vagabond

fourth of july

The blazing sun despised me. Its fiery arms desired to burn me to a crisp in order to rid the earth of me. Alas, its mediocre attempts were distinguished in the murky lakes of my small town. Where red, frolicking children skidded the outskirts of the bug infested mud and put the adults to shame. Why I always brought my best bathing suit, I don't know, but I did it anyways.

So currently, I was tanning with SPF 50, enough to keep two pale toddlers safe of decaying skin due to the ball of fire in the sky. Honestly, I just came here to listen to music alone. My mother hated it, being the germaphobe she was. I had limited friends, and I was totally fine with that. Adults, especially the Little League moms, hated me because of my wild behavior. I guess it was okay; that meant more peace and quiet for me.

I was in the middle of my book when a child with dirty palms crashed into my body. The impact sent us crashing to the sticky sand beneath us. My book went flying in the air into a deep dirty puddle. My book, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, was destroyed. I looked up angrily at the wailing toddler. His cries softened to sniffles as he looked at me with wide, innocent eyes. His mother to rushed to the two of us. The boy murmured, "Sorry."

"Yeah," I grumbled. I crawled to my hardcover book whose pages were ruined. The worst part was that it was signed by Ms. Rowling herself. I pulled it out and shook the water off of it.

"We can buy you a new one." The mother thought she could comfort me.

"If you can get it signed by J.K Rowling, okay," I sneered.

The lady didn't answer me. I turned and packed all my stuff to go home. I examined the pages as I walked. Almost the entire thing was soaked. My blood boiled at the sight of it. I wanted to scream and cry, especially when I looked at the title page. Her signature was bleeding through and fading away. I opened the door and walked right up the stairs to my room. My mom called out my name but all I could do was sit at my desk and try to apply warmth and air onto the book. I put up a fan and patted each page, front and back, carefully.

It was ruined, and there was nothing I could do about it. My mother raged up to my room. "Is there any reasonable explanation as to why you were ignoring me?"

"My book is ruined and I was trying to fix it."

"I am your mother, and I am more important than some stack of paper."

I grit my teeth. "Sorry. What did you want?"

"I need you to clean the kitchen for me while I go to run some errands. Could you do that for me?"

"As you wish," I replied while spinning in my chair. She gave me a curt nod and walked down the stairs to the front door with her purse on her shoulder. I dragged myself down the stairs to a messy kitchen awaiting my presence.

Like usual, she left the kitchen dirty as hell. There was a mess littering the counter and the fridge was sticky with spilled soda. I pulled my hair into a loose ponytail and started scrubbing the fridge inside and out. The fridge light flickered and slowly buzzed off. "You've gotta be freaking kidding me." I got off my knees and threw the rag into the sink which was, in fact, filled a mile high with dirty dishes (not really of course). I ran down to the basement and started messing around with random gadgets. Of course, me not being an electrician, it didn't work. That can wait till later though.

I grabbed another rag on my way up the stairs in order to clean the counter filled with uncooked leftovers from last night. No matter how hard I scrubbed, it wouldn't budge, so I grabbed a spoon and started scraping at the mess. And finally, finally, it came out. The only thing left to do was the dishes so I put on a playlist filled with miscellaneous songs and started.