Ding!! The school bell rings as loud as a lion would roar. I sprint out of the old crusty building, rushing along the sidewalk, leaving the chipped blue schoolhouse behind me. I only slow down when I know Patricia isn’t following me. Patricia is the star of everything she does. She executes lovely, fake smiles. She is perfect, and is the number one student in all of her classes, and every sport she does by far. She settled, after much deliberation, to make me her new best friend. One day as I was walking home from school, the grey sidewalk beneath my feet felt bare and as soon as Patricia skipped by, I knew why. “So did you hear the news that the school cleared the mural off of the sidewalk?” Patricia beamed expectantly. “No. I thought that mural had been there for years.” I replied. “Yes, but that doesn’t matter, they picked me to choose a team of six people to help me paint the new mural. Isn’t that great!” I shrugged and looked back down at the uncovered sidewalk. As soon as I spot our bright new house, I rush up the stairs, through the screen door and into my room, slamming the door and locking it. I fall down on my bed, legs splayed out in front of me. * * * Summer is the best time of the year. The sun shines down on me as popsicles drip on my bare feet. I stroll home from the pool, still wet from swimming; my best friend Maria skips beside me and we talk and laugh together. My schedule is always free and I never have any boring camps to do, so it’s just Maria and I. “Maddy, I have a surprise for you!” I hear my mom’s voice call, smooth and sweet. I slowly sit up and open my door expecting another book or baseball cap. Instead my mom is standing, smiling like a clown. “What is it?” I ask, expecting something worse than books. “I signed you up for bike camp! Isn’t that great? Patricia will be there so you’ll have a friend, and I’m sure that you’ll make new ones.” She said, beaming even more. I tensed up, realizing what she’d just said. “Mom, I don’t know how to ride a bike.” I replied, my voice scratchy and weak. “It starts tomorrow,” she said, apparently not paying much attention to me. I close my door quietly, explaining that, “I have so much summer homework!” Instead I spend the next four hours trying to figure out how to ride a bike on the Internet. Dinner was a depressing sight. My sister, Georgia texting on her phone, mom, planning carpools with Patricia’s mom on her computer, dad tapping constantly on his iPad, trying to email his friends, and me, sitting and wondering if I’d survive the next day. “So are you super excited? I am! I’ve been riding bikes since I was five!” chatters Patricia. I sit on the neat, perfect leather seat in Patricia’s minivan trying not to puke from the scent of mint tea and banana all mixed in one. Patricia stares at me expectantly, her small blue eyes like needles piercing into my skin. “Um sure.” I reply. “I’ve been riding since I was three,” I coughed, apparently allergic to the lie. Her mouth fell open, and I could see her perfect shiny white teeth, gleaming like diamonds. Once at the arena, Patricia’s mom waves her goodbye, not bothering to hug or kiss her. I wheel my new green bike to the starting point, where eight other people are standing. I fasten on my helmet and climb on the seat. I feel unstable and unsafe. Patricia mounts her pink bike with ease and sits on it comfortably, waiting for our instructions. A man with spiked blue hair and bright green eyes walks up to us. He stands in front of the rainbow of bikes. “I am Sebastian.” He booms, in a voice like thunder. “Let us start our camp with a little competition, shall we.” I hear whooping and hollering from a gang of boys, and I gulp nervously. “The first person to reach the finish line,” he points across the track, “will win,” he finishes. My arms are shaking and quivering so much that I can’t hide it from Patricia, who looks over suspiciously at me. “Ready… Set…. Go!” Sebastian cries, waving a red flag in the air. My legs start sweating, as I start pedaling. Instantly I’m behind everyone. Shaking I feel myself falling, then crash!! It happened. I embarrassed myself in front of everyone. I look up to see a concerned pair of brown eyes looking at me. I sit up and recognize the girl as the one sitting on her bike next to Patricia at the starting point. “Hi. I just wanted to see if you’re okay,” she says. I push myself up on my bloody elbows, trying not to cry. She was probably one of those professional bike riders who knew how to ride when she was 5. “I’m fine,” I reply, yanking my new, very damaged bike up. The girl has short wavy brown hair and dark brown eyes. Her smile is kind and protective, the way Maria would smile at me. She grasps my hand and helps me up. “Thanks.” I mumble. She nods and replies, “You’re welcome.” Then she mounts her bike and pedals away. I suddenly realize that she has the same jerky movements, the same quivering legs as me. I rush toward her and say, “Wait! What’s your name?” She jumps off her brown bike and says, “Rosie, what’s yours?” I catch my breath and say, “Maddy.” We exchange smiles before Sebastian blows his whistle, crying, “Thomas wins!” I glance back to see one of the boys standing at the finish line, screaming, “I won! I won!” at the top of his lungs. I suck
Friendship
Friends and Footprints
