Olivia sat hard on the box spring, the checkered comforter barely cushioned her landing as a pain shot up her spin through a loud creaking beneath her sore bum.
“Ouch!” She frowned and rolled to the side leaving room to rub the sore spots.
It was official, she was going to hate this place as much as it hated her…
.
A tear glistened from her eye as she thought of all the friends she had left behind her. Most of all her pony, Rogers, who she would never see again.
Olivia rubbed her backside for a few moments more, until they’d finished throbbing their annoyance at her lack of ease with their feelings.
No one seems to care about my feeling on anything. She sympathized with the tender meat.
I didn’t want to come here, to this place… It was awful here and no one could tell her any differently. There were no kids that she’d seen and she had been watching. There was a mean old lady that peaked through her awful pink curtains. They had so many sun spots, it looked like a giant baby had spit up all over it. Aspen wrinkled her nose in disgust at the picture forming over the ceiling above her.
No one had come to welcome them. In fact, Olivia wasn’t sure anyone had notice there was a new family to be greeted at all. The block had remained relatively empty, a few cars came and went. But she was beginning to think they drove themselves, it was always to dark to see the driver by the time they came back in the cold dark of early spring afternoons. Sometimes it felt like they’d just run from paradise and leaped into a bubble of nothingness.
No friends…
No real neighbors…
No Rogers…
Liv rolled over in her bed, it would be one thing if there was a place for her horse, the back lot behind their house was beautiful, the trees at the properties edges would have convinced any ordinary child that there was nothing beyond them, that the trees extended forever into an ocean of green, nothingness.
The small girl pushed herself from the hard box spring surface and walked to the window.
She knew better, this was no ordinary girl after all.
She was a lost girl, ripped from the illusion that things are what they appear to be. That bubble had burst at the idea that her mother and father didn’t know everything as she had once imagined.
In fact they knew less about more than things she did. Olivia had been thinking a lot about these things. She glared over the treeline at the tall buildings
From her bedroom window, she could see much better than the ground floor view most children fall for first. Things aren’t as big and scary as they seem.
I bet from the top of the tallest of those towers my house probably looks like nothing.
“Liv, Sweetie! Lunch time honey! I made your favorite, potato soup.” Aspen looked down at her hands, thinking of her new Gerbil, Loser. He’d been a gift, a ‘to help you get over your horse that we sold away without letting you say goodbye..
She lured him out of his green igloo with the same sing-song voice and expensive cheese.
I wish I could disappear into nothing too. I wish I could be invisible so I could go where I wanted to go, and be who I wanted to be.
I wish that forest did go on forever, I would run into it and never see this place again.
Liv’s thoughts echoed wistfully through her mind as she wiped at her tears and retreated from the window to make her way down stairs.
A child’s wish is a powerful thing. She is lucky I was the one to answer her plea, there are a few much less friendly than me who would have loved to step over the innocent welcome mat and fill that void with their darker presents.
I am just here for a little fun…
Your Ever Friendly Neighborhood Knave,
Robin Goodfellow
The Inkling 