“Neighbor Girl”

By: Hannah Stiff     Word Count: 999

It took three days before Nana got wise to Davey’s game. 

“What’s the matter with you chile?” she exclaimed in her bellow that led the charge in the Baptist choir. “Sick or somethin?”

“No ma’m” Davey mumbled behind his comic book, but Nana yanked it back and stared him down.

“You ain’t spendin’ your summer vacation growin’ pale and weak inside, no sir. Why you haven’t been out since you came?”

Davey squirmed. “I can’t go out there, there’s pollen.”

Nana’s eyes rolled like twin dice. “Mmmhmm, and I’m Aretha Franklin. Scoot.”

“Want me to do some dustin’ Nana?” Davey squeaked desperately. 

“Honey, your Nana can take care of this house jes’ fine, now git yo’ little self outside ‘fore I dust you!” 

Davey scooted to the front door and snuck a look through the keyhole. 

She was there.

She sat on her porch swing, scoping Nana’s house like it was a stake out, red hair framing her face like a mane. Her fingers gripped the edge of her seat as if preparing to launch.

Davey had heard her squeal when he drove up with his mama a few days before, “Ohh Daddy Daddy! A cute little boy Daddy! He looks like the littlest Jackson 5 boy Daddy, like Michael! I can’t wait to meet him!”

It had been all the warning he needed. Davey determined no girl was going to rope him into being her playmate for any length of school break. Especially one that called him cute. He had found out from Nana that the girl’s family had moved to the neighborhood just two months before, and the little pumpkin-headed menace was an only child.

Davy’s thoughts were flattened by the approaching footsteps of Nana checking on his progress to the front yard, and he scrambled out the front door and slammed it shut behind him.

“Oh, there you are!!” The girl shrieked from her perch, and with a jump that cleared her front verandah and made the porch swing wail, she was bounding across the street and over the lawn.

Davey flinched and stuffed his hands into his shorts, determined to make no physical contact. 

“Say, whatsa matter? You shy?” She was an inch from his face now, trying to catch his downturned eyes.

“Nope” came Davey’s gruff retort, and he swung down the steps and went slinking off to the back garden, the girl in hot pursuit.

“Well good, cause I’m all by myself and I just moved here and…”

“I know.” Davey interrupted with what he hoped was blistering finality. The girl seemed unaffected.

“Well then, guess I just need to introduce myself.” She stuck her hand out like a tollbooth arm. “My name’s Shirley Ann Preston, yours?”

Davey finally made eye contact. She beamed with this new development, and yanked his right hand out of its hiding place.

“You’re supposed to give your hand to a lady,” she rebuked matter of factly.

“What lady?” Davey quipped, and retrieved his hand.

Shirley Ann’s eyes widened, then crinkled at the edges. “You sound like my daddy. He told me I'm not a lady ‘till I drive. Now what’s your name, or do you have one?”

“It’s Davey” he replied, stung at the insulting suggestion.

“You must be the old lady’s grandson,” she observed.

“Nana ain’t old!” Davey roared. “Take it back!”

“Don’t flip your wig!” Shirley Ann protested. “She’s a nice old lady, so there!”

Davey realized he was continuing a conversation with a girl he had sworn to ignore, so with a growl, he turned away and continued his escape.

“I’m sorry Davey, I’ll take it back ok? She’s probably only 60.” Shirley Ann clung to his arm like a mosquito.

“Whatever,” Davey huffed and tried to shake her off.

“Good,” the girl tweeted happily. “So what do you want to play with me?”

 “Me want to play with you?” He yelled.

Shirley Ann grinned, exposing her missing bottom tooth. “I’ve got jump ropes and a wagon and if we’re careful, Mommy will let us bake cookies!”

“You crazy, girl,” Davey muttered, and yanked her hands off his arm. 

“Well pick one!” She prattled. “We have time to do ‘em all, you’re here all summer, right?”

 Davey decided to ditch any remaining courtesy and finish the girl off.

“Yes, I’m gonna be here for two months,” he declared, hooking thumbs into belt loops. “But ya know who Imma gonna play with? No one! So scram!” He ended with a curt nod and began to march to the front door.

All of a sudden his feet went backwards, and with a thud, he hit the grass. As he gasped for air, he heard Shirley Ann yelling over his body like a referee in a boxing fight. “That’s what you get for shouting at a lady, you stuck up boy!” With a sudden wail, she threw down the stick she had tripped him with and started running.

Davey staggered to his feet and took off after her. “Hey you, Sh-Shirley Ann, stop!”

