"She had a raspberry beret, the kind that you find in a secondhand store."
I walked past my favorite house in the world, and listened hard. It was on a street about four blocks down from mine, in the less upper-class part of the neighborhood, and it was painted a vibrant shade of purple. The weeping willows that swept their branches on the ground outside of that house had tinkly silver bells fastened to the ends of their bows, and they rang with a delightful, sugar-plum-fairy sort of sound when the slightest breeze touched them.
Today I was lucky, and an April wind was stirring the branches. I paused for a moment in front if the house, just listening. Then, with a sigh, I hoisted my bag farther up on my shoulder and continued on my way home. Apart from school, home was my least favorite place. My parents were always wondering why I wasn’t more like the next door neighbor’s girl, Julia. I always had one answer to this: Julia was a suck-up. She always did everything her parents wanted; she wore their pantyhose and loafers, their pink poly-blend sweaters. She attended their social functions, had the friends they wanted her to have, and kept her room their boring shades of beige.
When I arrived at my overly ornate, beige front door, I sighed and pulled on the doorknob. The door, to my disappointment, opened, and I trudged gloomily into the living room. My mother came rushing out to greet me. She had managed to force me into a poly-blend sweater this morning, and was ecstatic about it. I had, however, paired it with my Docs, and, somewhere throughout the day, had pinned almost half of my political button collection to it. When mom saw this, her face fell a bit, but she still said, in a good-natured voice, “Hi, Sweetie! How would you like to go shopping with Julia today?”
I just looked at her. She knew perfectly well how I felt about Julia. When she kept looking at me without relent, I muttered, “Homework,” and made an escape up to my room. When I finally got there, I closed the door and collapsed on my bed with a sigh. My room was the only part of the house that I felt comfortable in. my multi-colored walls, painted without my parent’s consent by myself and my aunt Gloria, were a welcome break from the monochromatic house. After staring at my punk band and women’s rights posters for a bit, I pulled myself up from my comforter, grabbed my bag, and elected to go out for a bit. The homework excuse hadn’t been entirely a lie: I did have plenty of homework, but it would be easier to ignore that fact for a bit than to try to bring myself to do it right then. I was in a rebellious mood (it was almost a state of mind now), and homework wasn’t rebellious enough. Maybe going out and buying another Sex Pistols CD would be. So I slipped out of my room and into the hall. I made it down the stairs before I saw my mom. She was talking to the maid, Violet, and didn’t notice as I came down.
However, when I opened the front door, she did notice me, and said, “Claire! Where are you going?”
“Cara’s house. To study.” I informed her.
“All right. Just be home by nine.” I slipped out of the door, silently thanking Cara for saving me yet again. Cara was my imaginary best friend. I had led my mom to believe she was real, so I could use her as an excuse whenever I wanted to go out to buy something or to stare at my favorite house.
When I got downtown, I drifted toward the record shop, but as I neared it, I realized I didn’t really even want another CD. I had enough of them. So, unsure of quite what else to do, but quite sure that I wouldn’t be going home, I floated around downtown, heading vaguely toward a nearby café for a well-received cup of coffee. However, as I was walking down
It must be new, I thought. When I approached it, I saw that it was in a building as old as the one that housed the café and many of the restaurants. It was cracked in many places, the yellow paint was peeling, and ivy was beginning to creep up it in many places. I looked around in the windows of the shop for some indication that it may have just recently moved there, but saw none. Not even a single faded sign with “New!” in cracking red letters. So, overcome with curiosity, I opened the door and stepped in. a string of bells rang frantically as I came in. on cue, a portly woman with a dull purple house dress (and here I had thought those went out of style in the 60’s—god knows they should have) with a matching straw hat forced down over her wildly curly dark hair. She looked me over from “Think—It’s Not Illegal Yet” button to mid-calf Doc Martens, and uttered a disapproving “can I help you?”
“No thanks,” I told her. “I’m just looking around.” She scowled, but retreated into the depths of her shop. I started into the shop, cringing and shuddering at most of the things I saw. This shop seemed to be a recreation of a 50’s store that only sold things to people over the age of forty. I preserved, however, because I knew the rules of thrifting, and the number-one rule is that you have to look hard, or all you’ll find will be crocheted sweaters with hideously deformed kittens on them and pleated khaki shorts. After sorting fruitlessly through shelves and shelves of items like these, I hit on something.
At first I overlooked it, but my long years of living in a city where secondhand shops were the body of the consumer economy had taught me well. Looking at my find, I saw that it was a wool beret the color of raspberries. I picked it up and put it on my head. When I looked in the dusty mirror that was leaning against a nearby wall, I saw that my head looked astonishingly similar to a muffin. After a little adjusting, however, I found I looked like one of those French artists that stand around in parks painting the seine.
After admiring my reflection once more, I pulled the beret off and made my way over to the counter to pay for it. The clerk looked surprised that such an item would be in her shop, but took my money anyway, and stared me out of the shop. Once on the street, I looked at my watch, and thought that maybe at last I could go home. I put the raspberry beret on my head, and stopped to adjust in front of a shop window, then continued on my way.
