October’s Flight

Cammie pushed aside her sunshine-yellow curtains to stare out the window. Ghosts, princesses, and superheroes were just starting to file onto Lemon Lane. She turned from the window to look at her reflection in the full-length mirror. Cammie’s curls bounced up and down gleefully in rhythm with her sparkling plastic antennae. A frilly ballerina leotard overlapped lavender tights. Matching wings glittered under the incandescent light bulb hanging from the ceiling. Perfect, she thought. Glancing out the window again, Cammie felt lighthearted. It seemed almost as if she could fly. In fact, now she was flying. She was flying through her window, out of the neighborhood, and into the limitless sky. The moon smiled down on her. Cammie looked down, only to find the most beautiful flowers below her. They came in every color of the rainbow and were speckled with tiny intricate drops of dew. Cammie longed to go down to the flowers and so her wings obeyed and she drifted downward. Landing on a petal, she thought, How odd. These petals feel like bedsheets. Cammie, suddenly feeling indifferent to the petals, decided to taste some of that juicy nectar that allured her. As she bent down to sip, the nectar seemed to leap out of the flower and it splashed Cammie’s face. The moon abruptly became a light bulb. “Wake up, sleepyhead,” said her obnoxious sister, who had evidently poured water on Cammie to rouse her. “You don’t want to miss Halloween, now, do you?” Cammie rolled over in bed and put on her costume. She was a shimmering butterfly. Cammie looked in the mirror and thought, I could almost fly…