The girl was sobbing too hard to hear, and it took him grabbing her by the shoulders to finally get her attention.

“Hey, I didn’t mean to make you cry, really!” Davey’s insides twisted just watching the tears roll down her face. 

 He yanked his handkerchief from his pants as Shirley Ann blubbered and dragged it across her face. “Say, quit bawling, will ya?” he pleaded roughly.

She hiccuped and looked at him solemnly. “I don’t suppose you really meant all that,” she murmured with a sniff.

“Nooo, I guess, I mean…” Davey’s heart sank as Shirley Ann’s smile returned like a speeding train.

“‘Course not, you were just foolin’ me!” She grabbed his hand and pulled him towards her house. “C’mon, let’s play jump rope!”

Davey complied. It wouldn’t do to start her crying again. Come tomorrow, he’d make sure to put her in her place, and that would be the end of that. No way Shirley Ann was gonna ruin his summer.

Broken Mercy

Springtime is the worst. The food stores have run out, our winter stock is no more than crumbs and empty barrels. The plants haven’t quite grown back, the fields have yet to be littered with seeds. The animals are only just waking up, and there isn’t enough meat on them to be worth the kill. Springtime is where we die. 

My alarm clock rings at exactly 6:15 am, like it does everyday. That is not by choice. Everyone must be up and working to support the Mother land. I sit up and rub my sunken eyes. Like every morning, I gaze upon our leader, Madame Willow. I mumble the required pledge of loyalty. You never know what is around you listening. One person got caught not reciting the pledge in the morning. They were never seen again. There is one place we know they aren’t listening, and that is where I am going today. 

A plot, long in the making, is going to launch today. We have planned and suffered. This regime has stripped us of our dignity, our souls even. It was difficult to gather a remnant to fight back. Most of us here have been beaten down so bad that all we know is what they tell us. Get up, work, provide for the Mother land. We are the greatest nation, our own race of superhumans. I didn’t know so many super humans could starve. 

Sliding out of bed, I wash up and dress in the drab brown and gray attire that they provide. There will be no breakfast today. There hasn't been in a few days since the last of our grain was used up. Instead, I will ignore the growling in my stomach. I gnaw on my nails to give myself the sensation of chewing something. 

“Elise!” The whisper of my father sounds from my door. “Are you coming to breakfast?” Code for “Are you coming to the meeting?” 

“Yes, Father, I will be there.” 

The one place they can’t hear us. My Father has been building it for years. A bunker under our cabin. He works with the construction teams. A wooden beam here, a tool there. Piece by piece, he built a place unknown to Madame Willow. It was harder to dig the pit without them noticing. We had a few close calls, but my Father never quit. There was nothing special about the bunker. Quite literally a cube of wood under our basement. The regime can’t bug the place if they don’t know it exists. 

I climb down the ladder into the makeshift bunker and am immediately greeted with grim faces. Our small rebellion. My father, myself, two of his coworkers and my cousin. That’s it. Everyone else ran away before my father could even get the words out. 

“Why the long faces?” I asked. “Weren’t you supposed to go and start the rally?” We had been planning our first public rally. Even if they killed us, the seed of rebellion would be planted. 

My father shushed me immediately. 

“What? They can’t hear us in-” he looks down. 

My father interrupts me, “I can’t go out there, there’s pollen.” 

Code for “they are listening.” 

How much have they heard already? Do they know about the rally? Do they know about all the horrible things we have said about Madame Willow? How we have a building without her mandatory photo? How we have tried to recruit as many people as we can to our cause? I can feel my palms start to clam up. My heart pounds in my chest. I look at my father and see it. The breaking. 

Everyone eventually gets that look in their eyes. The one that says, “I can’t do it anymore.” It’s the look that most people had when we began to speak of our cause. It’s the faded away, far off gaze someone has when they’ve succumbed to the regime. When all spark of personality has been squashed and they have been just another cog in the machine.

“Father?” I hear my voice, small it was when I was only a child. 

“Sometimes..” He begins, slow and soft, “Sometimes mercy is to let it all go.” 

What does he mean and why do I feel a panic rise in me? “We were going to fail anyway.” He whispers. 

“Father, what have you done?!” my voice cracks. 

“Mercy, Elise, is letting it all go.” 

I hear the door to the cabin slam down. Boots sound above us. Voices whisper to each other as they search the sparse space. 

“Father…” I hardly whisper. 

“I am sorry” 

The hatch opens and I am eye to eye with a soldier. 

Allergies. 

