This is the full version of fifteen that I posted a while ago I hope everyone enjoys the added scene to it!
Her fifteenth birthday comes on a cool July day, much like the day she was born according to her parents.
She wakes up to her mother kissing her forehead with a tray. Breakfast in bed for birthdays was a thing she enjoyed. Fluffy pancakes and raspberries with cups of hot chocolate in delicate cups.
Then she took the time to dress and do her hair, pulling it away from her face with a half knot. Loose curly baby hairs frame her face and she puts a bit of lilac at her neck and wrists. She skips down the stairs smiling broadly.
Father is already on a call, but he promises to be back for dinner if he can manage it. So she spent the morning tinkering on the piano, playing duets with her siblings until they exhausted all the repertoire they knew.
Not that they were the best players by any means, but Mrs. Meredith had taught most of them over the years. Jem of course only knew the basics theoretically but could pick up things easily without being taught. Walter played emotionally, memorizing pieces because he did not like to sight read, and the twins, were proper students when they had their lessons. Rilla though, had little time or patience for more than a good time. She had a few songs company she could manage easily, and if anyone compared her to Lizzy Bennet when she played or her lack of practice she took that as a compliment.
Father makes it home just before lunch, sweeping through the door, dropping his medical bag at the door and cleaning off his shoes before he finds her bathed in morning sunlight taking photographs with Walter. He pulls her into a large hug, kissing her temple, murmuring happy birthday to her as Walter snapped a photo for evidence. Another with both Mother and Father, and Susan takes one of the whole family. It's casual and lighthearted, perfect for a summers day photo.
Father was always like a little boy when it came to birthday, but with him home, she could open some of her cards with everyone present. Ones from the mail at least, which came from Aunt Diana in Avonlea, along with Aunt Dora( who had sent along a lovely hank of lace) and Uncle Davy( who had sent along a handful of candy for her).
Of course, there are the regular callers, people popping in to say happy birthday, mainly her friends dropping off little gifts and whatnot as they picnicked on the front lawn in white dresses, eating petite fours that someone brought over until they had their fill.
Mrs. Meredith who came with Una and Bruce was invited to tea by Susan today. They kiss her cheek they wish her a happy birthday and Bruce coyly hands her a little bouquet of wildflowers he picked for her. To which she thanked her profusely as she found a small vase for him after she hugged him.
He was a cute little boy now that he has fully grown into a child who no longer a baby that cries all the time. However, he does get awfully excited when Susan brings out the tea, which comes with a towering plate of scones with cream and jam for them.
They all settle in as Una passes along a small tissue paper wrapped gift, a pretty card of an angels and clouds with foiled edging.
See, I am sending an angel ahead of you to guard you along the way and to bring you to the place I have prepared.
Exodus 23:20
"Girls, don't feel the need to sit with us, go out have some fun why don't you?" Mother tells her with a smile. Rilla looks at Una and nods her head, they take a few scones, preparing them and Rilla goes to grab a small basket before they skip down to Rainbow Valley, to sit down with a basket of treats.
"How does it feel to be fifteen?" Una asks her, licking sticky honey off her fingers.
"Wonderful," Rilla says dreamily.
"Fifteen, an age of in-between," Una says with a shake of her dark head. Still, in a long braid, most days. Her hair rarely curled her inky black tresses.
"My new dress is an inch longer, I know I am getting one because Mother measured my skirts and took my measurements for one" Rilla says happily. "They surely must be allowing me to go to the dance and just haven't told me yet. They can't give me a pretty almost evening type of dress? I know you can't dance and don't care, but dancing is in my soul, I want to dance and dance."
"I much rather play piano or find someone to talk to for the event. Dancing can be overrated, though I suppose you shall have your answer soon enough about the dance at the lighthouse, it is only two weeks away at this point."
"It doesn't feel fair for them to drag it out, but if I ask about Father reminds me the answer will be a guaranteed no. However, I do know that Faith complains to Jem about not dancing at it. She says it's not fair," Rilla points out.
"Then they can dance in private as they usually do, much like Nan and Jerry," Una says simply. "Only one or two boys would ever make me reconsider a dance."
"Oh!" Rilla says gleefully. "Tell me who! I do hope Kenneth will be there, though his ankle is bummed still. He was here when we heard about the dance he said he might come to it. Though I am sure there will be plenty of others as well. If not Walter will dance with me, and Jem out of duty."
Una only shakes her head blushing as Walter comes walking up to them.
