Matilda Matlock

The Letter

Upon a quiet park bench with one hand gripping a rather crumbly granola bar and the other holding the end of a skateboard sat Matilda Matlock, a dazed girl of fourteen with her eyes particularly focused on two squirrels ferociously battling over one acorn.

She lifted the bar to her lips once more and took a bite, feeling a few specks of granola fall into her lap and prompting the girl to shift her hand from gripping her skateboard to brushing the crumbs off to the ground below her feet.

The distant sound of laughter and chatter filled her ears as Matilda sat alone, observing the squirrel fight occurring just above her in a tree branch. She watched with a small smile as one of the squirrels seized the acorn successfully and proceeded to scamper away, the tiny, scratching clicks of its nails pitter-pattering along the bark.

"Hey! Hey you, you looney!"

Matilda lowered her gaze to see two girls approaching her left, one blonde and one brunette, giggling maniacally with one another as they eyed the girl sitting upon the bench alone. 

"All alone again, are you?" the blonde girl taunted. "Why am I not surprised?"

"Look on the bright side... perhaps you'll finally make a few friends in secondary school this term!" the brunette mocked.

"Oh, but Carla, don't you see?" the blonde said, turning to her friend with a mean smirk. "Matlock here seems like she hasn't even made any mates over the summer, unless you count that snack bar!"

The girls cackled as if they've said the funniest thing in the world while Matilda felt her jaw clench uncontrollably. Her gradually fuming expression seems to be clear to the girls, who had flicked their eyes back to Matilda and smirked menacingly yet again.

"Oh, aw, did we hit a nerve?" Carla, the brunette, teased. "Are you going to go home to cry to mummy?"

"Oh, that's right..." the blonde sighed, "...there is no Mummy Matlock, is there?"

Matilda abruptly stood from her seat, burning her eyes into the girls as they grinned with mocking gazes. She felt her fists clench at her sides, the words Mummy Matlock echoing in her mind, as she began to dig her nails into her palms so hard that there were surely marks forming.

Suddenly, the tree branch draping directly over the two taunting girls shook violently as if on command, pouring a mess of pine needles onto the pair's heads.

Both of them shrieked, startled, their hands flying up to their heads and covering their precious hair.

But the branch continued to tremble a moment longer, Matilda watching it in awe, before it finally finished off with dropping the two squirrels from before right smack on the girls' heads.

Another cry escaped both friends' lips as they began to violently claw at their hair, Matilda beginning to laugh as she watched the squirrels clamber atop the girls' heads for dear life. At last, they leapt off of their scalps and scurried away, frightened, but not nearly as shaken up as the duo who had only just been mocking Matilda.

They looked at each other, then at Matilda, and didn't say a word, deciding instead to huff and turn on their heels, attempting to fix their matted hair on the way.

Matilda grinned for a moment longer before glancing up to the tree again, a bit mesmerized. It now sat perfectly still, appearing completely unbothered, making Matilda's brows knit together before she let it be and returns to her park bench, quite satisfied.

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Matilda hummed to herself as she brushed her hair in the mirror, her bedroom painted with a warm glow of sunlight as the evening settled into her neighborhood.