They've barely played for ten minutes when Aaron throws his hands up and stomps away to the neighbor's yard. He mutters something about stupid girls wanting to play stupid imaginary games, but he still leaves his sweater for her to sit on. She can't get up to follow him because she's being a mermaid captured by an evil octopus and she needs to decide what color her tail is and the jewels in it before she can beat up the octopus and get gravely wounded while escaping. Also her skin gets itchy and red if she lays in the grass, so she stays on her brother's school sweater and runs her fingers over the prickly new-cut green blades of their front yard and thinks of colors. Mommy is inside but the front door is open and she can hear her voice raising and falling on the phone- no words she cares about, just the lilt like when Mommy reads long passages from the Hobbit at bedtime.
She looks at her legs stretched out on the sweater, bruise-blotchy knees bare below her soccer shorts, and blinks hard until she can almost see them as a tail. Imagination is making pictures for yourself, and she is going to be the most imaginative girl in kindergarten if it kills her. She'll show everyone her tail and they'll want to be her friend just like that.
She wants to go across the street to play with Aaron and the neighbor kids but she's not allowed to leave the yard by herself. Besides, one time she followed Aaron after he gave up playing and he said she was the ugliest girl in the world and never apologized, even when she cried. So she sits and blinks at her legs and listens to Mommy's voice from the house.
It's warm out, not hot like it was the day they went to the beach and days after her skin was peeling off like dried Elmer's glue, but hot enough she feels heavy and sleepy. Can't fall asleep on the grass, though, not unless she wants to be taking oatmeal baths for the next week.
She rolls to her feet and wraps the sweater around her waist in case she wants to sit down again, and something falls out of the big pocket on the front. Several round somethings that catch the light where they lie nestled in the grass like Easter Eggs. Four whole quarters. They're Aaron's, probably, but she's not too bothered by it. He can always get more from the change jar on the counter. No, these quarters are hers now, the price of his leaving to play with someone else. She scoops them up in one hand and jangles them about to hear their happy coin sound. Maybe if she hides them now, Aaron won't even remember they were there.
Just then the most perfect sound starts, far away but growing stronger, getting closer. She grins and closes a fist around the quarters. This is going to be even better than hiding the coins from Aaron. He'll never know, now..
She's running towards the sound, panting as she draws up to the white truck covered in stickers, and holds up the money so the man knows someone there. She's the second tallest girl in kindergarten, but she still has to bounce on her toes to see over the edge of the window, to see the ice cream man. He smiles down at her and she moves closer to the car to hand him the quarters.
"Are your parents around?" the ice cream man asks. She bounces a little higher to see the way his smile stays on his face when he talks, almost like it's a painted on clown smile. She's not supposed to talk to strangers, so she just shakes her head and rests her hand on the window sill so she can show the ice cream man the quarters.
"Kid, come a little closer and tell me what you want." He says, his voice with ups and downs like one of the characters in the TV shows Aaron says they're too old for. It's painted on like his smile, and she starts to step a little back, maybe run back to her own yard, when he winks at her and reaches back, back, back behind him and pulls out a fudgsicle. As soon as she sees it, she can taste it melting on her tongue, she wants it so much. He wraps his big hand around her coins, hand and all, and reaches out with the other, the fudgsicle. She puts up a hand for it but he keeps reaching until he touches her forehead with two cold fingers and whispers something that sounds slithery. She pulls her hand away and takes the fudgsicle with both, squinting up at the ice cream man. He winks again with no change in his smile and says, "See you soon!"
She runs back to her lawn and imagines how the mermaid got her fins away from the cold octopus and fought free. Half an hour later, when Aaron gets back, the fudgecicle is a smear of sticky chocolate on her cheeks. He gets mad at her for stealing his quarters because one of them had a state on it.
Several hours later, she and Aaron are tucked into bed in their adjoining rooms and Aaron is still angry enough at her that he doesn't talk to her through the doorway like usual.
The next morning, she is gone without a trace.
Five days later, she is back, but... Different.
Ten years later, Sam Winchester awakes from a dream about a cold room and a man with a painted on smile. He can still taste the bitter remnants of chocolate on the back of his tongue.