Existing (2 page)

She takes a step back and stares at it intently.
“Okay,” she says with a shrug. “Will you braid my hair for me please, Rose?”

I smile and ruffle her fine, blonde hair that falls naturally straight to the bottom of her spine. “I sure will.”

“You do the bestest braids.” I guide her toward the bed and start to pull her pajama top over her head. I feel her hands push a piece of my long brown hair behind my ear. “Can we do something pretty with your hair too?” she asks.

I lean back a
nd pull her pajama bottoms quickly down her legs. “My hair isn’t as good as yours at doing what it’s told.”

She pulls the bottom of her hair from around her back and twists it around in her fingers. “You got wavy hair and I got straight hair.”

“Yup,” I say, holding her panties at the floor so she can step into them. “You got all the best features.”

She stands
stock-still as I pull her panties up and help to wriggle her into her tights. “What was your Mommy’s hair like?”

I slip her dress over her head and start to brush her hair. “I don’t really know
, Ava. I was only a baby when my Mommy went to live with the angels.”

I pull th
e brush carefully down her hair, making sure I get all the way to the ends.

“Didn’t you ever see her
?” she persists.

“Well, I must have
when I was a baby, but I can’t remember.”

“Does that make you sad?”
she asks, blinking at me.

I turn her around and push my hands over her face and smooth her hair underneath my palms. “Sometimes,” I say honestly, “but I’m glad that I have you.”

She smiles, making her big brown eyes light up right in front of me and throws her arms tightly around my neck. “Love you, Rose.”

I sniff. “Love you too
, Ava.”

Despite the fact that the sun beats down against the grass
, causing twinkles of light to reflect off the frost, the air is far too cold to be sitting outside at the park. I stand up from the bench, my breath misting out in front of me and walk toward Ava, who is playing by herself in the sandpit. It seems all of the other parents decided it was too cold to let their children play in the park today. I pull a tissue from out of my coat pocket and wipe away the trickle of snot that has escaped from her nose.

“What are you building
?” I ask.

She si
ghs and pats the top of an overturned bucket. “I’m trying to build Cinderella’s castle so she can live happily ever after with her prince, but it’s not working.”

I study the four small sandcastles that are too far apart to look like anything but random castles and try to figure out how to help. “Why don’t you put another sandcastle in betw
een each of the ones you’ve made and then we can build walls?”

She wipes her little pink nose again with the back of her hand and looks up at me. “I don’t want to play in the park anymore
, Rose.”

I step into the sand box and sit down beside her. “How about I go and get us both a hot chocolate and then we’ll build the biggest princess sandcastle ever?”

She nods and carries on patting the top of the upside down bucket. “Yes, please. Can I have a donut too?”

I glance at my Father and Hallie and reach into my pocket. “I don’t have enough money
, Ava.”

She pushes her woolly hat from out of her eyes and tightens her scarf around her neck. I watch her face screw up
when her eyes move behind me.

“Why does
my Mommy always have to kiss Daddy like that when we’re out?” she asks, looking disgusted.

I turn and watch Hallie lick the side of my Father’s face before giggling and snuggling down into his chest and feel instantly
sick. If only he knew, I think.

“Your Mommy loves our Daddy. When pe
ople are in love with each other, they show their feelings by giving lots of hugs and kisses and holding hands,” I tell her.

She frowns. “Mommy never kisses me though.”

I open my mouth to defend Hallie but close it quickly. I owe that woman nothing, and if she wants to turn her own daughter against her then who am I to stop her? A cold breeze whips against us, making my long hair slap into my face. Ava shudders at the side of me.

“I’m going to get us a drink
,” I tell her. “I’ll be five minutes.”

“O-
kay,” she sighs.

I glance at my father and Hallie
as I walk past their bench, but neither of them appears to notice anything that’s going on around them. They’re like teenagers how they’re stuck in their own little bubble of happiness.

I keep my head down to try and stop my eyes from
watering from the stinging wind and pull my coat up around my neck. I hate the cold and I hate how it makes everything else seem sluggish and miserable.

The little café is situated in th
e center of the park and is a bigger, more expensive version of a garden shed. It has a pointed roof and two small serving hatches on either side. A stream flows gently next to it, making it the perfect place in the summer to eat sandwiches and bask in the warmth of the sun. But in winter it’s one of the coldest places in the park, with no trees to protect you from the mist or biting wind.

As I round the corner and the trees give way to the view of the café
, I see a group of people from my year at school hanging around it with their hoods pulled up. I stop and think about turning back before they see me, but the image of Ava shivering in the sand pit fills my head and I find myself striding toward it.

“Look who it is guys!” Oliver grins at me. “If it isn’t the hermit,” he laughs and a few of the others join in. I spot Lauren and Destiny from my English class and groan inwardly.

“Roisin,” calls Destiny, “are you lost or something? Do you even know what this place is called?”

I ignore them and smile at the lady rubbing her gloved hands together in the shack. “Can I have two hot chocolates
, please?”

She nods, turning
around and picking up two Styrofoam cups from off the top of a wobbling tower of them.

“Two cups
, Roisin? Does that mean you actually have a friend to buy one for?” Destiny steps away from the group and strides quickly toward me with an evil grin on her pretty, fake-tanned face. I can’t help but stare at her bright white teeth as the wind forces her perfectly straight, platinum-dyed blonde hair to blow out behind her. “Who are you playing with?”