It was precisely 3:27 am, and Melody Campbell was sitting cross legged by the beach, having stealthily snuck out of the house due to insomnia. It wasn’t a public beach with mobs and mobs of vacationers and gaudy umbrellas that made your eyes ache when you looked at them too long—it was more like a huge cove along the Atlantic coast, private to only Melody’s family and their neighbors. In fact, Melody rarely saw anybody out there but herself, and of course the bottlenose dolphins. There was no particular reason for Melody’s insomnia; it just happened some nights. But the Cove always seemed to help with that. The sound of the gentle night’s waves tamed her restlessness, the humming breeze helped her to think, and the sand, cool from the shade of nighttime, was a welcome difference to the stuffiness of sharing a small room. By now, Melody’s eyelids were heavy and she was struggling to keep them open. Just as she turned away from the lulling waves, she caught something in her peripheral vision. Stifling a yawn, Melody turned back and blearily took a second look. What she saw astonished her. Footprints. At first she thought they might be her own, but a closer inspection proved otherwise. Then she noticed the next thing. The footsteps lead right into the water– and never back out. Scanning the ocean front, Melody didn’t see any signs of a human disturbance. The churning waves crashed on smooth sand, and behind the surf, the ocean was glassy smooth. The footprints must have been fresh, the bottoms still filled with tiny pools of water. Eventually exhaustion won her over and forced her to turn back to the house. At the front porch, Melody took one last glance at the Cove and the footprints, only to find she couldn’t even see them anymore. Maybe it was just a trick of the moonlight, she thought doubtfully. Or perhaps I was just dreaming the whole thing. She went into the house, silently shutting the door behind her, and crept into the room she shared with her little brother Harmony. (Her parent’s bad idea of a joke.) The moon shone through a crack in their curtains, forging a path onto his face. For a second, she stared at him lovingly. His shaggy blonde hair was strewn about his pillow, those plump little-kiddish cheeks were littered with golden freckles illuminated by the moonlight, and his lips were curled into a quirky smile, perfectly reflecting his sweet nature. And then she was stumbling into her bed, pulling her sheets around her, and falling asleep, dreaming of mysterious footprints leading into the ocean… * * * Melody woke up to Harmony banging out a lively (and very out of tune) song on the piano downstairs. On second thought, it probably wasn’t a real song. Her little brother was indeed a… creative… composer. However, nobody in the Campbell family had the heart to tell him how he really sounded. Any headaches or earaches were carefully hidden. At first she screwed her eyes shut, trying to close off the sound and fall back asleep. And then it hit her with the force of a pummelling wave, one of the freezing ones you get when you first run into the water, one that soaks you through and makes your breath hitch up in surprise. Everything that happened last night was recalled, and suddenly she didn’t feel so tired. Leaping out of bed, she dragged a comb through her honey blonde hair, changed, and rushed into the bathroom to perform the quickest brush-your-teeth-while-washing-your-face procedure mankind has ever seen. “I’m running out, but I’ll be back soon!” shouted Melody to her mom over the commotion of the piano as she scooped up a pancake and folded it into her palm. Her mom nodded and sent her a thumbs up signal, not even bothering to try raising her voice above the chaos. Slipping on her flip-flops, Melody sprinted out the door to the cute gray house and ran around to the back, stuffing the pancake into her mouth. She’s always thought she must be one of the luckiest girls in the world, to have a beach for her backyard. Melody raced to the shore, golden-speckled chocolate eyes probing the sand for a trace, any trace, of the footprints she thought she had seen the night before… And there, to the left, a trail of faint imprints that just defined footprints leading into the water. There still weren’t footprints leading out of the water. So she hadn’t imagined it, she wasn’t crazy. Someone or something had definitely been here last night, had definitely walked right into the water and never came back out again. Most kids would have been scared when they figured that out, but Melody wasn’t like most kids. She was intrigued, curious, pulled into the mystery, the mystery of the footprints. * * * When she got back to the house, Melody was relieved that the piano abuse had finally stopped. Melody’s mom smiled knowingly at her, one of the smiles moms can give you when they know just what you’re thinking at the moment. “Don’t tell him, but I was relieved Harmony decided to go play in the back with you and got off of that poor piano.” Wait. There was something wrong with that sentence, but Melody couldn’t quite put her finger on it. Oh. Her eyes widened, lips parting slightly. She looked at her mom. “What, honey?” “Harmony. He- he wasn’t in the back. When did he leave the house?” “About five minutes ago,” volunteered her dad, looking up from his copy of the paper, eyebrows creased in worry. “If he went back to the Cove, you would have seen him.” They all exchanged glances. They knew how quickly Harmony’s little blond head moved from one thing to another– he might have started out intending to
