The Gift of Kindness
She put the herbs into the bowl, one by one in the order prescribed. Next, in went the corn-husk doll. Finally, she lit the candle and said the words. The contents started to ignite creating a black smoke that engulfed the doll. Poof. The doll was infused with the herbs, a tiny spark lit up where the doll’s heart would be, two deep spots where eyes might be, and a streak under the dots that looked like a mouth.
Dulcet was quiet and mostly kept to herself. She didn’t get involved in the drama of high school and had a small group of friends who most considered nerds. Mostly, Dulcet wanted to make it through highschool invisible, but one day one of the most popular girls in school changed all of that. Why she took a sudden interest in Dulcet, no one could figure out, but the teasing and harassment was relentless and merciless.
“Look everyone, it’s Dullard,” Belinda yelled from the bus window. It was the first time anyone noticed Dulcet let alone the popular kids. Dulcet just put her head down and let her long, brown hair fall into her face.
“Hey, Dullard, tell me how you stay so thin, binge and purge or you just don’t eat at all?” Belinda called out in the hallway one day.
“Did everyone hear, Dullard’s dad got a big promotion at the Dollar Convenience. Maybe he can buy you some clothes from this century, Dullard,” the taunts just wouldn’t stop. Belinda was always targeting someone for her barrage of mean girl rantings, but for some reason it seemed her attacks on Dulcet were different.
“Don’t listen to her, Dulcet,” said Mandy, her best friend since third grade. “She’s just jealous.”
“Jealous? Jealous of what? She has everything; I’m just a nobody,” Dulcet said.
Dulcet was wrong about this, though. She didn’t know that one night Belinda asked her boyfriend one of those stupid questions to which girls don’t really want to know the answer. And he said he though that quiet, blonde girl was one of the prettiest girls in school. And he was right. Dulcet had a haunting beauty with her wheat blonde hair and dark brown doe eyes.
“Just ignore her, she’ll get tired and find a new victim,” Mandy insisted.
“Yeah, I guess,” Dulcet responded, but was not convinced.
Dulcet was right. Not only did Belinda continue to taunt her, but now Belinda’s friends were chiming in as well even when Belinda wasn’t around. Not only did they taunt her at school, but they posted pictures and comments on social media.
After the social media bombs, half of the tenth grade was taunting and teasing Dulcet.
One day, Dulcet was walking down Main Street and saw a sign for a tea shop that was on one of the side streets. It was no ordinary tea shop. Yes, there was tea, but there were also a variety of herbs and spices and paraphernalia and an entire section of books. One thing truly interested Dulcet. It was supposedly a charm that warded off attacks. She turned the ornate, hollow ball over in her hands. It was about the size of a dime, had an elaborate design, and contained another small round object inside the ball. She could see it through the intricate design that resembled lace, and she could smell it as well. It wasn’t an unpleasant odor, but it was unusual. She took the charm to the counter.
“Problem with girls, hm,” said the woman behind the counter. She was older, about Dulcet’s mother’s age, with long blonde hair with purple streaks in the front.
“How . . .” Dulcet began, but the woman answered before she got the words out.
“It’s one of my gifts. I know things,” Cassandra informed her. “This thing I know because you are a teenage girl and I know that look and that feeling.”
Dulcet looked at her suspiciously and then averted her eyes to the tips of her shoes, her chin nearing her chest looking like a gymnast ready to flip. And,with her head still down, brought her eyes back to the strange shopkeeper.
“I think you have a gift as well, although you haven’t learned it yet.”
Over the next few weeks, Dulcet visited the shop often. Although the charm had kept her from many of the taunts, for some reasons Belinda seemed immune to the charm.
“You may need something stronger for that one,” Cassandra said. And she gave Dulcet the book and ingredients for the silencing spell.
Dulcet held the charcoal doll, she looked at it’s little glowing heart. Tempted to stick a pin through the heart, Dulcet held back. One thing she prided herself on was her self control. She took a small tube from her desk drawer. Super glue. She squeezed a line of glue across the black streak that was the doll’s mouth.
The next day at school, Belinda had nothing to say to Dulcet. In fact, Belinda had little to say to anyone. Not only was Belinda silent, but she did not eat at lunchtime. She grew more withdrawn both spiritually and physically as the weeks went on.
“Something is really wrong with Belinda. She looks like death,” Mandy said to Dulcet one day.
That night, Dulcet went home and peeled the glue from the doll’s mouth. The next day, Dulcet went back to being invisible. Belinda would occasionally glance at her in the hallway, but never said a mean word to her again
