Of Smoke and Dust 🖋

Chapter Four: a new school, a friend rejected, and a lunch table only for two

CHAPTER FOUR

Past

August 32 2016

7:55 AM

Maia wasn't terrified.

She was nervous, yes, but the all-encompassing fear she'd expected wasn't surfacing. Her breaths weren't short and shallow. Her knees didn't shake. She wasn't pestering her mother with excuses of how, maybe, she could hold off going to school one more day.

Mostly because it wasn't her mother driving her.

"Are you girls excited?" Mrs. Quinn asked, leaning around her seat to face the two eight-year-olds sitting in the back of her car. Her grin was cheerful and far happier looking than any of the children she was driving to school. "Your first day of third grade! You'll have so much fun!"

Maia gave her a shy smile in return. "Yes, Mrs. Quinn."

"Ah, dear. I told you to call me Helen." Mrs.Quinn-call-me-Helen reminded her with another warm uptilt of her lips.

Maia blushed, a light pink dusting her cheeks. "Sorry, Mrs - Helen. Thank you for driving me in."

Helen beamed. "Such a sweet girl, I don't mind driving you at all. Leonie loves the company, don't you, sweetie?"

"Yes!" Leonie (for that, Maia had realized, was Kitty's real name) exclaimed. "Now I have a new best friend!"

Over the course of the past few days, Leonie had quickly upgraded Maia's status from "friend" to "best friend". Leonie, Maia concluded, didn't seem to have many friends either - so despite their differences, she and Maia had stuck together like glue the minute they stopped giggling long enough to introduce themselves.

"Exactly." Mrs. Quinn smiled indulgently at her daughter.

Leonie's brother, sitting in the front passenger seat, snorted loudly.

Evan Quinn was indeed ten years old, and liked to think himself above his seven year old sister and her "little friends". However, Leonie was just two years his younger, and as such, she took it upon herself to beat the notion from him in any way she could.

Case in point: Leonie coughing discreetly in his direction, a sly look on her face. "Hey, Evvie-poo." She whispered. "There's a spider by your chin."

Evan's head jerked up immediately, and he was already searching around semi-frantically by the time he noticed Leonie's not-so-stifled laughter and Maia's softer, more tentative giggles.

"Evan! Leonie! We have a guest with us today." Helen implored. "Behave."

Leonie rolled her eyes, leaning over to cup her hands around Maia's ear as if to tell a secret. "You don't mind, do you?" She asked in a hushed whisper, her breath warming the side of Maia's face.

"No." Maia told her. "It's funny."

In the front, Evan was listening in with a sour look on his face.

"Mom, Lee and her friend are making fun of me." Evan complained.

"Evan." Helen sighed. "You're the eldest - you're supposed to be the example."

"And he's just jealous that I found a friend and he didn't!" Leonie piped up.

"LEONIE!"

"Sorry, Mommy."

Helen turned to the back, an exasperated look in her eyes. "Maya, was it? I promise this isn't how they usually act."

"Liar." Evan muttered. "Leonie's always like this."