Cind or Ella?

35 0 0
                                    







Once upon a time there lived a wicked awesome chick (that would be me) and a princess. Okay, she wasn't a real princess, more of a pop princess. In fact, she wasn't even a pop princess, but given her parents were rock royalty, princess was about as close a title as she'd get.

I'm easily recognisable. I'm the one standing next to that beautiful girl in all of her selfies. I'm not a groupie, as such. More like a roadie, or perhaps bodyguard. Anyway, however you put it, I'm her BFF. In fact, it's been like forever that we've been best friends.

I first met C soon after she came to live in my neck of the woods. Crawling through a hole in our adjoining fence one steamy morning as she chased her ball, she stopped in her tracks the moment she saw me.

"Hi." She lifted a hand in a tentative wave. She was wearing a colourful bikini with a full ruffled bikini bottom that looked like the pilchers you used to pull over a baby's cloth nappy.

"Hi." I said back, staring at her as intently as she stared at me. Time seemed to stand still and my heart was caught between beats. My breath was stuck half-way in my throat and I was afraid if I moved or finished my breath, the spell would be broken and she'd disappear.

"What's your name?" The spell was broken and I could breathe again.

"Charmaine," I replied. "What's yours?"

"Cindy."

She looked me up and down with excruciating thoroughness and time slowed again. Finally, she spoke.

"Are you a boy or a girl?"

I blinked in shock. I hadn't really thought about it before, having never been confronted like this. I mean, I knew technically I was a girl. I understood the differences between girls and boys, but I had never really thought of myself as a girl. Growing up, I had seen the images of 'girl', and I couldn't reconcile that image with what I saw in the mirror everyday and how I felt inside. There was no 'girl' looking back at me. In front of me now was the perfect image of 'girl', at least according to what I knew 'girl' to be, with long, dark, curly hair falling over slim shoulders that so closely resembled coffee fudge, I had to refrain from leaning over and licking them. A smattering of tiny dark freckles peeked through otherwise flawless skin and green eyes shone from beneath lashes as long and dark as any 'ship of the desert'. This was 'girl' in all her beauty.

And then there was me. Short sandy-blonde hair, slicked back from the water that had sprayed me from the sprinkler under which I'd been playing, my board shorts sticking to my skinny legs, my bare chest shining with new sweat that I wasn't entirely sure was only caused by the heat of the day. I couldn't help standing up straighter and trying to flex my puny child-muscles, hoping she'd be impressed. I could see that she wasn't.

Deflated I replied, "I'm a girl."

I wanted to rush inside then and lock myself away hoping isolation from the world would help me recover my dignity, but she just shrugged and looked back at me over her shoulder as she started disappearing through the fence. "Grab my ball, wouldya? Wanna come play?" And with that she was back on the other side of the fence leaving me with nothing to do but pick up her ball and follow. I've been following ever since. Like I said, we're BFFs.

Cind or Ella?Where stories live. Discover now