by C.T. Millis
Chapter 15
There were just enough clouds in the sky to coax the sun into the town. The sun itself beat down strong, cutting through the ice in the air. When James and Sophie stood in the sun, it was almost warm. They were in the more populated part of town, where there were shops, grocery stores, barbers, bars, and every building was three stories. James was standing with this arms in front of him like he was holding onto something, and Sophie was to his right, had her arm up like it was resting on something, and looked off into the storefronts. Both of their knees were bent a little. When the light turned green, it was so quiet at the intersection that they could both hear the click of the light as it transferred.
“Here we go!” James said as they looked both ways and shuffled forward, through the stoplight.
“Can I drive soon?” Sophie asked, “you’re going to crash us!”
“I won’t!” James smiled and saw the red glimmer of a stop sign, “we can change places at that stop sign,” they shuffled forward, “He’s really nice-”
“Really? I thought he’d be mad that you snuck into his tree house,”
“No, I broke the ladder, and he just had me help build a new one, he said I can go up there whenever I want-”
“That’s really nice,” Sophie smiled, “Here we are!”
James made a screech noise with his mouth and reached to his right and moved an imagined lever. Sophie opened an imagined door and began walking around the back of the imaginary car while James walked around the front. They both leaned back into the imagined car like mimes, using their arms to slam the ‘doors’ shut.
“Okay, let’s go this way!” Sophie moved the imaginary stick back to drive, and they moved to the right, she made whirring noises with her mouth, and they began moving faster. When she said
“SCREECH!” They both stopped running, but Sophie’s glasses flew five feet ahead of them with a gentle crunch. They were quiet for a few seconds before Sophie realized what happened,
‘No! Not my glasses!” her face turned red as she ran over to them and sat down on the pavement, with them in her hands. James went over to her and gave her a hug when she started crying,
“It’s okay- you can just get new ones, I have to get the prescription changed a lot anyway.” Sophie sobbed in response.
Later, James ached to leave the corner of the room when Sophie’s dad started yelling at her.
“Do you think these are toys?” he held tight in his fist the broken lenses, “the optometrist is on vacation for another week,” she looked away from him, “You’ll just have to go without.”
Sophie’s father left the room and went down into the basement. James held Sophie while she cried for a while.
“We were just playing, I was running and I stopped- then they flew off. They broke.”
James slipped out of the door and made his way to the tree house. Each cloud followed another out of the sky, so none of the warm air from the setting sun stayed in the town. James pulled his coat tighter around him and tried to remember where all the stains on his sleeve came from while he made his way through the woods. The wooden ladder was still where it was before, leaning against the tree. James pulled himself into the tree house and sat down on the floor of it. It was not long before he leaned back and looked at the tree branches through the cracks in the tree house boards.
James imagined Sophie’s vision being returned, like a miracle, overnight. James replayed her sudden stop and imagined himself jumping in front of her in just enough time to grab the- James heard rustling. There was a sheet of paper under a brick by his head. When he read it, the paper said in Mr. Heckerman’s handwriting:
Apparently, you are growing millions of new cells everyday. If you ever want food to help you grow, you can just come in to the house and grab some.