I sigh and watch the woman pouring the hot chocolate slowly into the cups. Can’t she see I’m being laughed at here and that I need her to hurry up? Destiny comes to stand at the side of me and I can see her looking at my expensive belted winter coat and my knee-high leather boots.

She leans her perfectly manicured hands onto the counter and rocks forward and backward on her heels. “What I don’t understand, Roisin, is that you clearly have money. Your clothes are always nice, you smell nice, and you’re clean. You could make more of an effort with make-up, but you’re pretty in your own little way without it. You could be one of us, so why do you wrap yourself up in your own little world and make yourself a target? Why are you so weird?”

I spin around quickly and narrow my eyes at her.
If only she knew how badly I wanted to be anything but weird. I don’t like being the freak of the school. I do it because I have to. It’s the only way I know how, and it’s not like I could just walk into school tomorrow and be normal. They’d never accept me now. I’ve been too weird for too long.

“What business is it of yours what I decide to do with my life?
” I ask. “Just go back to your little friends and continue being a bitch.” As the words slip out of my mouth, I want to take them back. I’ve never spoken to any of them like that. I’ve thought much worse, of course, but I’ve never dared to actually say anything.

Her eyes go wide in her head and then s
he smiles, making the crystals in her lip gloss twinkle in the sunlight. “You sooo did not just called me a bitch.”

The lady behind the counter places my cups down and holds her hand out. I rummage around in my pockets before dumping all the coins I have into her hand. “Thanks,” I mumble
, picking up the steaming cups.

I take a step away but feel the hood on my coat snag on something. I turn around and
realize Destiny has decided I’m not going anywhere.

“Let
me go,” I hiss, trying to keep the drinks from spilling all over my gloves. I hope that they don’t decide to push me around or trip me up. I don’t have any more money and Ava needs this hot drink.

Destiny curls her bottom lip out at me and grins. The others see what’s happening and gather around us like
vultures around a dead carcass.

“What’s the matter
, Roisin? Do you think your one and only friend will have given up on you already? Are you worried you’ll go back and they’ll be gone?” she laughs.

“Shut up,” I spit, feeling like I’m being smothered by them and their closeness.
“Just leave me alone.”

“Who’d have thought she could
be feisty?” Oliver laughs in my face, looking pleased with himself. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard you talk so much, Roisin. You need to be careful you don’t strain your vocal cords or something.”

“Leave her alone.”

His deep voice cuts through the laughter and the snide remarks and freezes me to the spot. Destiny laughs before letting go of my hood. I start to walk away from her but find myself face-to-face with my savior.

“Thanks,” I whisper.

Zak Wilmot looks down at me with his beautiful, big blue eyes and smiles. The memories of last summer suddenly flood through my mind. I push them away as soon as I realize what they’re doing to me.

”Don’t mention it. Seriously,
” he says.

I nod and push my way through the crowd and watch my hands shaking in front of me as I walk across th
e concrete path and back toward Ava. I’ve probably been gone about fifteen minutes. I hope they haven’t forgotten about me.

Just before
they are out of view, I look back at the crowd that is still gathered around the serving hatch and catch a glimpse of those mind-numbing bright blue eyes again and shiver.

Zak
Wilmot and I spent all of last summer together when our families coincidentally booked the same vacation to the Florida Keys and found ourselves in neighboring condos. He hadn’t spoken to me before that summer, and after a few days of looking awkwardly at each other, he finally approached me. After that we became inseparable. And that’s how I spent the most amazing nine weeks of my life – right next to Zak, laughing and running, swimming and basically enjoying life.

Zak
kissed me after a beach bonfire one night a few days after he had started to talk to me, and as the heat from the flames danced and skipped on the sands, something deep inside me woke up and has refused to go back to sleep ever since. Zak Wilmot is the only boy I have ever kissed and he’ll probably be the
only
boy I’ll ever kiss. I don’t want to ever have to go through that again. I’ve learned my lesson.

He tried to talk to me when we got back to school
, which surprised me more than anything else that he’d done. I had convinced myself that he would just fall back into the group of friends that he plays soccer with and would continue ignoring me like the rest of them, but he hadn’t. For days afterward, he tried to stop me in the hallways to try and talk to me. He’d sit by me at lunch, but I could see his friends whispering and nudging each other. I didn’t want him to be laughed at just because of me, so I ignored him – just like they all ignored me - and he finally gave up a few weeks ago. I wanted to be able to hang out with him and laugh like we’d done during summer vacation, but I knew it was too different. For those nine weeks, I was normal. I was someone else but that someone else vanished the second I got back home, along with my innocence. 

“There you are!”

Ava climbs up from the sand, dusting the grains off her tights and walks over to me, looking like she’s on the verge of turning blue from the cold.

“Sorry Ava
, there was a line,” I lie. I hand her the hot chocolate and watch her sip it carefully. “How’s the princess castle coming along?”

She sighs and nods toward the two new castles. “I
t’s okay, but my fingers won’t work properly.”

I look at her bright red hands and wince. “Where are your gloves?”

She shrugs and drinks more hot chocolate.

We shouldn’t be out here in this weather. If my Father and Hallie want to spend time alone
, then they could have just asked me to babysit in the house. I take Ava’s hand and pull her toward her parents.

“We’re cold,” I say
, wrapping my hands around the warm cup. “Ava is cold. I think we should go home.”

Hallie sighs and pulls her head from off my Father’s chest. “You’ve only been out here an hour. You need to toughen up.”