The Eye of the Beholder

I probably wouldn’t remember the day I met Ellen if it weren’t my birthday. And obviously everyone’s supposed to remember their birthday. It wasn’t a big birthday like sixteen or eighteen. It was the one right after my thirteenth, so kind of a letdown after the becoming-a-teenager hype. In fact if my own parents had remembered my birthday I wouldn’t have even met Ellen, the girl who set of a catalyst for my whole summer.

                “Gummy worms or jelly beans?” Lillian asked, towering above me, clear candy shovel in hand.

                “Huh?” I blinked twice.

                “Earth to Ben! I am buying you either gummy worms or jelly beans for your birthday. Which one do you want?”

                “Um,” I thought for a second, “I guess gummy worms.” Lillian liked gummy worms the best and she’d end up eating them all anyways.

                “Sweet,” she said and filled the cellophane bag full of multicolored creepy crawlies.

                Now, before I continue on with the rest of the story, let me get one thing straight; Lillian is not my girlfriend. Yeah, she’s a girl and yes, she’s my friend but it’s a totally different situation. We’d been friends since we were in diapers. It would be kind of hard to like a girl like that. She was practically my sister.

                I followed her up to the counter and watched her pay for the candy. The owner of Blueberry Cove Sweets, Mrs. Rivers made polite conversation with us until a shadow passed across the door leading into the storage room.

                “Ellen, come on in here and say hello,” Mrs. Rivers said in her grandmotherly manner.

                A girl about mine and Lillian’s age stepped out of the shadows and into the shop. Not meaning to compare them I did at first glance. The girl, Ellen, was wearing a long pink sundress and a floppy pink hat, nothing like the soccer camp T-shirt, ratty shorts and backwards baseball camp Lillian’s general wardrobe consisted of. Her hair was dark and long and it flowed down her back in cascading waterfalls of jet black that contrasted her pale skin that was sun kissed by a few freckles dotting across the bridge of her nose. She looked like the typical Maine girl, mysterious and profound, yet familiar at the time. Lillian was the opposite. She was not the typical Maine kid. She was tan from hours at practice. She was neither mysterious nor profound. She was rowdy and loud and generally an open book. So when she immediately starting jumping to conclusions I was not the least bit surprised.

                “Hi, I’m Lilli, or Lillian, whichever one you want to call me. Are you staying here for the summer? Are you Mrs. Rivers’ granddaughter?” Lillian spouted out, holding out her hand for Ellen to shake.

                Ellen took her hand and shook it like it was a dead fish but didn’t answer any questions.

                “Something like that,” Mrs. River’s said in her mysterious Maine way.