The Shabby Girl

By J. M. Hughes

The first year of high school. New experiences and new feelings await 15 year old Jack as he comes to grips with a world that is larger and vastly more mysterious than he could have ever imagined. But most mysterious of all is the new girl at school, and the bond that grows between them. The girl the other kids call the shabby girl. YA13+

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Aug 11, 2014
• ISBN: 9781312427044

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The Shabby Girl

The Shabby Girl

A novella by By J. M. Hughes

© 2014 J. M. Hughes, all rights reserved.

Disclaimer: This story is a work of fiction. All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Published in ebook format August, 2014

ISBN: 978-1-312-42704-4

Cover art by Victor Negreiro

(http://victorestivador.com)

The Shabby Girl

Behind a stand of scraggly shrubs at the end of a gravel street there was a small, empty run-down house. It sat forlornly at the end of a nondescript street that ran along the edge of the school grounds. A nice, small house once upon a time, and from a distance the surrounding old oaks and towering pines almost made it appear quaint and rustic. But years of neglect, sagging foundations, and lack of paint had relegated the old house to the status of little more than a shack. The path home from school started near the ancient structure and vanished into the thick foliage beyond. It ran through a short stretch of woods, finally emerging in a tidy little subdivision beyond, where Jack lived. The shack was a bit of an anomaly in an otherwise average neighborhood in an average small town. Hidden there at the end of the street it was unseen and unnoticed. It seemed to Jack like it had been there forever, stuck in some kind of bubble of slow time, doomed to eventually collapse, but not in any big hurry to get there.

One day, while walking home from school, Jack had decided to take a quick peek inside the old house. The gate was secured with a rusty chain, so he gingerly eased himself over a low wooden fence and quietly made his way to the back door through the overgrown weeds that filled what was once a yard. Finding it unlocked, Jack pushed it open with a rusty squeal of protest. Inside, a layer of dirt and random bits of trash covered the floors. A broken doll lay face down and forgotten in one of the empty bedrooms, along with what looked like a forgotten child's sock. Jack didn't pick it up to make sure, opting instead to nudge it with his shoe. In the kitchen, a three-legged chair stood propped against a wall beside a filthy window with no curtains. A small, wobbly looking table hovered precariously above the floor on rotted legs, and a large wood-burning stove with a nasty layer of grease and grime crouched sullenly against the opposite wall. It looked ancient and incredibly dangerous. It was hard to tell that it had once been covered in lustrous white enamel.

After briefly looking around the house, and being careful not to touch anything, Jack left the way he'd come and continued home. He didn't really give the old house much more thought after that. He simply passed it each day on his way to and from school with hardly a second glance. Then, one day, a few weeks after this fifteenth birthday and shortly after the beginning of his first year of high school, something changed.

* * *

It was a typical Monday morning and the start of another day of school, but when Jack emerged on the path through the woods he stopped and stared in disbelief. The yard around the old house had been mowed, and there were curtains in the windows. People had moved in, and one of them was now standing on the front porch, looking right back at Jack.

She was about Jack's age, 15 or so, with long wavy brown hair pulled back loosely with a blue ribbon, and a rather blank expression. She wore a long, old-fashioned, and rather dirty, cotton print dress. She was also barefoot. Jack was taken aback by her large brown eyes, which stared back at him with no sign of any real emotion or recognition. The effect was very creepy. She was also rather grimy, and obviously needed a bath. If not for these two things the girl would have actually been rather pretty. As it was, she looked more like an extra from a 'B' grade horror movie, like one of the characters that mysteriously meets their doom near the start before the real action kicks in.

Jack shuddered and looked away, and quickly continued on to school with his eyes on the gravel of the unpaved street before him. Just before the street made the transition from gravel to rough pavement he quickly looked back at the shabby little house. The girl was still there on the front porch, watching him, and Jack could have sworn that from the way her shoulders drooped she almost looked disappointed. He pushed the thought aside and continued on to school at a brisk pace.

That afternoon after school let out, Jack once again headed home past the old house. He felt a wave of relief to see that the girl wasn't standing out on the front porch this time. He was almost at the point where the path dove into the canopy of trees when he glanced back. For a brief moment he thought he saw a face in one of the windows, but then the curtain moved slightly and the image was gone.

The rest of the week was uneventful. Jack made his way to and from school without seeing the girl again. He wondered if she would be in school the following week, and then scolded himself for thinking about her. But he couldn't get her face out of his mind. When he wasn't attempting to pay attention in class or talking with his friends between classes, his thoughts turned to the strange girl with the big, brown eyes.

* * *

Saturday finally arrived and Jack was looking forward to exploring the old railway grade that ran alongside a stretch of the local river until it ended at the ruins of an old pivot trestle. Further away form the river, the same grade looped across a field and then faded into nothing, and Jack was always on the look-out for more information about