🍭 Ghosted in Sugarshore 🍭

🍪 2. TAKE HOME 🍪

I liked my house.

Walls made out of light gingerbread, jellybeans along the edges, a licorice door, and a candy cane doorframe. Not to mention frosting on the rooftop. What more could a candy-man want?

It's a regular gingerbread house, nothing flashy. I disliked flashy. The world was flashy enough without me helping it. I wanted to keep things essential: four walls around me and a roof over my head. Even the roof seemed unnecessary sometimes; when I wanted to gaze at the sugar stars. Good thing it didn't happen as often anymore.

Yes, I liked my house, that's true. I liked it, but it's not like I liked all of it. The only objectively wonderful thing about it is that it's slightly remote, on top of a little hill. It's probably the highest point in all of Sugarshore. Above everything, slightly. I knew the hill was so short that a jump from it wouldn't even hurt me, and not only because the jelly would break my fall, but I liked to feel tall. I was tall already, but you could always be taller.

"I love your garden," Hale squealed as we climbed the hill. To be honest, the garden's beauty didn't match her excitement. The ground was regular sugar sand with jelly bushes scattered around like shiny colorful pimples. Despite them being common and ordinary, she seemed to see something magical in them, something more than her own crooked reflection.

She was impatient to see all of them. Her petite body moved vigorously as it bounced far and near, not missing a single one. She mimicked jumping on them, but she wasn't really. She couldn't, not yet. It was all in her eyes, eyes full of wonder. I didn't know her, but at that moment, I knew her stubbornness was all an act. Hale wanted to live.

We followed the same path, but mine was pale and plain while hers was full of color.

"You like jelly?" I asked, despite it being obvious.

She spun midair to face me, like a lost wind. "I do, I so do! My dad was a jelly-man."

She bounced to the next jelly and kept floating above it. "Green, just like this one."

My face fell green. I studied her. "Really? You don't look... gelatinous? Is that a word?"

She giggled. "Nor green, yes. It's because he's not my real father, silly. I'm a full-on cotton candy lady. No, my real father was killed and faded. Nobody ever killed a killer, a perfect crime. Not that he didn't deserve it. My real father was a bad, bad man. Jelly was my stepdad, but he was my dad, you know?"

I slowly nodded, deciding at that moment her jelly sculpture would be green.