Chapter 10

TRUE LOVE IS NOT A HIDE AND SEEK GAME FOR IN TRUE LOVE, BOTH LOVERS SEEK EACH OTHER. -UNKNOWN

.•° ✿ °•.

The sky was crisp the way that only summers knew how to be, and the clouds were clear and defined like little cut outs stuck into place with Velcro on blue felt.

There was a comfort and familiarity to a day like today; the kind of day that wanted to last forever, and where each maze and every game of hide and seek just never seemed to be long enough.

“You found me already, that’s not fair!” Carmen moped with her bottom lip stuck out, and she clamored clumsily to her feet just to stomp one of them in protest.

That was just so Carmen!

The sides of her toes were stained brown from running in the dirt and mine were too, and she wore a smile that was just a little bit crooked owing to the uneven way her teeth had come in.

“You cheated ‘cuz you made the maze, Cadenz!”

I grinned both in response to her protest and to the way she never could say my name right and to the pretty way the insides of her joints caught the sunlight and the way her left plait was always pulled a little bit tighter than her right one.

Carmen was a girl worth smiling for.

“You can hide again!” I offered excitedly as I bounced on the balls of my feet in the uneven soil and my gaze was momentarily caught and captured by the chipped polish on my toes.

“It doesn’t matter though,” I continued, ever-so-smugly, “because I’m the Queen of Hide and Seek and you know that, so I’m going to win!”

“Well...well...” She began to counter, “I’m the Princess, Cadenz!”

“And Queen is better!” I retorted with my hands pressed to my hips, sassily making a point the way I was oh-so-good at.

“Nuhuh!” Carmen began, but I covered my eyes with my hands pointedly and began to count out loud with ascending volume - my own special way of letting her know that she could stay and win the argument, or she could go and have a hope at winning our game.

It was so easy to imagine the way her violet eyes grew wide the moment she realized that she had better get to hiding. I heard her feet kicking up soil and knew that she’d taken off toward my left, but my left was a concept I only ever knew from making little L’s and Upside-Down-Lowercase-R’s with my fingers, so it was better to think of it as her simply having gone that way.

“Twelve, thirteen...” The count to twenty might as well have been a count to infinity for all the time it afforded my ten-year-old brain to consider the possibilities of the universe. Possibilities like going to the dance at the end of summer or wanting to be a space station when I grew up or potential outcomes like the poster I still needed to put together for my French class on all my favorite French foods, or if I’d make my quota for counting rainbows for the summer (currently seven out of 10!)

“Twenty! Ready or not, here I come!”

My eyes opened to the sight a sky that wasn’t blue anymore, not crisp nor clear; it was the color of strawberry jawbreakers, vibrantly red and filled with fireworks that rolled over atop one-another as if eager to escape the confines of the infinite expanse above.

I blinked twice and thrice, until the blue come back to wash away the roiling crimson and vermillion and all was right with the world again.

“I’m gonna find you, Carmen!”

Hadn’t Carmen realized she left footprints in the dirt? She was so silly, and that was why she’d always be a Princess and never be the Queen!

.•° ✿ °•.

“I get to make the maze nex’ time.” Carmen asserted between deep breaths, and I shook my head at her with an air to the contrary.

“Nuhuh, the winner gets to make the maze.”

“But tha’s not fair!”

“Why not?” I turned my head to look at Carmen, and when her gaze met mine, I found myself lost for a time in her eyes. I’d never seen what was behind the color of the sky, but if it sparkled and swirled and danced in any way that even close to how Carmen’s eyes did, I knew very well that I wanted to go there one day.

“’Cuz,” Her face screwed up in a pout, and I couldn’t help but smile whenever she did that, “if you make the maze, then yer’ gonna win, and if you win, you gets to make the maze and so yous gonna win again ‘cuz you made the maze and cuz you made the maze yer gonna win again.”

“Yuh, tha’s right” I concurred. That made sense because that was how the rules worked.

“Tha’s dumb! Tha’s not fair!”

“Is so too. Maybe you should just be better?”

“But Cadenz! I can’t get betterer if I never wiiiiiin.”

She did have a pretty good point, and so after a moment just to think on it (and to make her pout in that cute way she kept doing!) I nodded my head and looked back up at the sky. We were laying on the ground the both of us, and I knew that my Mama would hate that I’d gotten dirt in my hair and grass stains all over my dress.

For a moment, I wondered if Carmen’s Mama would be cross as well, but try as I might, I just couldn’t conjure an image of the woman in my head.

In typical 10-year-old fashion, I stopped trying because I got bored.

“Okay!,” I conceded with a little nod of my head, “You can make the next maze.”

“Really?!” Her eyes lit up even brighter than the sun in the sky right above the two of us.

“You means it? I cans?”

“Mhm! But it better be the best bestest maze ever or else I’m gonna win again cause I am the Queen of Hide n’ Seek.”

“Not for much longers, Cadenz!”

Carmen scrambled to her feet without the need for further prompting, and she took off into the blackcurrants leaving behind only the sounds of her fading giggles.

The warmth of the sun, the brilliant blue of the sky, the sound of distant giggling.

The warmth of fire, the way the sky burned, and the sounds of distant screaming.

I sat up in a panic and shook my head; I tried to rub my eyes and saw my arms on fire; I felt the pain, I smelled blackcurrants and my own flesh burning, and then just as quickly as it had happened everything came back into focus when I heard a familiar voice calling my name.

“Cadence! Carmen! Come up for lunch, you two!”

“Okay Mama!”

I got to my knees, and then to my feet, and brushed down the edges of the pretty gingham dress; pretty and pristine as the birthday I’d gotten it, and then tattered from hide and seek, and then burned in flames, and then back to the way it ought to be.

It was lunch time, and I was just hungry, that was all.

Gosh I had such an imagination!

“Carmen!” I hollered, “Carmen! It’s time for lunch!”

I listened for her to call back but was met with an still and quiet silence. Not just the absence of her voice, but silence like the bushes had all stopped rustling, like the wind had stopped dancing, like the animals and birds had all taken a vow to be quiet all at once.

My head turned to look over my shoulder in the direction of the house, and then looked towards the barn where my Papa would have been today just like every day. I couldn’t hear Mama waiting impatiently for us to return, and I couldn’t hear Papa tinkering with his tools or his toys or his tractors; I couldn’t hear any of the sounds that made up the symphony of a summer’s day.

Everything was just quiet.

“Carmen...?” I followed her footprints through the soil, slowly and cautiously, as if suddenly the silence might come alive at any point and wrap me up in its nothingness. Eventually, I emerged into a clearing where all the blackcurrant bushes were folded flat against the ground and in the center stood Carmen, looking more than a little bit confused.

“There you are! Mama said we gotta come uppa the house for lunch.”

Carmen tilted her head slightly at me, like she didn’t recognize me, and then when the recognition came to her eyes, all the sound of the world flooded back like the sound of waves crashing on cliffs.

“Oh! Yuh yuh, okay!”

“This isn’ a berry good maze, Carmen. It’s just a circle.” I teased her, and she shook her head in protest as I took her by the hand.

“Nuhs, there’s other circles, too, jus’ around this one, you’ll see!”

I shook my head and led her past the three bigger rings of cleared out blackcurrant bushes that ran circles around the area she’d been standing in, and we made our way back up to the house for lunch.

Carmen could be such a space cadet sometimes!