I run down the stairs, following the smell of homemade bread into the kitchen. Mum is squatting with her back to me to observe her sourdough rising. I tiptoe past the kitchen bench, trying desperately to get in and out without conversation. I fish my car keys out of the dish by the kitchen table but the jingle of metal is too loud for me to be undetected.
"Where are you going, Emme?" I stop in my tracks. Shoot.
I grimace spinning around to face my mother who's now standing up with her hands resting on her hips.
"I'm going to see Maggie." I try to sound confident but I know she's going to try and shut me down.
"Em, you've been visiting her every day for the past month. You rely on her so heavily, I think you need a break." She comes over to me and places her hand on my shoulder. It's her go-to move when trying to get me to do something but it only ever works on my Dad, my sister and I figured her out ages ago. "Why don't you go shopping with that girl from your maths class last year?"
I scoff. "Cleo? No way. The only reason I spent time with her last year was that it was high school, we were in the same class and those things made it compulsory. I'm out of school now, meaning I never have to see her again." I lean away from her, letting her hand drop off my shoulder and back down to her side.
"Fine," she sighs, grabbing my keys from my hand, "but you're walking there. Exercise will be good for you."
I stomp out of the kitchen, pretending to be angry about having to walk but I thought she was going to forbid me altogether so I'm taking a win wherever I can get one. I push open our front door, still feeling her worried stare piercing the back of my head up until I close the door behind me.
I was four years old when I had met Maggie. Mum had dropped me off for my first day of kindergarten and I was watching a boy eat crayons from an art table in the corner. I distinctly remember the girl that entered, one hand swallowed in her father's grip and the other, holding onto her toy elephant by the trunk, it dragging on the floor behind her. I remember watching the girl with long blonde hair and ocean blue eyes cry when her father left out the rainbow door, leaving her and her elephant behind. She had sat down a few meters away from me and she wouldn't stop crying. The teacher was too busy confiscating things from the annoying boys on the other side of the room to come and help her. I handed her one of my own special markers from home. She came to sit down next to me and decided to do a colouring of a parrot. She coloured out of the lines, pressed too hard with the marker and kept putting it in her mouth but I wasn't angry at her. Her eyelashes were still bunched together from her crying and her freckles were drowned in the sea of red skin that was still all puffy. We didn't talk for the whole day, we just sat in silence doing our colourings. The next day we did talk but only a little bit. I told her my name was Emme and she said that her elephant was called Remy. She said that my name rhymed with her elephant's name. She told me she was called Maggie. Every day we would colour together and each day I would give her another one of my markers.
YOU ARE READING
My Best Friend named Maggie
Short StoryI told her my name was Emme and she said that her elephant was called Remy. She said that my name rhymed with her elephant's name. She told me she was called Maggie.