I was falling into a forest of red, full of raspberry bushes, with the brilliantly scarlet autumn leaves reflected in the pond, making it shine crimson, too. I hit the ground with a muffled thump, having fallen on top of a pile of autumn leaves the color of ripe strawberries. As I sat up, the world began to spin, the haze of different shades of red making my head spin. I stood up slowly and unsteadily, and tottered over to the pond. I looked in it and saw myself wearing my raspberry beret like a Parisian artist. The world kept spinning, but I didn’t notice it anymore. The raspberry beret, in the pond, was sparkling.
I woke up slowly that morning, quite without the confused jolt that usually comes after a dream. I sat up, and felt like the world was still spinning. I closed my eyes and shook my head, then opened them and looked at my The Clash poster, and the spinning stopped. I looked in my mirror, and saw myself, in my oversize t-shirt and leggings, quite without my beret. My beret, in fact, was sitting unremarkably on my bedside table, looking benign and very much not sparkling.
That's the first scene, but then I skipped a bit because there was a scene I really wanted to write.
The long crab grass pushing up between the cracks in the sidewalk scraped soles of faithful mid-calf Docs as I approached the Purple House. I didn't think about it, though, because I was right then walking past the bell-laden willow trees. I figured, as I was already fulfilling my lifelong desire, I might as well go all out. I reached out next to me and did something I had wanted to do almost my entire life. I gently grasped one of the tiny silver bells and rang it gently. The tinkly sound that followed delighted my ears and heightened my confidence, and I continued my purposeful stride down the walk.
As I approached the Purple House and rang the bell, I half expected that no one would answer the door, because this whole thing seemed almost too... opportunistic to be true. Despite my expectations, the door opened after several seconds of clacking footsteps. I looked up into the face of a tall, elegant middle-aged woman. Her face was creased around the eyes and mouth, but right then she looked very serious. She was wearing a long, black dress and an apron, and I had begun to suspect that she was a maid. The house was pretty big, after all, even if it wasn't as colossal as the mansions that I lived around (and in). I realized with a jolt that I had been standing there for almost a full minute, thinking, and that the maid had been standing there in the threshold, her expression as mild as ever. My face colored and I stuttered, "I... um... I-- I just came to..."
"Finally come to your senses, have you?" the maid asked in a voice that was slightly gravelly, but just as neutral as her expression. "Well, you'd best come with me, then." Confused, the gears of my brain working feebly to understand what was going on, I followed her. By the time we had traversed the long (but not as lengthy as in my house) corridors, past odd still lives showcasing various pieces of exotic fruit, my confusion had faded to and overwhelming, nagging curiosity to know what was going to happen next.
I looked around the room we were in now. It was a living room, and had lavender walls with dried plants framed and hung up. Two darker lilac couches in chairs formed a square around a coffee table. But what attracted my attention most was the people sitting on the chairs and couches. There were six of them. Three were brown-haired, a boy and girl who were seemed to be twins and looked about my age, and a young child, a girl with an elaborate dress and hairdo, who looked no older than seven. The other three had red hair, blonde hair, and textured dark hair. The blonde looked at me with narrowed eyes, but his eyes weren't narrowed in a menacing way, just in a contemplative way. The redhead and the twins both greeted me with friendly smiles. The child looked wary, and the dark-haired one wasn't paying any attention to me at all, but rather to an embroidery cloth she was [bent over with extreme concentration].
The maid looked around as mildly as ever, nodded once to the blonde, and left the room. As soon as the maid left, the redhead, who looked about twenty and was wearing a floaty white tunic, jumped up as soon as the maid left and said eagerly, “You’re Claire, right? Welcome, welcome! That beret used to be mine, you know!” With that, her excited smile turned alarmingly quickly into an expression of horrified realization. The blonde man glared meaningful daggers at her, and she said, “Oh, crap! Mark, I’m sorry!”
“Can’t you keep, your mouth shut, Rosie?!” the blonde, who was obviously Mark, asked meanly. “We weren’t supposed to tell her yet!”
Rosie recovered quickly, and said cheerily, though slightly anxiously, “Well, we might as well explain to her now!”
“Fine,” mark grumbled. “Go ahead.”
“Well, to start, I think some introductions are in order. First of all, who are you?” Rosie asked me.
I was very surprised. The way these people had been behaving, I had assumed (quite reasonably, I thought) that they knew who I was. I didn’t want another incident like the one with the maid, however, so I answered right away, “I’m Claire,” I said, blushing. I had always hated my name. It had been my parents’ idea (Naturally. Who else’s idea could it have been? Certainly not mine).
“Hi, Claire,” Rosie said, looking slightly surprised. People always expected me to have a name like Dahlia or Lee. Claire did not fit my character. Looking sheepish, she introduced me, “Okay, everyone, this is Claire.” Then she pointed to the young girl, the brunette twins, the blonde guy, and the embroidery girl, respectively, and said, “That’s Cassie, Marie and Sebastian, Mark, and Madrina.”
-- Rosie L.
