The Moon Is Beautiful

Chapter 30

I smile.

A hairbrush smooths through my hair, fighting the knots that have formed. My dad doesn't visibly show it, but I can see how much he is struggling. This isn't something a father is used to doing. But mine has had to do this my entire life, and even though I've lived for merely ten years now, it's probably still longer for him that for any other father.

The brush gets stuck in between a knot, and I wince. I've always had hair prone to knots, yet I still refuse to brush it at times, and weak to my pouty lips and puppy eyes, my dad always gives in and lets me go to sleep like that.

And this is my punishment, because everytime I skip on brushing my hair, I end up in pain as my dad tries to brush through the knots.

"I'm sorry, my little rose." my dad apologizes when I wince again. I feel apologetic to him, as even though I'm the one in pain, he's the one with a grimace on his face, as though he's our roles have been switched.

My little rose. It's his nickname for me, and it's also my favourite, well, other than my beautiful rose which is Ms. Anderson's nickname for me. Growing up with an absent mom has not been the best for me, but luckily, I have a great dad and Ms. Anderson fills in for my mother so that my dad doesn't have to.

"Are you ready to go out?" my dad asks, pulling me out of my thoughts. My dad and I are in the city, it being the first time I've come here. For my tenth birthday, I said that I want to come to the city to celebrate it, and luckily for me, since I'm convinced my mother doesn't care about me, she merely gave my dad her credit card and sent us off.

And now we are here. But, at least there is one perk to having a rich mother. We don't have to worry about a thing, as the limit on her credit card is nonexistent and so we can splurge as much as we want to.

I can't wait to go shopping and buy all mu favourite toys. I see myself spending all my mother's money as revenge for her not being there for me, although, I doubt it'll even make a dent in her bank balance, which really makes my revenge meaningless.

But I'm smart, and so I'll think of another way to get back at her. I'm not like the average ten year old. If someone were to look into my mind, they would be shocked by what they see and hear. I think like an eighteen year old teenager, my vocabulary being extremely broad and definitely not matching that of a ten year old's.

"I'm ready." I say, my toothy smile making its appearance. My dad grabs my hand and leads me out of our hotel room. I can't help but stare at our surroundings with fascination, having never seen something so grand as this in my life.

The first place we head to is the park, which may sound strange to others considering the fact that we have parks in my hometown, however, when my dad asked me what I wanted to do, the first thing that came to mind was playing, at a park specifically.

I guess that even though I'm quite mature for my age, I still desire to do the things a ten year old should.

"Wait here. Daddy will just go buy some ice cream, okay?" my dad says, ruffling my hair and I nod with a smile, loving the affection he gives me. He walks to the nearby ice cream truck, and like a good girl, I stay rooted in my spot, not moving because my dad told me not to.

And then I hear a cry. Turning my head, I spot four boys, three hovering over the other one who sits on the ground, tears streaming down his face.

The three boys laugh, pointing their fingers at him as snot runs from his nose. That's not nice. Unable to stop myself, I head over to them, my hands on my hips.

"Stop bullying him." my ten year old voice pipes out, grabbing the boys' attention.

"And who are you to meddle in our business?" one of them asks, staring at me with annoyed eyes.

Who am I? That's a good question. I'm definitely no one to any of them, but I can't just leave this poor boy to get bullied. That's not right.

"Oh me? I'm his girlfriend." I confidently lie, huffing through my nose, as if to exert my power.

"Girlfriend?" one laughs, kicking the boy. "Oh, so you're not even man enough to defend yourself in front of your girlfriend, aren't you?"

"Stop that." I say with stern eyes.

"And what are you going to do about it?" he challenges, taking a step closer to me. Without thinking, I perform the one offensive move my dad taught me, and within a blink of an eye, the boy was lying flat on the ground, my foot pressed onto his chest to keep him down.

The others two boys' eyes widen and without sparing a glance to their friend, they run away in fear that I may do this to them.

"Let go of me." the bully protests from underneath me, but I just put more pressure on my foot.

"And why should I? So that you can go bully other kids too?" I question, folding my arms across my chest.

He doesn't answer and so I increase the pressure of my foot until it has him screaming out and begging for me to let go of him, promising like a weak child that he won't bully anyone else again.

I don't have anything but his words to believe in, but I let him go anyway, deciding that he is not worth getting into a fight with and ruining my birthday for.

When I turn to the boy who I just saved from being bullied, he is already staring at me, his doe blue eyes wide with awe. I bend down in front of him.

"Are you okay?" I ask and he nods, his eyes so pure as they stare at me. "You shouldn't let boys like him bully you."

He looks down, his expression becoming grim. "It's not that easy when he's so much stronger than me."

"Then if you can't be stronger than him, be smarter than him," I say, and this grabs his attention. "Instead of just allowing him to bully you, run or scream out for help or something. Don't just stand there and let him take advantage of you."

I know that at this point, I'm basically scolding him, but if I don't do this, he will fall victim to bullying for many years to come.

"Do you understand?" I ask, and he nods, wiping the snot from his face with his sweater paw. I give him my hand and help him up, dusting the sand off of his clothes.

I probably should get going now, or dad will get worried. But just as I turn around, I hear the boy speak again.

"What's your name?" he asks, his eyes big as they stare at me.

"Rose." I say instead of saying my full name as my full name can be a mouthful for a boy so young like him. I can easily see that he's at least a few years younger than me. Even children my age struggle to remember my name, and so most of the time, I just go by Rose.

"Nice to meet you Rose," he burps, a blush appearing on his cheeks almost immediately afterwards. It's cute. "I'm Kaden."

He gives me a toothy grin, dimples appearing in his cheeks.

"I'll see you later." he says and even though I'm not sure what he means by that, I nod and make my way back to the spot that my dad left me, and luckily, he's not there yet when I get there.

I wouldn't want to worry him.

My dad arrives shortly, and hands me my ice cream, but not before asking if I'm okay. After eating our ice cream, we play a little together, my dad pushing my swing and catching me at the bottom of the slide, but I quickly get bored and decide that I want to go shopping for my birthday present now.

We then head to the biggest shopping mall I've ever seen in my entire life and the first store that catches my attention is a toy store, filled with more toys that I could have ever imagined.

I get quite a few dolls, including a baby doll, a barbie doll and a Bratz doll. It felt so nice to just pick what I want and not have to worry about the price. This is the life of a ten year old.

By the time I've had enough of shopping, I'm both exhausted and hungry, and so we head back to our hotel and order some room service. They have such a wide variety of foods to choose from that I almost didn't know what to pick, but in the end, I choose my favourite, cheese pizza, a pizza that has nothing but sauce and cheese on it.

We eat whilst having some father-daughter bonding time and then we go to bed early since tomorrow is going to be another eventful and busy day.