Flash fiction - Moving Day

Finally, a day with some time to write. It's been too long, as always. Here's a short story prompted by our writer friends over at Studio 30+. The words we had to use are in bold. Check out others by clicking the icon below. Thoughts and comments always welcome. I'm now off to enjoy the sunny river...

Moving Day

She would like to go backwards because it all began to fall apart just when it had become perfect. Or something close to perfect in her fourteen-year-old mind.

Laying at the edge of the cornfields, bottles of lemonade at their side, satchels flung and just the sounds of crickets, or bees, or some insect she promised to look up later; and them, touching, side by side, breathing the same air and wondering if this was what love could be.

His sweet lips and the stories that sprung from them, even before she tasted them for real and dissolved into him, letting him cover her with newness and give birth to an ache in her whole being she had not been prepared for.

The note in her locker: Meet me after math next to the gym. The goose bumps of expectation, nerves and the warm sensation sliding all over her body at the thought of just seeing him alone.

Taking her hand under the lunch table and squeezing it, albeit briefly, before stroking her fingers one by one. Her eyes down, trying not to cry at the hurtful things which had been said before; her heart grateful for the kindness shown in secret. Don’t listen to them. You’re nothing like your mother. I am here, friend.

The science experiment the day her best friend was at a music exam and the teacher forced her to move to his bench, where his long fingers cradled the test-tubes and his eyes laughed at her behind the goggles. She hated science. He loved it. She would love it.

His first day at school and the red jacket everyone laughed at, except her because it meant no matter where he was she could find him. Across the grass, his blond hair twinkling in the September sunshine, his hands not knowing what to do as he looked beyond the other boys for something more interesting than football stats. He found her, though she pretended he hadn’t. Then.

Now. The moving trucks looming outside, casting a shadow over the house and her whole life. Her mum gone, her dad with a face as sad as the end always is. Her brothers crying, wailing, as their lives are ripped from the roots of the tree swing, the porch, the sandpit, Harvey’s kennel. Her screaming at the injustice of it all, the pain of separation, her future blinded by him not being there.