Mollie + Chester

Chapter Ten

Chester paced up and down the windowsill, crouching down really low until his chin touched the ledge and pouncing at the red and orange and yellow confetti leaves that brushed up against the window. I watched from my bed, the covers pulled all the way up to my ears and my hair knotted so I looked like a monster.
Music flew into my room through the slightly open window all the way from the park where people had already started setting up their stalls with autumn themed games and food and face painting stations.
My clock on the table wedged between my bed and my oxygen machine beeped as the numbers switched over to 7:00 and Chester turned his attention from the floating fake leaves outside to the vibrating clock. He pounced on it, almost knocking everything off the table. I laughed and pressed the button to turn it off and the kitten jumped onto my bed nudging his way beneath the covers.
My bedroom door creaked open and Mum came in, brushing the tiny bits of hair from her face.
"Oh Mollie, you're awake," she said taking a seat on the edge of my bed.
I sat up. "The music woke me."
"Well, you'd better get up soon, Toby will be here in half an hour. Seth's leaving right now to help Mrs Ranchfield down to the park."
So, at seven-thirty, I was sitting on the front step, dressed in an orange puffy jacket that Mum picked out because apparently I had to look more 'autumn-y'.
The fake autumn leaves blew in the breeze and mixed with the real ones and one landed right on my head. Chester nudged me with his head and purred, when I scratched him behind the ear. Mum was on the front lawn, raking up all the real and fake leaves into a big pile, which Chester jumped right into as soon as she turned her back.
The leaves spun around in the wind once again and Toby's family's car pulled up into the driveway and his Dad honked the horn. I smiled and waved hugely, getting up and standing on my tippy toes as Toby ran up to me, an already written note in his book to show me.
Would you rather go to the moon or be able to see the future?
I circled the word moon and Toby agreed.
"Muuuum!" I whined grabbing my own notebook and pen off the step and letting Chester back inside the house. "All of the good stuff is going to be gone!"
"Oh alright then," Mum said straightening my jacket. "Let's go."~

We walked to the park since today was a special occasion and since I was feeling better than usual and very full of energy that morning. Toby and I scribbled horribly on our notebooks since we both failed at writing while walking and we couldn't even decipher what we were trying to say to each other.~
The~Bently triplets ran past us, zooming about with their arms out like wings, dressed in strange autumn coloured super-hero costumes. Their parents ran after them yelling out their three names. Pepper Jackson strutted by in her ugly orange poofy dress that would probably ensure her a win in the Miss Apple-Bee contest. Toby looked at me and we both burst out laughing, watching Pepper's hair wobble from side to side as she walked.
The entrance to the park was usually this big green arch with flowers that grew up its sides, but those fake paper leaves had been woven in today to get everyone into the spirt.
"Now, where would Seth be?" Mum asked craning her neck to look past all the big hair and horrid costumes. "I need to go and check on my autumn cake entry."
"Mum, we are both ten. We can go by ourselves."
"But what if..."
"We are at a Tamwood autumn festival. I know the names of every single person here and also their kids' names and pets' names and even their cars' names! We will be fine." I crossed my arms over my chest and Mum sighed.
"Oh, okay." She handed me a bunch of loose change from her pocket and Toby and I shared it between ourselves, taking into account the change given to him by his parents.
"Meet me at the grand centre stage at one," Mum said.
I rolled my eyes. That was when my age group was competing for the Miss Apple Bee title. "Mum, I am not doing Miss Apple Bee. No way."
"But I have the dress..."
"No!"
"Fine, but still, meet me at one."
"Okay."

We weaved our way in and out of the big colourful tents set up with giant cardboard signs and words inspired by autumn like; Jenny's Leafy Pizza, or Stewart's Fall Shop. Every third or fourth tent even had a carnival game where kids paid a dollar to throw a ball at a cardboard tree and knock the leaves off.
Right in the centre, the pavilion had been converted into a stage where girls pranced around in orange and brown dress, trying to win the title that would make them happier than a lifetime supply of chocolate.