"I have tried my best Rilla-my-Rilla, without ruining all chances, Father left it to Mother's decision after all. Not that you know that." He adds on and Rilla nods her head gravely taking the knowledge to the grave if needed. "Are you going to the dance Una?" He asks ever so smoothly.
"Most likely, it is something to do out of the house," Una says nodding her head.
"Well, you'll have to save me a conversation on the rocks," Walter tells her and Rilla watches Una blush without her brother even noticing.
When dinner was called it was also her favourite, but mostly she was excited to blow out the candles of the white frosted cake that her mother helped Susan make. Completely with delicate piping and icing roses, it was one of the prettiest cakes she had seen. Though one might say she said that every year. She closed her eyes, taking a deep breath as she made her birthday wish before she blew out the candle. Missing all but one of the candles to which her siblings cackled.
"You know what that means. She'll have a beau by the end of the year," Jem teases her.
"You'll have to work on making yourself pretty for him." Shirley teases her next.
"Oh hush, your sister is the prettiest girl in Glen St Mary," Susan snaps her tea towel at him Lightly of course.
"I think everyone would like, Beau's included— for Rilla to be a little older," Father says gruffly from his seat.
"I want at least half a dozen, so I think I shall need to start soon," Rilla tells him as she moves and sits on her father's knees as if she is still a child. "Whatever will you do then?"
"I suppose I will have to stock up on chloroform," Father grins jokingly. Wrapping his arm around her. He enjoyed how his youngest still felt comfortable sitting with him as she did when she was younger, well until someone declared it was time for presents and she ran to living room. Where she sat on the living floor opening the small pile. Each of her siblings got her something small, Jem a pearl bracelet, and Walter presented her with a new diary to write in. Nan and Di pooled together and got her a lovely bunch of satin and lacy ribbon headbands.
The best gift is a new dress, a light sage with pink daisies garlands that were embroidered around the hems and waist, edging of the blouse blocked out with lace insertion that had been dyed a matching green colour. She held it up to her body and twirled around.
"Go try it on," Her mother laughs and Rilla quickly rushes to her father's study and undoes the hooks and buttons to her white dress and pulls the new one over her head. It was a whole inch longer as well!
She comes back out, her long hair tied back and hanging down her back.
"Fits wonderfully, and you'll be able to grow into it," Her mother says double-checking the fit at the shoulders and underarms.
Rilla laughs as she spins in it, skirts were far from the twirling of her younger days but it still rose slightly and rippled with her as she moved.
"May I have this dance?" Walter asks bowing to her in the living room.
"You may," Rilla giggles curtsying to his bow and takes his hands and lets him twirl around the living room.
"Are you sure you don't wish to go to Queens?" Walter asks her once more
"Why what in the world would I do there?" Rilla laughs. "I have no use becoming a teacher, I just want to laugh and twirl around youth. Make some handsome man fall in love with me and then we'll get married and what use will teaching be for me then?"
"You do realize there are dances at Queens and parties?" Walter teases her.
"Pish," Pilla says waving him off. "I am fifteen Walter, the world is at my fingertips. I want to wear pretty dresses, and go calling and have tea and go to concerts. Her voice was light with laughter.
Walter merely shakes his head with a smile as an Austrian folk dance begins. A Ländler he told her when he taught her the year before. A homey sort of waltz that is more country in its routes, but fun to dance with Walter when he is home.
"One day you will realize that fifteen is not at all that old Rilla-my-Rilla," he says with a shake of his dark hair.
They dance through various dances around the living room. Jem joins in for one with the birthday girl as well, if she promises to not step on his feet. For him, it's a Polka, fast and delirious with its turns and hops. She could only laugh as she twirled in her slippers on the hardwood floor where the tables were pushed out of the way.
Shirley chooses a Scottish waltz that is mellow, she is light on her feet and never stomping without meaning. Though when she did she could hear Father groan. 'Did we not just refinish the floors not long ago?'
'Oh the floors will be fine darling,' her mother would tell him. Father watched from his spot by the window. When was the last time her birthday had not been interrupted by a telephone call?
Still, her back was already perfectly straight, and her arms always had the perfect amount of tension to them. She goes to him, pulling into a dance next, the gramophone disc is turned over and restarted. Her cheeks are flushed, settling into a calm waltz, something that would not make him worry for his floors.
She wonders if Kenneth would stop by. Aunt Leslie always gets her something pretty, and he had come by for Jem's birthday the week previous they had sent something for Walter in June and Shirley in April, the Twins, were born in September.
