"She doesn't speak."
The lady who'd presumably come in to shop for a bargain deal on some oldies but goodies album but was now in the middle of cooing over the six-year-old girl with the beaded braids in her hair looks up incredulously at the much older girl working the counter.
"What do you mean she can't speak?"
Kiari Dalton, said cashier, doesn't look up from filing her nails. In most ways she looks like an older version of the girl; only there are no beads in her much longer braids—tied up in a knot at the back of her head—and her large, angled eyes are something she got from her father, along with the wild spark within them.
"I said doesn't, not can't."
Danika Hemming—affectionately labeled Dinky by her big sister—smiles up at the woman and blinks those thick-lashed eyes at her.
It's something she and Dinky's father had had to explain quite a bit, for several different reasons. Kiari and Dinky's mother had been a frail woman—sick nearly from the moment Kiari was born. Kiari still remembers the stretches of time where life had been almost normal, only for her mother to fall ill once more—spending most of her time in the hospital.
Though she'd split with Kiari's father, they remained on good terms even after she'd met Dinky's father years later. Dinky had been born when Kiari was twelve, and she'd been four years old when she'd survived the car wreck that had killed both Kiari's parents and left her motherless en route to the hospital.
She hadn't spoken a word in the two years since; and though it had created a few obstacles with things like school, neither her father nor her sister had pushed her to do so. If she never spoke again, they would love her just the same.
After the lady browses the shop, decides there's nothing she actually wants there, and finally leaves—Kiari casts her sister a knowing look and presses her palm gently against the top of Dinky's head.
Dinky cuts her eyes at the glass display countertop, beside where the cash register sits and above all the extra special collecter's edition records inside, and Kiari smiles with a good-natured eye roll.
"Lennie doesn't like when I let you sit up there, but I guess since it's just me today..."
Dinky grins wide and raises her arms.
"Alright, you know the deal: someone has to check out, you have to get down." She nods enthusiastically the whole time Kiari is lifting her, and settles comfortably into a cross-legged sit. She sways to the smooth jazz playing over the speakers and Kiari pulls out her phone.
The notification above the message app catches her eye—a bright red circle with a white fourteen in the middle.
She knows who they are all from, which is why her thumb hovers just above the green icon like it's frozen in time.
God, she must be seething right now...
The thought has her caught between a wistful smile and chewing at her lip.
She's almost convinced herself to rip off the bandaid—it's not like she had her receipts on, no one would have to know—but the jingle of the door alerts her to another customer, and she clicks the phone off almost like she'd gotten caught with her hand in the cookie jar.
The androgynous blonde that strides into the shop looks windswept. A glance out the glass door and Kiari notices the yellow convertible in the parking lot, parked right next to her turquoise Chevy pick-up.
Next to each other like that, they look like they should be parked outside some diner in the fifties.
Dinky grins and waves at the stranger from her perch. It earns her one of those endearing smiles that everyone gives children and baby animals.
YOU ARE READING
Star Girl
Fanfiction-just as there are those that guard the earth; there must be those that guard the heavens.
