“What’s the scariest thing you’ve ever seen?” he asked. “In real life, movies don’t count.”

Everyone leaned forward eagerly. I smiled at them and pretended to be considering, even though I already knew what I’d say.

---

When I leave my classroom, I can see people on the playground. That is not unusual, but these people are different. Some are wearing uniforms, some aren’t, but all of them are big.

I know that next year I’ll be going to a bigger school, where people were almost old enough to go to high school! But these people are too big for high school (they were adults) and anyway, I don’t like people who are bigger than me. They are kind of scary, even though I’ll never admit it.

I am the second-biggest kid in my school (well, maybe third) and the second-oldest (except the teachers) and I am the oldest in my family (parents don’t count, my friend told me, they’re too old to count.)

But my friends aren’t scared of these bigger people. Even though I’m bigger than all of them, I’m more of a coward. They are already running down towards the playground, ignoring the teachers who are yelling at them and the kids they push aside. Some of the younger kids are running too. I guess they’re less cowards than me, because they’re going to see what is wrong instead of being afraid.

To prove I’m not afraid, I go out the fire exit when nobody’s looking. So when my friends get down to see what’s happening, I’m already there, proving that I’m not a coward and I never was: I wanted to see it all along.

---

My brother would tell me, years later, that he remembered a line. They had to get into a line on the playground so they wouldn’t interfere with the police and the hospital people. (I could never remember what they were called... It wasn’t doctors... medics?) My brother would remember a boy trying to sneak past the line, and the boy got into trouble (of course).

He would start talking about how the boy always did things to get into trouble. I would smile and laugh, but I would still be remembering things other than lines and boys getting into trouble.

It would be four years later when we’d talk about that, and I’d be big enough for high school, not afraid of big people anymore (much) and laughing with my friends about ‘the scariest thing I’d ever seen’. The scariest thing, even when movies don’t count, is pretty scary.

It would be four years later and I’d be less of a coward than I was, but I’d still be a little afraid. I’d still stay up that night my brother and I talked, after I’d gone to bed, remembering and wondering why it scared me. I would have a perfectly good explanation, and when I told the story to myself, even I would have to admit that it wasn’t scary. Not much, anyway.

---

I can see a girl, now, I don’t know how I got closer. Four years later, when I would be less of a coward, and big enough not to be afraid of adults, I wouldn’t be able to remember what happened exactly, just flashes of images.

The girl is on a stretcher, and that’s what’s really scary. In movies, people get carried away on stretchers all the time. That’s what happens when they get hurt, unless it’s a really bad hurt and they’re dead. Or unless they don’t have a stretcher. Sometimes the people in movies are smart enough to make one, but other times they don’t figure it out and the person who’s hurt has to walk.

I am glad we aren’t in a movie, because I don’t think this girl can walk. Not anymore, anyway, I’ve seen her walking on the playground but now she looks too hurt.

Which would probably be why she’s on the stretcher.

There are police and medics everywhere and they scare me. I remember the girl’s mother is there, but I don’t know how she got there so fast.

The mother is screaming and yelling, tears streaming down her face and it blends in my eleven-year-old memory with the principal’s face and the policemen and the medics and the teacher (I can’t remember who) who shoos us out of the way and tells us that, sorry kids, there won’t be much of a recess today. I remember a fence and we can’t pass it, but I can’t remember which side we were on.

I remember the mother screaming. She’s completely hysterical by now, and that scares me. I’ve only seen an adult cry once (in real life, movies don’t count) when my grandma died and I was trying to play spy.

But even then, they hadn’t cried much, or, at least, not like that. When adults cry, they cry like big kids, quietly and they try and hide it. Not like toddlers who just got hurt really, really badly.

The toddler-mother is screaming still and I think the police might be holding her arms. And then a girl comes down the stairs (she had to stay in class late, she wasn’t so far behind us because she was a coward) and my friend points her out to me as a friend of the girl who got hurt.

The girl who got hurt is a year younger than my brother. And now she’s on the stretcher still and her mother is screaming. I wonder if the girl can hear her.

I wish the mother would be quiet. The girl isn’t a coward, she’s too young to be a coward, but she must be scared. If it’s so scary that a bigger kid, even a coward, was scared by a mother who wasn’t hers screaming, then a little kid must be really scared by her mother screaming.

I don’t know if the girl who got hurt is awake yet, but her hands are up. They’re above her chest, shaped around like she’s holding a soccer ball (my brother plays soccer and that’s what his hands do when he’s holding one.)

But I don’t see a soccer ball anywhere.

And now her hands are twitching, moving rapidly closer to each other and then further away, shaking uncontrollably. I want to turn and run away. I’ve never seen a person twitch like that before, when they’re not just joking around. In real life, movies don’t count.

But the girl can’t stop twitching and I still can’t see her face which makes it even scarier. She isn’t a girl I saw on the playground anymore, now she has to be ‘the girl who got hurt’. I twist around, trying to see her face and hoping that when I do she won’t twitch anymore because then she won’t be the girl who got hurt anymore. She’s only twitching because she’s ‘the girl who got hurt,’ and she’s only ‘the girl who got hurt’ because she’s nobody I know. I’ll recognize her...

And the mother is screaming in the background and girl is twitching and my friends and classmates are all talking behind me but I can’t hear what they’re saying and the teachers are telling us what to do only nobody’s doing it because everybody’s scared, not just me, not just me, even though they’re less of a coward than me they’re scared and they’re talking and the mother is less of a coward than me but she’s scared and she’s screaming, and the girl is less of a coward than me and she’s scared and she’s twitching...

“The scariest thing I’ve ever seen?” I asked.

And they’re carrying her away from the school...

“In real life,” they reminded me, “Movies don’t count.”

And the mother’s screaming like adults don’t...

I nodded. “Real life scary things...”

And the police are trying to calm everyone down...

“Don’t try to tell us you don’t have any,” they teased.

And now the girl-who-knew-the-girl-who-got-hurt is crying, even though she’s not a coward and she’s a big kid...

“Well, I can think of one,” I told them.

“I’d be scared too,” my friend tells me later on the phone. “She must have been really badly hurt...”

“I walked out of the classroom in about sixth grade and I saw...”

Somebody’s screaming, somebody else is crying, and the girl is still shaking and everybody’s afraid, not just me...

“Him!” I pointed and they all laughed.

And after all the screaming and fear die down days later, I look around for the girl who got hurt.

They started joking and trying to throw the insult back at me. I laughed.

She never came back.

---

Fredtheflyingfish, you must be proud of me. I put up a new story. So there.

Anyway, this was inspired by a real life event, where a girl fell of a play structure and got hurt. The real girl, however, returned to school a few days later after only a minor concussion. All specifics and dialogue, internal or otherwise, is completely fabricated. The event in my life was actually not the scariest thing I’ve ever seen, but I don’t think anyone wants to hear about maggots burning alive. I hope you liked it, and please review!