She's broken from her thoughts as someone passes her a piece of cake that had been forgotten about in the dancing.
"Oh, it's strawberry!" Rilla exclaims taking a bit out of a corner piece with a flower on it of course.
"We have one more gift for you," Father says digging into his pocket and pulling out a box.
She opened it gingerly, finding a string of pearls, clearly not real ones, but they still had a beautiful lustre to them. A single strand, with small rhinestones that broke up the pearls as they sat on the cord.
"Oh, it's beautiful! Thank you so much!" She says wrapping her arms around him. She stands in front of him, holding her long hair out of the way as he fastens it around her neck adjusting it so it sits perfectly within the square neckline of her white dress she had put back on after taking off her new one.
The sun was shining as Rilla lay in the hammock in the shade of course, she didn't wish to freckle her pale skin. Half asleep, still daydreaming about life and her birthday that was a few days before.
She was dressed in one of her ever white summer dresses, white stockings and white tennis shoes. Her hair was in a long braid, but still curled and fluffed out around her face with one of her new headbands tied decoratively around her tresses.
What was the poem that Walter was sprouting off about?
Over hill, over dale,
Thorough bush, thorough brier,
Over park, over pale,
Thorough flood, thorough fire
I do wander everywhere,
Swifter than the moon's sphere;
And I serve the fairy queen,
To dew her orbs upon the green
She whispers to herself, before lifting the book from her lap, Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream. How romantic would it be to fall asleep in a fairy ring and find oneself in the realm of the fairies?
Of playful Puck, to be able to see Oberon dance with his Titania. Of Hermia and Lysander and their forbidden love. It was magical and it made her, all romance was magical, love affairs and beaus. She couldn't help but be excited for the years to come. Which boy would ask first? Maybe she should ask Nan how Jerry went about it. Was it some golden gesture? Could minister sons do golden gestures?
Jem seems to always just be quiet and pensive, but whenever she comes across him and Faith walking through the old groove of maples, he seems like a different person. Then again at twenty-one, he was an adult and spent more time away at college and university than he did at home. Yet every time he came home, he and Faith seemed closer than ever.
She sighed and opened the book she laid on her stomach, reading through until she came to her spot.
The cowslips tall her pensioners be;
In their gold coat spots you see;
Those be rubies, fairy favours,
In those freckles live their savours:
I must go seek some dew drops here
And hang a pearl in every cowslip's ear.
Farewell, thou lob of spirits: I'll be gone;
Our queen and all her elves come here anon.
She doesn't hear the footsteps on the veranda or even the knock on the door. The hammock swings as she stretches slightly, hands twirling in front of her as she pretends she is some fairy flying around the sky.
"Rilla Blythe,"
She shrieks as she opens her eyes, the hammock threatening to overturn her in a heap of white lawn and lace as a leg and arms flail in surprise, steady hands grab the hammock and her waist.
"It's just me," Kenneth Ford was with a rather velvety laugh. "I didn't mean to scare you, well, I did, but not quite as dramatic as you reacted." He tells her.
Rilla merely blinks realizing that one of her legs is on display, up to the blue ribbons that were her garters that rested above her knee. Along with a sliver of white skin, she quickly shakes out her skirts embarrassed at what he might have seen.
"I'll help you out," he says laughing once more, and takes a step back, holding out his hands. Pretending as if he saw nothing he shouldn't have. He takes her hands as she slips out of the hammock and rustles her skirts into place once her feet are on the ground. She hastily grabs the book of Shakespeare that had fallen to the ground. Walter would never forgive her if one of his books at dirty.
She looks up at his tall frame, she had grown taller in the past year. Yet she still barely met the top of his shoulder. The last time he was over, she hadn't been feeling well. Joys of becoming a woman and he teased her sour mood and called her Puss and Kid, trying to get her to smile at him. If he had only known the reasons for her mood that evening?
"Thank you," she says blushing.
"Anytime," Ken says flashing her a smile that makes her knees melt. Did he know how handsome he was? Surely he knew?
"I came by to give you this, from my mother. She didn't want to mail, it but apparently I am told that your birthday was a few days ago. So please don't tell my mother I was late?" He asks her with a small pleading look on his face.
"I shall have to think about it," Rilla tells him teasingly as she takes the gift. They walk towards the veranda and she fluffs out her skirt as she sits down in a chair and he takes the next one. Leaning back as he watches her?
