I remember Creston Park School. I went there when I was 12 years old. It was a boarding school. There were about 100 girls there and we all slept in one big hostel.
The house was very big and dark looking. It might once have been beautiful, but had fallen into disrepair. Clearly, the place was crumbling and falling apart.
The grounds were very large and full of trees. There was a very high wall around the garden. It felt like a prison. We were stuck there for so long, it felt like it was our entire world.
I don't think it was a very good school. The teachers weren't unkind to us or anything, but everything about it was pathetic. It seemed like everything had gone wrong.
It seemed like Donna and I were always in trouble. There were about a hundred other girls there, but none of them liked us. That's how we were thrown together. We were unpopular. Nobody wanted to hang out with us. I think that's why we hung out with each other. Nobody else wanted us.
Donna was very ugly. She looked very strange with her wild, curly, unkempt hair and her dull, unfashionable clothes. She had scars all over her face and wore thick glasses that made her eyes look as if they were popping out. I looked almost as bad.
It seemed as if we had some disease. No one will come to us. He was ashamed to be seen with us. Sometimes we were shy to be seen with each other. I don't think we realized how sad we were. We never talked about it because we were too embarrassed. We used to pretend that everything was fine. We tried to tell ourselves it was just because we were different.
We used to sit together there in a secluded part of the garden, under the shade of a beautiful old poplar tree. We called it the "popular tree". We tried to convince ourselves that we were popular and all the other girls were worthless. It was obvious that we were deluding ourselves, but because there were two of us, we were able to maintain the illusion and that made matters worse.
It was impossible to believe that anyone could care about both of us. We didn't even care about each other. We were like two patients in a hospital, isolated and separated from others because of a disgusting and contagious disease. I began to feel that, if this is what life is like, I couldn't live it any longer.
Then, one day, the teacher gave us a class project and I was paired with another girl. She was one of the most popular girls in school. She was very beautiful and everyone liked her.
When we were working on projects together, somehow he took pity on me and we became friends. He took me under his wing and told me how to improve my looks. She told me to brush my hair and wash my face properly and use deodorant. She told me she didn't mind me, but she couldn't stand Donna.
When we completed the project, I thought she would leave me, but she didn't. We went to bring friends. Then, he introduced me to his friends and to my surprise, others started liking me too.
I joined their group and began to distance myself from Donna. She was left alone. I shunned him and would avoid him like the plague. From the moment we parted ways, everything started going right for me. She seemed to represent everything that was terrible in my life. She represented a period of my life that I wanted to forget.
Donna was sad when I left her. She never cried, she just wandered around alone, lost and dejected. When I was with others, I would see her sitting alone under a poplar tree, looking at me. Whenever others pointed and made fun of him, I started laughing and joking with them.
One afternoon, Donna came to me when no one was around. she asked me to come with her to the poplar tree. I didn't want to go with her, but I felt guilty, so I went.
When we got there I couldn't stand it. I didn't want others to see me with him. I was afraid that the stench of his unpopularity would affect me. I was so afraid of being thrown out again that I said horrible things to him. I told him he hated it. I told her I wished she was dead.
That night, as I lay awake in bed, I saw her getting up. She wore her dressing gown and went out of the hostel. She did not come back. I lay there waiting with a horrible feeling in my stomach. It felt like there was a tightness in my throat.
The next morning, the teachers noticed that Donna was missing. They searched for him everywhere, but could not find any trace of him. He called his parents, but they also did not listen to him. Everyone assumed that she had run away.
A few weeks later, I was out in the gardens. I went to a poplar tree and sat in the shade. Then, I happened to look up. Then I saw him. Two rotting legs were hanging just above my head. His dead eyes were staring at me accusingly. He had hanged himself. Overall, his rotting corpse hung hidden among the branches of a Chinar tree for several weeks, and no one knew about it.
After that I had a nervous breakdown. I fell and they brought me to the hospital. I was bedridden for weeks, wasting away, unable to sleep, unable to eat. They didn't know whether I would live or die. Life was never the same after that.
The school tried to suppress it, but the matter soon got leaked. It was all over the newspapers. "Little girl commits suicide at school" screamed the headlines. This was a scam. There were few details and a lot of speculation in the newspapers.
The tree was cut down. Some teachers and staff resigned. Most of the students were taken home by their parents. Eventually the school had to be closed and the crumbling old house and grounds were sold at a loss.
Since then, I have been afraid of Donna. I see him in every tree I pass on the road. She's hanging there from the branches, her face all red and her purple tongue hanging out of her mouth, staring at me with those evil evil eyes.
It doesn't matter where I am or who I'm with. I wake up in the middle of the night to find her standing over me, the belt of her dressing gown tied around her neck. She asks me to come with her and I am unable to resist.
Some nights, I find myself sleepwalking. My husband noticed that a belt was wrapped tightly around my neck. He would have to shake me awake and calm me down by slapping me.
It's only a matter of time before he succeeds. It's only a matter of time before she gets her revenge. It's only a matter of time before Donna manages to take me with her back to the poplar tree.
