Nightshade

Hadley's Love Letter

     June 14th, 2017

     It is a warm and sunny day outside. 

     There aren't very many kids at practice, but Hadley is one of them. They have run until exhaustion, and they now run through the grassy field and through the sprinklers. Sweat covers their flushed, hot, red faces like the dandelions that cover the field. Their clothes are wet and clinging to them like plaster over newspapers.

    Just as Grace's tea heated the back of her throat, Hadley's aura has the same effect on people, a presence that fills one up with an inner light. 

     When they are finally back inside the rapidly emptying school, the kids gather around a circular table and eat watermelon, filling their mouths with it's sweet luscious flavor. Some of them meander around the edges, discussing movies and T.V. shows, writing riddles on their glistening skin, and playing computer games while chattering vivaciously.

     Although Hadley had been at the school in the next town over, she is returning for the following school year, and saw it as a decent opportunity to go running with the girls today. Although she had just been locked inside crying for a while, and she had been a little bit sad lately, she saw no reason to stop her life, as that would only make everything seem even worse.

     Sometimes she would play out scenarios in her mind of things she should have asked Arthur before it was too late, knowing that so many others were thinking just the same thing, and would eventually realize that this guilt was only a mirage.

     Hadley takes five neutral steps over to the drinking fountain to refill her hydro flask, but on the the way, something catches her eye: A piece of golden lined paper. She picks it up a turns it around, and is intrigued by what she reads on its front side. 

     H A D L E Y

She is a ray of May sunlight on our shoulders. 

I want to be like her because she is an alpha, and she is someone so hard to find. 

She is in my dreams because she looks on the outside how want to feel on the inside.

She makes me feel warmer from the inside of my heart.

Hadley is brilliant.

    She wonders briefly who had written about her in a tone of such admiration, and folds it up and puts it in the smallest pocket of her bag.

     After all the kids start to leave the school Hadley walks home. As she is walking down the street along the sidewalk, a girl one year younger than her (who Hadley vaguely recognizes) unexpectedly dismounts her skateboard, walks away from the group she had been conversing with, walks up to Hadley and hands her a single rose. Hadley says, "thanks" accepting it with a friendly smile.

     The child nods, tosses her hair back, and joins the group once again. The pack of onlookers were watching, mildly interested, and some had discontinued their roller skating, cheerful conversation, and running around to pay attention to the exchange.

     All of a suddens she has a clearer view of the adoration she so often receives but never really acknowledges, as she twirls the flower in her fingers and listens to the song of the birds. She has always been considerably well-liked, but that never seems to change her low self-worth.

     Roses are blooming all around her in this neighborhood, yet this child simply handing her one had made all the difference because of its implication.