Boxes
Ronia’s black curls bob at the edge of my vision, her toffee face connected to twisting shoulders that sweep past the bodies of sweating parents, yakking teens, and pleading children. A shiny green sign tåwinkles with a line of sunlight, the white text saying “Atlantic Ave” invisible where the light hits the bumpy material. Air hisses through a hole in the thick plastic material next to me, pulsing as feet make contact with its airy brilliance. The sun watches over us, its warmth touching our faces and necks and burning us with its loving gaze. The wind joins in with the chorus of voices that ride over the thumping speakers like birds chirping out a melody while floating in the clouds. I eye a dolphin balloon that floats above the crowd, blue shimmer against a blue sky. The way it shines in the sun holds my vision as if challenging me to buy a grip on its bright string. I gather some cotton from my dad’s shirt in my fist and tug, gaining his attention. “Yes, Azalea?” I point at Ronia with one hand, and the balloon with the other. “Ronia’s over there,” I say, “And I want that.” I watch a kid with a red shirt near the balloon stand and narrow my eyes menacingly. “I want that now,” I add. Ronia’s face appears next to mine, face broken into a smile. “Azalea!” She throws her arms open. “Ronia!” I laugh and throw my arms around her. My hand wraps around her until it reaches the opposite side of her, where it rests, on the skin between her shoulder and neck. My hand is wrapped around the balloon, the slight tug goes up my arm and into my heart as I walk down Atlantic Avenue, hand in hand with Ronia. When we see something we like, we gallop towards it, like our hands are cemented together and never will part. * * * As we walk to the East River, the outline of Ronia’s building becomes visible against the pale blue sky. It grows larger the more our legs burn, the more asphalt we step across, the more words we set free. It grows so large it obscures my vision, the details of the front door more than the details of the building as a whole. We enter and walk to the elevator with its old, leathery smell, like the building is a prize someone tried to wash too many times. My faded sandals cross the gap lined with metal, high-fiving the floor—thwack—a game played with Ronia’s pink and my blue sandals. Her feet are golden brown criss-crossed with blue plastic; mine, a birch tree, laden with celebratory ribbons, blue as a bluebird. The white lights flash on the elevator wall: Floor 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. The elevator counts with me, 6 years, 6 floors. Through the doorway, our sandals thwack. It looks like the walls are holding negative space, like all the framed memories were forgotten. Ronia’s house used to be covered with pictures; nature, us, family, memories. But now all I see are nails sticking out of white walls, empty and holding nothing. Then I notice the bumpy, wood-colored boxes, green words on the sides, clinging onto the material as if they were scared to let go. But I shake my head and ignore these things, happy to be with Ronia. * * * When the sun reaches its home below the horizon, we watch the streaks of light glint on the dark choppy water. We take the subway home, the vision of the boxes bumping with the train. I hold the balloon to my chest, making the ends of my hair static. I frown; my tights itch, and so do my questions. My voice comes out, light as silver, but heavy with the questions. “Why were there boxes?” I ask, looking up at my parents. They share a look. “Azalea. We have some bad news to tell you,” they say, “But we can’t tell you right now.” So I wait until we get off the train and into the house before they talk again. “Ronia is moving to California.” They place their hands on my shoulders, but nothing can stop the flood of tears that stream down my cheeks, my blue eyes magnified with the salty water that floods my vision. The river reminds me of the time we spent frolicking in the springs upstate, allowing cool, clear water to surround our boots, laughing when it went above the rubber protection and tickled our feet. My eyes burn when I rub them, and salty water covers my face. My mind creates an image of the time when we galumphed through the snowy woods with little crackling walkie-talkies in our hands. The time we sat atop our fathers’ shoulders and held hands way up high, like our heads were not only in the clouds but they were the clouds. The time I ate her birthday cupcake when she was in the bathroom, and the time she ate mine the next year. The time we ate the apples from the ground while apple-picking. The time we put on a show for our families and sang and danced and played. I sleep with those memories floating through my head that night. * * * The next day, Ronia comes over with her family, and we all sit at the oak dining room table. I pout at everything, everyone. I woke up in the morning with a black cloud over my head, and my eyes raining spontaneously. Thunder booms when it wants, lightning strikes as it sees fit. They explain: California offers a job that New York does not. Where Craig (Ronia’s father) goes, so do they. I glower some more. Craig looks over and says, “Azalea…” I don’t let him finish. I