Every spring the dreaded sneezes come, making me a sniffeling invalid who can't even open a window. My eyes water, but I can't wipe the tears away or they will turn to itching 

"Achoo!"

Drugs don't work. Don't talk to me about whatever miracle pill works for you. I've tried them all. Believe me, if they did I wouldn't be inside right now.

I hide behind glass, wishing I could join the world in the sun. But dandelions invade the yard. 

It's a seige. 

I yell to the grocery delivery guy to leave the food on the porch.

He laughs at me. I can see it in the ring camera. They don't understand my pain.

My friends bring me medicine, my siblings bring me flowers. Flowers! My dog brings me his leash 

I pat him on the head,

"Sorry, Buddy." I say "I can’t go out there, there’s pollen."

A Tale of Frivolity

Sophia was like a broken doll: big eyes, curly yellow hair, and a tendency to jitter and spin about as if her gears didn’t quite catch. Just now she jerked back from the window as if it had stuck her with a pin, dropping the red paisley drapes. 

“I think I am not well enough to go outside,” she announced in a tremulous voice before striding to the other side of the room and carefully placing herself in the chair by the cold fireplace, where she sat and pinched the folds of her silk dress, made of a color strongly reminiscent to that of a dried up bog. 

Her sisters looked at her in shock. 

“Why, Sophia,” said Georgiana, who was just gathering her gloves from the box on the mantel piece, and already nursed her gray parasol on her arm like a bird. “I have been toiling unusually hard all morning to go on this walk that you have been nagging me about.”

“Yes, Sophia” added Maria Charlotte mildly, pulling a frog-colored thread from her needlework, “It’s rather unfair of you to make your sister do that, and then not go.”

“I apologize, but I really do feel a congestion coming on,” Sophia said, tapping the back of her hand against the bridge of her nose and blinking very fast.

“With your constitution? You have hardly had a congestion in your life!” Declared Georgiana.

“And of course you have been in my head the whole time!” Retorted Sophia.

“Now, now,” soothed Maria Charlotte. “I believe you, dear. But the best repair for a congestion is to indulge in the outdoors and fresh air. A walk will do you good.”

“I am certain that with this type of congestion it will not,” cried Sophia. “I will walk with you tomorrow, Georgiana, but for now let us remain here.”

“Certainly not! I have been of the mind that I would have to walk this afternoon, and now it will do terrible things to my cognition to not complete this task.” She grabbed her sister’s bonnet from a hook and dropped it into her lap. “Do come.”

“But I can’t go out there! There’s Pollen!” Sophia whispered the last words so low Georgiana leaned forward.

“What?” She asked.

“Don’t whisper, dear, it’s impolite,” Maria Charlotte reminded her gently.

“Mr. Pollen!” Sophia choked again. “There, it’s out!”

“Mr. Percival Pollen?” Georgiana ran to the window where she put her eye to a crack in the drapes. “But he must have come to call on you!” She cried, turning to her sister. “You must go out to meet him directly.”

“No, but you don’t understand! I cannot!” Sophia jumped to her feet in her excitement.

“‘Must not’ not ‘cannot’,” Maria Charlotte corrected her. “You are apparently able to, but not inclined to do so.”

“I cannot imagine what has gotten in to you!” Georgiana said. “Why, just the other day you were speaking of him.”

“But that was before- before-” In her anguish Sophia sank back into her chair as she held her face in her hands.

“Dear me, before what?” Georgiana swiftly came to her arm. Sophia mumbled something incoherent. “Do take you hands from your face, sister, I cannot hear you.”

“Before I misplaced his book.” She raised a tear streaked face to her sister.

Georgiana’s eyebrows touched the edge of her bonnet. “You mean you don’t know where it is?”

“That’s what ‘misplaced’ means, dear,” Maria Charlotte offered.

Suddenly, there was a tap at the door which caused Sophia to jump. “Oh, what shall we do? He is at the door!”

Regaining herself, Georgiana announced, “Well, the book can’t have gone far. I’ll help you find it immediately, and then we may invite him in.”

“I have scoured this room from top to bottom! The bedroom as well. I cannot imagine where it might have been placed!” Sophia moaned.

“Then you might as well go tell him so.” Georgiana said curtly.

Sophia moaned again, but rose and they commenced to turning the room inside out until they were both quite red in the face. 

“It is as I feared! It must have been stolen!” Sophia declared at last, dropping the last cushion to the floor. 

“Stolen? What was stolen, dear?” Maria Charlotte looked up from untangling a thread. “My goodness, what are you two doing?”

“Haven’t you been listening? The book from Mr. Pollen that he gave Sophia has been misplaced.”

