I missed my one-year anniversary on FF. :( So here's a little piece to make up for it.
Also, this is the first time in at least three chapters that I've actually typed out the characters names. Try not to piddle on yourselves in shock. ;)
Love and cupcakes,
Phina
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Prompt #20: Wish
The summer sun ached against the deep-red backs of her closed eyelids, and Rachel made a small sound of discomfort. Heat prickled against her fair skin. She could feel it burning at the smooth ivory of her forearms.
She had always hated the sun, and it must not have liked her either. It burned away the whiteness of her skin – made it red-hot and itchy instead. It liked Kori better.
Dick adored it. Rachel gritted her small teeth (only one of her baby teeth had fallen out so far: she was hopelessly behind in the kindergarten race. Dick had lost three already, and Vic was even more grown-up with five big teeth already grown in) and stretched out further on her grassy lawn, the lavender of her T-shirt riding up a little on her tummy. She could see a sliver of white flesh in a gap between her soft cotton shorts and T-shirt.
She wanted the sun to like her. She wanted to have brown skin like him.
Dick was farther down the street, pedaling furiously on his red plastic toddler bike. She watched him struggle through the thick summer heat – his arms bronzed and beautiful – and sighed, scooching back on the grass.
Kori was squatting at the end of the street, her thick red blanket of hair hanging in front of her face as she poked at a big beetle on the sidewalk.
Rachel had always loved Kori's hair. She wore it long and loose, like a red cape – like the warrior princesses in Gar's comic books. Rachel once tried to let her hair down like Kori's. At first it felt like she was Rapunzel, letting her long waves of hair float down to a prince. Then it tangled hopelessly, and when she tried to brush it out, it left big wads of purple hair behind in the comb. She made her mother cut it short after that.
Kori looked up in surprise when Dick pedaled by her, and then her face split open in a wide smile. She already had three gaps where her teeth were growing in.
And Dick – strong, funny, beautiful Dick – grinned toothily back.
Rachel watched them from her seat on the lawn, wishing she had Kori's big green eyes and toothy smile and brown skin. She looked at her white legs, peeking out like sticks from the blue cotton shorts, and criss-crossed-applesauced them underneath her.
Kori giggled. Rachel wondered what Dick had said. She wished she was there laughing with him.
Dusty-dry grass scratched at her rough summer feet, but she could hardly feel it – she'd walked on hot pavement, rocky lawns, the sharp woodchips of the playground and the cold green supermarket tiles to toughen them up. Dick liked it best when his heels were brown and leathery.
Her feet always hurt now, but not as much as before. Before, they'd been pale white, like the bottom of a snail. They'd turned pink first, then red, and finally a weak-chocolate-milk color.
Kori was looking up at Dick through her long lashes, like a baby deer. She was too beautiful.
Rachel yanked a dandelion from the scratchy lawn. She held it tightly with both chubby hands, squeezing the stem close to her heart, which hurt her chest with its boom-boom-boom inside of her. Her eyes shut; her skin stung where the sun hit it. She thought of Dick and his plastic bike – thought of riding it with him, laughing, smiling, adding the strength of her skinny white legs to the pedals.
I wish…I wish…
It was too much even to wish for, so she tucked the dandelion behind her ear, saving it for later. She opened her eyes and squinted in the glare.
Dick grabbed Kori's hand.
Rachel only realized later that she was ripping the grass to shreds with her too-pale fingers. She looked down, saw a firetruck-red drop of blood squeeze out of her fingertip, and felt like crying.
--
It was a year ago, on a lazy summer afternoon before Rachel had started kindergarten. She and Dick were kneeling on the sidewalk, drawing with her new chalks. They were pretty: the shape of the big carrot sticks her mother peeled in the sink, and every color of the rainbow, except for white. (She threw the white one away because it looked too much like the color of her skin.)
Dick pursed his lips, squinting down at the pavement, and began to draw determinedly with the blue chalk. She watched, fascinated – his fingers were smeared ocean-blue from the dust.
She watched a puffy half-moon take shape under his hands. Inspired, she took the orange and yellow chalks and drew and drew and drew, rubbing the colors into the sidewalk with her fingers until they were raw, bleeding, and colored like flames.
"Look, Dick!" she said, smiling. "I drew a sun." And she had. It was big and round and beautiful.
Dick took one look and threw her chalks down angrily, letting them shatter into jewel-bright chunks on the sidewalk. "You always make them better than me," he yelled, blue eyes crackling like lightning. He stormed off into his house and slammed the door shut.
Rachel sat in a puddle of chalk dust, trying not to cry, because all she had wanted to do was make something beautiful for him – all she had wanted to do was bring some sun into his life.
--
Rachel looked at the boy she'd loved since she knew the meaning of the word – watched him giggle and clumsily kiss Kori on the cheek. Kori blushed, but even from three houses down Rachel could see her smiling giddily.
The dandelion was still tucked behind her ear. She reached up and pulled it from a silky tangle of purple hair. The green stem was the same color as Kori's eyes.
Rachel stared hard at the dandelion and blew against it with all her might. A dry breeze picked up and carried the white fluffy cloud away, away, away, carrying every dream of Dick from every night of her six years to a faraway place. A place where hopes and dreams floated on white dandelion clouds, blown in on peppermint winds. A place where any girl could be Rapunzel and let down her hair, like a princess: not just the pretty ones with long, shiny red curls. A place where boys were beautiful, too, with brown arms and plastic bikes and big blue eyes and gap-tooth smiles.
A place where wishes come true.
A place that had never existed, and most likely never would.
Rachel followed the feathery white cloud with her eyes until it grew tired and drifted softly to the ground. Then she flung the dandelion stalk to the sun-baked earth, ground it into the dirt with her summer-tough heel, walked purposefully up the porch steps, and closed the screen door on her dreams.