it, like little kids when they get lost in the supermarket.

Another thing about Lizzie is that she did not like showing emotion. The only time she would cry would be in my arms, no one else’s. She would only talk about her trees and discoveries with me. She would let me hear her favourite songs, even though I always made fun of her singing. Her favourite band was The Beatles, and so was mine. Her favourite song was A Hard Day's Night and mine was Eleanor Rigby. Each night we would play a different song on my record player, and fall asleep to it. After that, some students started complaining about the songs and we had to stop them, so instead, I used to tell Lizzie the stories of my book, each day a different chapter.

Her favourite book was (A Mae Selvagem) The Savage Mother. The story of a little boy who used to live in the suburbs with his little sister and his abusive mom. Every day he would sleep with a knife under his pillow because he was scared his mother would do anything to his sister. When he was eleven, he grabbed his sister and ran away, without a place to sleep, food, water or clothes to protect himself from the cold wind of the night. Every night he used to sing to his sister so she could fall asleep, until one day a young wealthy man heard this boy's beautiful voice and fell in love with it … when he saw the state they were in, he immediately took them home, gave them food and took care of them. That boy turned out to be one of the most famous singers in his decade.

I personally thought it was a really poor story since I wrote that when I was thirteen years old. But Lizzie was amazed by it. She said that she liked the ending.

Another thing about her … happy endings were her favourites.