They really needed to get their priorities straight.
We were nudging each other and laughing when we saw something particularly stupid like a baby dress in the shape of an autumn leaf, or a Miss Apple-Bee entrant with hair that hit the top of the tents every time she walked into one.
Face painting! Toby wrote in his notebook and I shook my head, afraid he would drag me there anyway. People in this town looked at me already, I didn't want to stand out even more with a painted face. I was not a perfect little daughter of Tamwood and was not even going to pretend I was.
No face painting. I wrote, but Toby grabbed my arm and pulled me inside the tent anyway. There was one girl in front of us and her little brother sitting on the chair. Miss Denver, the day-care lady who had two kids (Colin and Miranda who were not like normal Tamwood teenagers), painted a Spider-Man mask onto his face, slipping in a tiny orange autumn leaf on the bottom of his cheek so he would fit in at the festival.
The girl took his place on the chair.
Why do we even need to paint our faces? I wrote, still trying to get out of it. I got enough pity stares as it was.
Toby smirked. Are you scared?
"No!" I said, following with another shake of my head.
Then what? I asked.
I blushed and reluctantly wrote, People will stare even more.
Stare back.
I smiled and Miss Denver called me to sit in the seat.
"What do you want today, Mollie?" Everyone knew my name since I was the imperfection in the town, completely different from everyone else. I turned to Toby.
Which one?
I pointed to the face with the tiny leaf. Toby rolled his eyes and pointed to the spider-man mask.
But that will make them stare even more!~
Exactly.
"Fine. We are both having this one," I said and Miss Denver dipped the sponge in the red paint and spread it over my face. That's what I liked about Miss Denver, she didn't care if I was different. She didn't care that I wanted a Spider-man mask, not a princess crown or a cat nose or a butterfly. When both Toby and I no longer looked like ourselves, we emerged from the tent.
People started staring immediately.
I told you they'd stare! I wrote but Toby just smiled and stared back at the Big Nose Society Lady who stared at us. She quickly looked away, embarrassed.
We weaved our way around the tents again, looking the starers in the eyes and making them blush, stopping at every game tent that didn't have a long line.
Mr Gregor, the owner of the town laundromat/pet shelter, stood behind an old table with a hand drawn sign that said: hit the leaves. Buckets sat on the table with orange painted plastic balls and towards the back of the tent was a wooden tree with leaves hooked on.
"Hello Spider-Mans," a little voice said and a tiny head poked up from behind the table.
"This is my grandson, Charlie," Mr Gregor said lifting the little boy up so he could see over the table. "He likes Spider-man a lot."
"Play our game!" Charlie said waving his little hands at the orange balls in the buckets. Toby and I handed over a dollar each and Mr Gregor stepped aside with the little boy. Toby threw the first ball, almost hitting the pair on the head and I laughed.
"Maybe we will move over here," Mr Gregor said, putting Charlie down and disappearing behind the tent.
I threw one of my balls which also missed and hit the back of the tent.
We are terrible at this! I wrote while Toby tossed his next ball. This one hit the bottom of the wooden tree and made it wobble.
I was about to throw my next ball when I heard someone sneer behind us.
"Looks like she found herself a stupid friend," they said. I couldn't quite place the voice every though I knew every person in this town. I threw the ball and it completely missed the tree again. I bent over the table, concentrating very hard on writing a note to Toby with slow and careful handwriting so I wouldn't have to look at him. He was lucky he couldn't hear them.
"They don't even talk to each other! They probably paid the poor guy to hang around with her," sneered another girl. My ears were burning as I listened.
"But he's weird too, look at that thing on his head," the first one whispered.
The two girls laughed loudly. I picked up the next ball to throw and the laughs were abruptly cut short as the girls screamed, very high pitched and girlish.