Sophia peeped through the curtains again, then jumped back. “And he is still at the door!”

“What color was this book?”

“It had a red velvet cover.”

“And the size?”

“A small tome.”

“Oh, it was just what I needed.” Maria Charlotte lifted her work and produced the novel from beneath, holding it out to Sophia with a sigh of regret. “Thank Mr. Pollen for me, it was just what I needed to rest my hands upon. Now, Georgiana, dear, will you hand me that cushion to replace it?”

The Girl and the Bee

Bridget Bumblebee buried her head under the covers. She wasn’t like all the other bees in the hive. They all loved spring with its warm weather, longer days, and blooming plants—especially the blooming plants. Bridget, on the other hand, hated spring. It wasn’t that she had anything against the warm weather, longer days, or blooming plants. In fact, she loved all the bright, beautiful colors that spring brought to the world. No, what Bridget hated about spring was the pollen. It always made her eyes itch and water.

“Bridget, sweetheart, it’s time to get up.”

Ignoring her mother’s voice, Bridget snuggled even further beneath her blanket. She knew it was time to get up. Yet, she also knew that getting out of bed would mean leaving the hive. Leaving the hive meant going out into the springtime.

“Mom,” moaned Bridget sleepily, “do I have to go out today?”

“Sweetheart, that’s what we do as bees. We go out and gather nectar from the flowers. That’s what bees have done since the beginning of time.”

Bridget rolled over and sat up in her bed, staring at her mother. How many times had her mother told her that same thing? Year after year after year for as long as she could remember. But, this time was the final straw.

“But, Mom, I can’t do it. I can’t go out there, there’s pollen.”

Her response was met with a stern look from her mother. 

“Bridget, I don’t appreciate you using that tone with me. I expect to see you out of bed and ready to go in five minutes. As her mother left the room, Bridget groaned and got out of bed.  Arguing with her mother never got her anywhere. 

Hours later, Bridget flew along with the other bees as they moved from flower to flower. “ Was this really all there was to life?” she wondered. She rubbed miserably at her itchy, watery eyes. Suddenly, Bridget felt a sneeze coming on.

“A…A…ACHOO!”

The sneeze sent Bridget sailing backwards head over legs until she landed in the patch of flowers the swarm of bees had just left. Bridget shook her head in an attempt to compose herself. Wow! What a sneeze that was! Bridget looked around trying to get her bearings. However, before she could spot any of the other bees, the flower on which she had landed began to rise from the ground.

“What’s going on?” she wondered.

Suddenly, Bridget found herself face to face with a human girl. The human girl held a bouquet of flowers, including the one Bridget rested on, in her small hand. When she saw Bridget; however, she dropped the flowers and screamed.

“AHHHHHHH! BEEEEEEE!”

Bridget flew up to the girl’s face. Calmly, she said, “Don’t worry. It’s okay. I’m not going to hurt you.”

The little girl sniffed and wiped her damp eyes with the back of her hand.

“You’re…you’re not going to sting me?”

“Of course not,” answered Bridget, “I knew you weren’t trying to hurt me. That’s the only time bees string people—to protect ourselves from getting hurt.”

Then, a sudden thought occurred to Bridget. 

“You mean, you can understand me? I thought whenever humans were around bees, all they heard was buzzing.”

“I don’t know. I’ve never met a bee before.”

“Well, I’ve never met a human before either. What’s your name?”

Clara. What’s yours?”

“I’m Bridget.”

Just then, Clara’s eyes closed as she opened her mouth.

“A…A…ACHOO!”

Bridget was once again blown backward by a sneeze. Righting herself, she flew back to Clara, who stood rubbing her eyes.

“Sorry, Bridget. It’s just all this pollen. It messes with my allergies.”

Bridget grinned.

“Really? Mine too!”

“I didn’t know that kind of thing happened to bees.”

That made Bridget laugh.

“I think I might be the first bee ever to get allergies from pollen, but I’ve always had ‘em. Every spring.”

“Me too. I love all the pretty flowers in spring, but not the pollen.”

“Same here. I wish there was a way I could enjoy spring without having to deal with all this pollen.”

After thinking for a minute, Clara smiled.

“Why don’t you come live at my house? You could stay in my room and never have to go outside again. I always wanted a pet. Now, I can have a pet that I can really talk to. I’ll be great!”

Bridget thought about it.

“That sounds like fun, but what about my family. I’d miss them an awful lot.”

“They could come visit anytime. They could fly right up to the bedroom window to see you.”

So, that’s what they did.