I am Little Elice

I stare and count the stars on my ceiling, even though I’ve counted a hundred times, and I already know the number. Mom says it’s pointless to waste my time counting things. I always seem to, even though it’s unintentional. I think she gets upset because I waste time in aisles in stores, focused on counting every kind of everything like I have all the time in the world. Mom says there’s hardly enough of it, and I think that’s why she drags me along.

But I count the stars anyway, the groups of them falling down, down, down; kissing the wooden trim of my floors in luminescent explosions. There’s 345(though there used to be 346, until I gave one away), and I count each one, again and again.

I don’t really know why I’m different. No one else really seems to either. Everyone looks at me and assumes everything that is unwritten, but it’s hardly my entire life. It’s easy to criticize a child. It’s easy to pity loneliness.

Except, I’m not lonely. At least, not in the way that adults understand it to be. And I’m not a child. I’ve just turned 10—and that’s a much bigger number than 9—a whole O added on. I know deep down not much has changed, but it always feels like the things painted on the outside make up more than what I feel on the inside. No one listens to me anyway.

No one except the stars.

When I close my eyes, they leap from the walls, becoming constellations of all kinds of friends. See, this is what I meant when I said I wasn’t lonely. I have the entire sky to talk to.

They take all kinds of forms, but most often, they dance as foxes across my bed, there to keep me warm even when it’s a cold and dark night like this one. Lightning crashes outside. I turn, pulling the pink and green quilt higher over my chest. I hadn’t realized it, but my heart is beating wildly.

I hear voices from outside my door: she comes with us, they hiss, clawing at the lock. Where is little Elice?

Big Elice is right here, tucked into bed. But the star foxes shake their heads in fear, telling me it is not safe here. If the voices outside the door manage to get to me—I’ll never come back to this room. They’ll take me from my stars.

So I count the latches on my window—2—and count the footsteps it takes me to get to it—13—and the foxes use their paws to help push it open. But it is a raging storm outside, and I’m not sure it’s good to follow foxes and stars into thunder and rain.

The monsters at the door are waiting, the foxes warn me, and the stars of them twinkle around my feet. I feel like I’m floating to the window, where all I know is to follow. I have to escape the monsters.

I land on the cold grass on the other side, immediately scorned by the wind and rain. Fearfully, I look back at the window, but the stars are already gone from there, bounding on ahead of me in the rain. Their glow is fading, like the essence of light caught in teardrops from the sky, so I begin to run.

I am not little Elice. I am big. I am fast. I run on stars and with foxes, even in the rain, and even in the dark.

Sometimes, I look back, and I frighten; thinking that my shadow behind me is a monster, but the foxes assure me that I am safe so long as I keep running with them. The rain is relentless, and I count my footsteps so I don’t think of how cold it is. From the window, it’s been 278.

Then, I start counting foxes, because I’m scared that if I feel too much fear, they’ll scare away from me. That’s what I remember learning in class, anyway; that animals can sense fear. I would never want to scare my star foxes.

There are 15 of them, which means 23 stars make up each. The 346th star I gave away is not counted, and I wonder briefly if it is lonely by itself.

The 15 foxes warn me to stay by their side, and I trust them, because I know all they want is for me to escape the monsters. They take me to the woods, and though they make me scared, I know not to let it show—and that fear will scare them away.

Branches crunch underfoot, but are silent beneath the paws of star foxes. I try not to be jealous. Mom says it’s not good to dwell on what others can do that I cannot. She says that there’s goodness in what makes me different, but she never seems to understand it. She hates my counting. She hates that I trample sticks, all 6 of them.

The foxes don’t say much, but they don’t need to; because we understand each other. It’s far more important than talking ever is, I think, and I think a lot now that I’m 10.

Eventually the foxes stop running, and I do too; my legs like jelly and my mind fuzzy all over though I’m soaked in water. I take a seat by an old tree, hugging my arms and waiting for the star foxes to join me.

But they do not settle. I start to fear they won’t stay, and maybe it’s my fear that drives them away.

I try to follow them, but it’s like all of me has failed me, and I don’t understand. I don’t understand why my body doesn’t move the way other people do, or why the monsters try to keep me inside. I don’t know why the foxes run from me and I cannot follow them.

I hold my head. I can already hear the monsters talking to me.

Little Elice… where may you be?

Except I’m not little. And I wish they’d get it right.

But the monsters are already here.

They’re tall, dark, and they bring out all the fear in me. But that doesn’t scare them away. The rain pours harder, but I realize after I’ve been pulled into their claws that there is no rain at all, and my face is only wet from the tears that fall there.

“Oh, Elice,” they say, as if they might be scared too, “You know you can’t run from us like that.”

But what could they be scared of? They already have me. And my foxes are gone, leaving me with nothing to make me big.

“Little Elice,” they say, “you must come with us now.”

And since I’m too weak and the stars are gone, I let them take me. I know where we will go—and it is the kind of place that makes me feel fear to scare away foxes. Mom says that it will be alright, while Dad is more stern, but soon I’m in a car and we’re driving away from the woods and rain.

The place we go to smells awfully like death, with lots of rain. It’s cold, and it’s blank, with sterile smells and lots of coughing. Other kids my age don’t come here. I don’t know why it’s just me.

Mom drags me along, wiping the rain from my cheeks. She mumbles something about sorry, but I don’t know what she could be sorry for. She and Dad take me into one of the rooms, and it’s fear all over again. There are different kinds of monsters here, ones that put needles in us and dress us from all ages in paper-thin robes.

“It will be over soon,” Mom promises, but I’ve counted her promises, and this is the 20th. I lay in the bed, Little Elice, and a monster stands over me.

There is one star on the ceiling, the one I gave away. It glows, faint in this harsh light, but remains as I close my eyes. So long as it is here, I know I will return as well.

I’ve tried to explain the foxes to Mom and Dad, but they don’t ever understand. I think being an adult must be tiring, if things such as star foxes don’t exist. I can’t imagine being that alone forever.

The monsters called doctors leave me alone for a while, and I sit in this bed, imagining how many people stared at the stars before me. Mom and Dad seem to have been in the rain, their cheeks wet, but we all seem to know the truth.

I will always be Little Elice.