To Faraway {A collection of short stories}

What's Love?

At the age of seven, I was alienated to how girls thought and I was more than flustered when one day, the house next to ours had movers and found out, by watching from our side window that a little girl about my age was part of the family that was moving in next door. I had hoped it would be a boy.

I was even more flustered when mom ordered me to bring them a tray of brownies and invite the girl over to play.

No matter how much I tried to protest, mom was mom. And she always got her way. So in a miraculously unfortunate turn of events, my day went from going over to my friend Peter's house so I can see his brand new basket ball, to going over next door and inviting a girl over to play. A girl. I doubted that she had a basketball.

It would've gone better, too. I had formulated a plan in my head to just leave the tray of brownies by the doorstep, ring the doorbell and run back home. I'd just tell my mom later, that the girl didn't want to play.

But of course this wasn't possible since mom was watching me from the front porch the whole time. Even when I finally reached the front door, nimbly avoiding the boxes that were all over their front porch.

The front door was wedged open by an empty box and for some time, I had just stood there debating whether I should still ring the doorbell since the door was already open. It was a pretty absurd thing to debate on, now that I'm looking back. But I was seven and entitled to certain level of absurdities.

I hadn't had the time to decide when a little pale face peeked through the crack of the slightly open door.

It was the little girl and she looked quite sad, too. That was until she saw my face, and then she visibly perked up and she grinned widely at me. She had pale blue eyes and caramel-colored hair and her face was smooth and pale, unlike the tan or freckled ones of those kids who lived around the neighborhood.

For a long time, I just looked at her in confusion and panic. Girls, you see, are highly intimidating even if they were smiling.

I looked over our porch and saw my mom smiling widely at me and gave me a thumbs up. It was a little annoying, I have to admit. But I swallowed and looked back at the girl in front of me, anyway.

"Hello." I mumbled, slight irritation towards my mom for making me do this, lacing its way into my voice.

"Hi. Can I help you?" She asked in her little girl voice.

"My mom told me to give you these brownies." I hand it to her and she tried balancing it in her little hands but it wobbled and tipped slightly to the right. None of the brownies fell, but three of the brownies on the right was slightly hanging on the side of the tray. I nudged it back as she finally gave up and called for her mom. A lady with the same hair as her came to the door and opened it widely, pushing some boxes out of the way as she smiled warmly down at me. She saw the brownies and took it from the little girl.

"I'm guessing this is from you? What's your name, little boy?" She asked me as the little girl stood, listening beside her.

"It's from mom. We live next to you. My name's Sutter." The woman looked to her right over to our house and spotted my mom. They smiled at each other widely.

"Thank you very much Mrs..?" She yelled over to my mom.

"Meddley! You can call me Alice. It's no problem, welcome to the neighborhood, by the way." My mom yelled back.

The lady smiled and looked back down at me. "I should leave you and Ronnie to talk." And with one last smile, she retreated back into their home, leaving me and "Ronnie" to "talk".

I wondered if I could go home now, but learned otherwise as I looked back at my mom and she waved for me to go on.

I pouted and looked back at the girl. "Do you want to go to my house?" I ask her.