I whipped around, the orange ball in my hand and saw Janice and Kia from my old school standing in big orange poofy dresses, another girl behind them dressed the same with her back to me. Kia was basically a mini version of Mrs Scowd and coincidently; was her niece. She used to strut around the primary school, when I actually went to school, acting as if she were in charge of everybody because she wore the perfect clothes and had the best hair. She was known by all the kids to pick on anyone not from Tamwood and was followed around all the time by her shadow; Janice.
Kia held her nose, examining her dress for any blood they may have stained it, though I could see she wasn't even bleeding. Janice was screaming to the rest of Tamwood who circled around us to see what was happening.
"That stupid kid threw a ball at her!" Janice yelled pointing to Toby who stood with one of the balls in his hand, he wore a smirk that I could see he tried to hide.
Mr Bently, the one with the triplets, looked from Toby back to the girls trying to work out what happened when a tiny voice piped from behind Mr Gregor's table.
"They are meanies!" Little Charlie crawled under the table and popped up like a rabbit. "Them girls beed mean to spider mans."
Kia rolled her eyes and crossed her arms. "He's two, he doesn't know what he's talking about."
Charlie held up Mr Gregor's video camera.
"I made a movie!" He said and Mr Bently took it off him and pressed play on the last recording. The camera was being waved around but the voices in the background we as clear as day.
Both Kia and Janice's voices came through the tiny camera speakers and their faces reddened and everyone shifted their eyes from me and Toby to them.
As the two girls backed back through the speechless crowd, I saw the third girl in the orange dress. More specifically, I saw her neck and her birthmark in the shape of an upside down tree.
"Alyssa?" I said. The rest of the crowd disappeared and I could only see her and me. She held my gaze for a few seconds that seemed to last forever, her dark brown eyes huge and guilty. She finally looked down and backed the same was Janice and Kia went, leaving me standing frozen, unknowing what to do next.
I remember on the first day of school when Bryce Cole said I looked funny because I had no hair. Alyssa said: "you look funny because you have a purple nose!"
"What purple nose?" Bryce asked crossing his arms.
Alyssa punched him right in the face. "That purple nose." She then flicked her pigtails in his face and took my arm, leading me to the arts and craft.
"Let's make bracelets," she said not letting me go until we were sitting on bean bags amongst the rolls of cotton and buckets of glitter.
"Why do we make bracelets?" I asked her. She adjusted the moss green beanie on her head and grinned.
"Because we are now best friends forever."
Toby put his hand on my arm as I stared at the handmade cotton bracelet around my wrist. My eyes had filled with tears and everyone had started closing in on me to see if I was okay. Toby pulled my beanie down over my forehead and led me out of the crowd, ducking under arms and between autumn decorated prams. I had no idea where I was going, but Toby did and he dragged me into an orange tent decorated with leaves (of course) and made me sit on a plastic folding chair.
"Hey, what happened?" Seth knelt on the ground next to me and pulled my beanie off my head. Toby held up a page in his notebook and Seth's eyes flittered over it.
"Three girls were talking about you and Toby threw a ball at them," Seth read. "So what's the problem, you don't care about what people think."
"Alyssa," I said, my voice shaking. "She was one of the three girls."
"Mol," he hugged me and I started crying again.
I could deal with people and their reactions to me being sick. I could deal with the sympathy with secret gladness that it wasn't their kids who were sick. I could deal with the ones who ignored my sickness and who tiptoed around me, staying away from words like 'death'. And I could deal with the making fun because honestly, the human race didn't have much capacity to empathise in situations they had no experience in. But Alyssa was different. We knew everything about each other, we had been mistaken for sisters many times.
"Have a cupcake," Seth said holding out two with an especially large pile of icing on them.
"But Mum..."
Seth feigned a shocked look. "When do you ever turn down sugar?!"~
I giggled and sniffed, taking the cupcake. Toby took the other and within five minutes, our spider man faces were also covered in chocolate frosting.~As I folded the orange cupcake wrapper into a tiny fan shape, a thought occurred to me.~
How did you hear what the girls were saying?~
Toby smiled when I showed him. I can lip read.~
Then why do we write notes?!~
Because it's what we do.~