Standing Out

After the unfairly overpriced medical bill, I was stunned that my family announced that we would be going to the beach in July. They told me that it was to celebrate my health with my favorite place in the world.

In order to be able to fully relax, however, I vowed to solve my various social problems beforehand.

I decided to start with Cindy.

While my parents were at work, I went to her house.

As I stepped outside, the warm air, thick with humidity, wrapped around me like an oversized blanket, suffocating me. I wiped my forehead in the sweltering heat. Hopping on my bike, I pedaled hard, hoping to get to my destination as quickly as possible.

Soon, I encountered the sign that indicated I was leaving Hibiscus Avenue and turning left on to Front Street.

Leaning forward on my bike, I felt a cool breeze whisk past my face. I welcomed it for as long as it lasted.

The neighborhoods rushed by, one after another, until I saw the sign pointing enticingly to Sycamore Drive. I halted abruptly and nearly smashed into a preceding mahogany mailbox. Should I talk to Sara? What even is there to say? I swallowed.

Shifting my bike back into gear, I tepidly inched into Sara’s neighborhood rather than Cindy’s. I just about choked when I saw her smoky gray house. I can’t believe I’m doing this. What even am I doing?

I skidded to a halt and put the kickstand down, trudging up to the doorbell. I rang it, flinching at its horrific sound. As I waited, I fidgeted with my hands a bit and would have pulled out some hair if the door hadn’t opened so suddenly.

To my paralytic shock and somewhat relief, it was not Sara’s mother that answered the door, but some elderly curmudgeon.

I don’t think that this man could see very well because he cursed me for trying to sell him the latest man diapers.

“What do you want, Mr. Bruen? I thought I told you that I’m not interested in your man compartments!”

I looked at him in confusion. “I don’t know any Mr. Bruen. I’m just a fourth-grader looking for Sara Whittaker. Besides, what even is a man compartment?”

“Don’t try to give me a load of baloney, Mr. Bruen! I’m not falling for your salesman tricks! Last time you fooled me into buying a used tractor for double the net value!”

“All I’m asking is if you know a Sara Whittaker. I’m not trying to sell you anything.” I was growing weary of this conversation. This is what I get for trying to amend problems long after they have occurred.

“I might tell you if you reimburse me, you cheapskate!”

I decided to play along. “I’ll reimburse you if you tell me whether you know her or not.” This had the old man thinking.

“Very well,”

I looked at him with urgency.

“Her family moved out of here a month ago to Auburn, Kansas.” He paused expectantly, as though I was supposed to say something. “Well, where’s my money?”

Oh, right.

I made up something about having to talk to my agent first and then made a beeline for my bike. The elderly man threw a boot at me, but luckily he missed. Even after I had made it out of the neighborhood alive, I could still hear the resounding boom of his malicious cursing.

I pedaled much faster than I had upon entering, apprehensive that the elderly man would catch up to me with his used tractor. I kept looking over my shoulder to make sure that there were no more flying shoes, or worse, Mr. Bruen himself.

I breathed a sigh of relief when I reached Cindy’s neighborhood, but was also mildly concerned. Did she move too?

I felt rather uneasy as I edged my way to her sandy-colored abode. Would I be greeted by another man and his diaper rash?

I didn’t want to hear the haunting tintinnabulation of the doorbell, so I just knocked instead. As the creaky door slowly opened, I just about melted due to my trepidation and, of course, the heat.

Fortunately, the face belonged to Cindy’s mother and not Sara’s crotchety replacement.

“Hi, Mya,” she smiled sweetly. “It’s nice to see you in good health. Cindy is upstairs if you would like to see her.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Meldrum.” I headed up to Cindy’s room. As I shuffled up the stairs, it felt like my feet were covered in adhesive glue. I wasn’t quite ready to talk to her.

I put my hand to her midnight blue door and shivered as coldness swept through me. Hesitantly, I knocked, startled as the doorknob turned. Cindy stood facing me, in pensive silence.

I gazed back at her, a bit frightened at how deeply her icy stare bore into my earnest, apologetic one. It was as though she was pinning me underwater in the Arctic Ocean and her words, the dagger-like icebergs, cut me as they moved past.

I shifted uncomfortably. I wanted to sit down somewhere, but Cindy was blocking the doorway to her room.

I was grateful when Cindy broke the silence because I didn’t want to look too desperate. “You are the reason that Sara, my best friend, has moved away.”

I didn’t know what to say and I must have looked pathetic when I mumbled something that vaguely sounded like, “sorry.”

“You have gone too far, Mya. Now who am I going to hang out with?”

I got it together. “Look, I’m really sorry, Cindy. But you still have me.”

Cindy frowned. That wasn’t cutting it.

I sighed. “Jessabelle brought Sara to my bedside at the hospital in an attempt to gain my forgiveness for bullying me this year.” I paused, looking her square in the eye. “I was sick of fake apologies and false pretenses. I had to turn them away.”

Cindy narrowed her eyes. “You’re obviously lying. Sara had a completely different story.”

This had done it. I lost it. “I can’t believe that you even listen to her! Ever since we became friends, she has tried to split us up, to make us turn against each other. Why? Well, it’s because she wants you all to herself. Since she couldn’t have it her way, she moved to Kansas and I guess made up her own little pity story.”

Cindy gaped at me in shock, which quickly turned to anger. “How can you say such a terrible thing? She left because you hurt her so much. How dare you show up to her house and insult her!”

“Cindy, what are you talking about?”

“Like you don’t know,” she rolled her eyes. This was a side of her that I had never seen before. “Your mom took you to Sara’s house in late May because you told her that you needed to talk to your friend. Then you found it appropriate to insult her and her parents. She was so upset that she asked her parents to move and they agreed. A month later they sold the house to a respectable old man.”

This was my turn to gape at her in shock. “Your story couldn’t be further from the truth!”

She crossed her arms. “Oh, well, correct me then.”

“Well, first off, the man that bought the house is a complete jerk. He threw a shoe at me!”

She narrowed her eyes.

“Second of all, I was too ill in May to go anywhere.”

She still didn’t believe me, which irritated me substantially. I shook my head sadly.

“Mya, you really hurt my best friend. Now that she’s gone, I have no one to hang out with.”

“What do you not understand? Like I said, you have me!” Then it hit me. I remembered the day in late February when Cindy was silent after Jessabelle told me that I don’t belong. She still thinks that I’m a creep.

She didn’t need to respond, but it hurt a lot when she did. “Mya, what do you not understand? Sara was everything to me, you are nothing to me! I just felt sorry for you. Your weird arm gestures and bald spots were really ruining my reputation, you know?”

Tears welled in my eyes and I had tried to brush them away, hold them inside, anything, but they came out, gushing like a spring. I wanted to yell at her, scream, bawl like a baby, but I couldn’t. No words would come out.

She didn’t say anything after that, so I just turned around and floated down the stairs as though I had become a shell of a human; existent, but without a heart or a soul. Cindy ripped my spirit out that day.

I think her mother heard everything because she looked at me with a peculiar, ghastly look on her face. I couldn’t tell if she was angry at me for upsetting her daughter, upset with Cindy for throwing away a “friend,” or both.

As I pedaled home and the sun began to retreat to the horizon, I thought about the whole situation. Today I had really made waves in my social life. They crashed upon the eroding shore of my friendship and tore everything away. I knew that I would not be able to relax at the beach. I also knew that I wasn’t going to visit Jessabelle.