Does he watch Ethel Reese as he watches her? The rumours swirled that he walked her home many times over the weeks from various things as she lived near his family in Over Harbour. His dark hair was brushed into gentle waves with a touch of curls at the ends, and his grey eyes were filled with some sort of curiosity she didn't understand.
She opens the small card, with a flying fairy on a flower.
'Happy Birthday Rilla, may fifteen be the year of adventure for you, Love Aunt Leslie and Uncle Owen, Kenneth and Persis.
She reads carefully, noting that while Aunt Leslie wrote the card and signed Uncle Owen for her husband, and even Persis's name, the name Kenneth was in a much more masculine handwriting.
Inside the box is a pair of silver combs, with small pearls and rhinestones on them, she traces them gently with her finger. Aunt Leslie always gave her the prettiest things, and now hair combs for her first party one day?
"Oh please tell your mother thank you!" Rilla exclaims, in giddiness. Maybe she would wear them to the party if Mother and Father allowed her to go? Were they too fancy for a lighthouse party? It all ran through her head a mile a minute. "I will treasure them forever!"
"This is from Persis and I?" He says handing over another package much smaller, but not so elegantly wrapped.
She unwraps the small package next, careful not to tear the pretty floral paper, before opening the box. Inside is a porcelain ornament, a fairy with sparkly wings, that was holding a prism in her hands. There is a ribbon attached to the top of it as if you were meant to hang up in front of a window or somewhere.
"It's lovely, " Rilla says quietly. "Thank you," she adds with a small blush.
"Not too childish I hope?" He asks with a crooked grin, that makes her heart flutter.
"Does one have to give up fairies and tales at fifteen?" Rilla asks her sitting up straighter. "Can't one just move into slightly more mature fairy tales? Walter gave me a Midsummer's night dream to read, and I have fallen in love with it. I know they say it is a comedy, and I do laugh over it, but it's still full of romance and fairies that I cannot help but daydream about it."
"I suppose not," Ken says after a moment. "Where are you at in it?"
"My cherry lips have often kissed thy stones, Thy stones with lime and hair knit up in thee," She says dreamily, and she doesn't see Kenneth choke back a gasp trying to keep his composure.
"Is it not just romantic?" She says sighing dreamily. "I kiss the wall's hole and not your lips at all?"
"Does your mother know Walter gave you this book?" Ken asks not knowing what else to say.
"Of course, we read it together at night, she explains things in finer detail at times or has me guess? It's her way of giving me some sort of higher education I suppose?" Rilla tells him with a small smile. "What do you think he means?" She asks him so innocently.
"Honestly….I was never one for Shakespeare, Say is there any leftover cake or has Jem devoured it?" He says with red ears.
"Oh! I think so! I'm sorry I am such a horrible hostess!" Rilla says standing up quickly, barely catching her gifts from falling. "There is some lemonade as well?" She tells him.
Ken frowns, he didn't mean to make her feel like a horrible hostess. "It's fine, I surprised you after all."
"Give me a moment?" Rilla says flittering about. Skirts swung as she went about to the kitchen. The cake was in the ice box, with enough left for two small slices she took off the bread ends and poked it to ensure it still felt moist. It was iced in pink frosting and still had a few pink scrolls and flowers on it.
She brings a tray out on the veranda, going back for the forks and napkins she had forgotten.
"Where is everyone?" Kenneth asks curiously.
"Mom and Dad are at the Manse which means Jem is somewhere with Faith, which also means Nan is with Jerry somewhere. and Shirley is working at the hardware store, Di and Walter went off somewhere without inviting me," Rilla says somewhat bitterly at the end, with an addition of a pout as well.
"How very unkind of them, though luckily you were here, you would have not gotten your gifts otherwise," Ken reminds her.
"Well, eat up," Rilla tells him passing him a plate with a fork, as he places a napkin on the knee of his brown linen trousers. They eat in silence, Rilla mainly nibbling on hers, not wanting to eat in front of him as she normally would.
"Well, thank you for the conversation and cake," Ken says getting up from his seat when the cake is all finished and conversation was waning. "Tell your brothers and parents I said hello to me Spider Why don't you?"
Spider?
Her heart sunk and shattered into what felt like a million pieces.
Spider, she was still Spider to him?
She watches him go, before putting her things away, tears hot down her face.
Spider.
She hated him for ruining her day like he did she decided when she cried as she flung herself on the bed.