The Same Girl [ON HOLD]

Two💔

It was just over two years ago.  

Twenty four months, seven days, and three hours ago, actually.

But twenty five months ago, everything was ... perfect.

I closed my eyes, leaned over the candles, and prayed to the cake fairy or whoever was in charge that Mitch Pennel- Sienna's twin brother and my best-friend-that's-a-boy- would kiss me. It was the same secret wish I'd made every year since I was eight- which was seven years ago- and I accidentally fell in love with him.

Sie, Mitch, and their parents- Uncle Cam and Aunty Jane, even though we're not related- celebrated my sixteenth birthday in our backyard with Mum, Dad and my little sister, Lucy, like always. When the singing and clapping and candle blowing was over, I opened my eyes. Mitch was right next to me, smiling down at me with a mischievous look in his eyes. The back of my neck went hot and prickly when I smelled his apple shampoo- the one from the red bottle that he kept stealing from Sie's bathroom because he liked how it made his hair look, and for one charged up second, I thought my birthday wish might actually come true. I didn't even have time to think about how embarrassing that would be when Mitch's hand, loaded with birthday cake, arched from behind his back on a not-so-slow-motion scale right into my face.

While cake in the face is definitely progress from last year's fruit punch over the head, something in my wish was getting mixed up or lost as it blew away from the cake into the sky. I promised myself to clarify my demand next year in bullet points with references to movies and screamed, shoving my hands into the mangled cake on the table. I scooped two giant corners overloaded with frosted flowers.

Then, I charged.

I lunged.

I ran.

I chased Mitch around the yard in laps until he dropped to the ground and wrestled the cake from me, rubbing them into my face like a mud mask. We were at it for a good ten minutes, laughing and rolling around on the grass, Sie, Lucy and our parents cheering and throwing more cake at us, candles and all. When we finally came up for air, there wasn't much cake left and the two of us were covered head to toe in sparkling purple frosting. We stood up slowly, laughing with our sides hurting as we halfheartedly called a truce. Mum snapped a picture of us- Mitch's arm around my shoulders, bits of cake and grass clinging to our clothes and hair, everything warm and pink in the glow of the setting sun.

When the novelty of the cake wrestling match faded, Mitch and I went to clean ourselves up. Inside, under the orange light of the kitchen, we stood in front of the sink not saying anything. I stared at him as we attempted to clean ourselves with the warm water.

His messy brown hair and bright blue eyes cast a spell on me, silencing the chatter outside. I held out a sticky hand and threatened him with another bit of cake in an attempt to break the silence. I was scared he'd hear my thumping heart. He scooped some of the sugary mess from my hand and moved closer towards me, changing everything that ever was or wasn't between us in a single raised eyebrow.

"Kasey," he said, tugging on the ends of my blond hair, "don't you know what it means when I boy pulls your hair at a party?" No. Just then, I didn't know anything. I couldn't remember how we had gotten to the kitchen or how we had come to talk about this. I bit my lower lip so I couldn't say something stupid like, "Mitch, all my wishes have come true!" There was silence as he waited for me to answer I stared at his collarbone and the small piece of blue sea glass he wore on a thin leather cord around his neck; it was just like Sie's and mine.

He made all of our necklaces the year before with some sea glass he found during their family holiday to Zanzibar Bay, right behind the California beach house they rented every year for three weeks every summer. According to Sie and Mitch, red glass was the rarest, followed by purple, then green, then dark blue. To date, he had only found one red piece, which he had made into a bracelet for Sie a few months ago. She never took it off. I loved all colours- dark greens, baby blues, aquas and whites. Sie and Mitch brought them back to me in jars every summer. They lived at the top of my book self, like frozen pieces of the ocean I had never seen.