The Cherry Blossom Tree

Cherry Chapter One

“Oh, my God, Vivien.  Are we there yet?”

I had to press my lips together to keep from laughing at Annabel’s dire tone.  She’d been asking the same question continuously for the last three days, and Mom’s answer had been the same as the one she gave now.

“Annabel, you mapped out our journey.  If anything it should be us asking you if the end is near.”

A groan came from the back seat.  I turned to find Annabel flat on her back with her feet resting against the open window.  My copy of A Tale of Two Cities was cracked open and resting over her face.  Now that in itself was the biggest shock of our trip yet.  

Annabel was a seasoned socialite.  Unless it was a Vanity Fair magazine or a horoscope guide, she avoided literature like it carried an incurable disease.  

“Are you actually reading that?” I asked hopefully.  It would certainly be nice to have someone to discuss it with in depth.

Beneath the cover, Annabel snorted.  “Don’t be silly.  It’s keeping the sun off my face.”

I huffed in annoyance even as delicate laughter sounded beside me.  I glanced over at Mom with a frown.

“Oh, come on, sweetie.  Even I saw that one coming,” she said, reaching out to ruffle my hair.  

Tight, corkscrew curls bounced frantically under the assault and I cried out in indignation.  It had taken me nearly two hours this morning to tame the monstrosity into looking halfway decent.  When it was working in my favour, I actually liked my hair.  Apart from Annabel I had yet to discover someone else with curls as tight or as vibrantly coloured as mine.  Sure it was classed as brown, but my hair was also laced with auburn strands and chunks of honey brown, natural highlights that drank in the sun and shone.

Of course it was a mystery as to who I’d inherited both my best and worst feature from.  Dad had boring black hair, and while Mom’s was a soft and silky blonde, it was in no way similar to mine.  I resembled Annabel more than anyone else in my family, and people often mistook us for sisters rather than the aunt and niece we were.

Not that I could blame them.  Annabel had turned twenty three last week, and I wasn’t far away from my eighteenth birthday.  A mere five years separated us; Mom’s parents had had her when they were extremely young, and Annabel had come long roughly seventeen years later as a total surprise.  Because of the minimal age gap, Annabel refused to let me call her ‘Aunt’, stating it made her feel old and decrepit.

“What are you reading?” Mom enquired, breaking me from my musings.

I glanced at the book in my hands, running my finger over the gold lettered title.  “Of Mice and Men,” I said, cracking the book open to the page I was currently on.  

I’d started it an hour ago, as soon as we’d packed up and left the motel to hit the road.  We were somewhere around 1500 miles into our journey and during that time I’d devoured thirteen books.  I was out of fresh reads and reading Of Mice and Men for the second time in three days.