Sparks

The rule was . . .

By Lynn Levy

Daria stood with her nose up against the glass, peeking in at the door. She didn’t go in—she knew better. And when someone came out, she melted away, back into the shadows, back where she couldn’t be seen.

But the tall blond man saw her anyway, and walked toward her. He was a giant, an enormous bulk of branches and limbs that looked like he shouldn’t be able to balance, let alone walk. She imagined him crashing over, like her string doll did when she pressed the button on the bottom. But instead, he folded himself down, quiet as a sheet, until he was squatting in front of her.

“Are you Daria?” he asked.

Daria furrowed her brow. The rule was, you don’t tell strangers your name. But another rule was that you don’t lie.

“Yes,” she finally decided upon, because she liked his pale blue eyes, and the fact that they were down right across from hers, and she didn’t want him to get up yet.

“What’s so interesting in there?” he asked, turning his head over his shoulder, back toward the door.

“Don’t know. Can’t go in,” Daria said.

The blue eyes flashed. “Ah,” he said. “So is it secrets you love, or puzzles?”

Daria thought about it a moment and said, “They’re the same.” Because they were. They were both things to figure out.

“Insightful,” the man said. Daria didn’t know the word, but understood that he agreed.

He made a quick movement and she felt a brush of air beside her ear, and then he was holding a coin, not an ordinary quarter or dime, but large and nearly white.

“Usually this is where I say, ‘Look what I found behind your ear,’ but it comes from farther than that.”

Daria’s eyes locked on the thing. It nearly glowed, and she imagined she felt heat coming from it.

“Do you want it?” he asked.

There were rules about taking candy from strangers (don’t), and following strangers (don’t), and getting into cars with strangers (don’t). Daria understood the common thread of these rules, but chose just then to be precise. There were no rules about fat, glowing white coins, none at all.

“Yes,” she said.

He reached out his hand, an invitation for hers, and right then Daria dared. She lay her hand, palm open and up on top of his, and felt his fingers against the back of her hand. They were warm.  She didn’t know what she’d expected, but he seemed like he could be something . . . else.

Gently, he pressed the coin into her hand, and closed her fingers around it. He patted her closed fist with his other hand.

He poured his pale blue eyes into her dark brown ones a second more, then unfolded, standing up like the stop action movie she’d seen on TV of a tree growing.

“Karl, you coming?” someone yelled from behind the door. He turned, neatly blocking her from view and said, in a much gruffer voice, “Can’t a man take a leak?”

There was a grumble and the door shut again, the little bell tinkling in a way that was too pretty.

Karl strode toward the door, and just as he went in, looked back over his shoulder at her. He nodded, just barely, and went inside.

You cannot beat a bully, was one of the things Daria had worked out on her own. And basically, all grownups were bullies. You could only outsmart them—and so Daria knew how to hide things. Real things, like the coin, and unreal things, like what she was thinking.

One of the rules was that she wasn’t supposed to spy on Uncle Brad’s friends. But this uncle would pass, like the others.

She melted clean away, into her best hiding place, and didn’t open her hand until she got there. The coin was gone. But from her palm shone a clean white light that filled the space. What it was, was the beginning.

Lynn Levy’s writing has been published in The Write Spot: Discoveries and The Write Spot: Possibilities, both available on Amazon in print ($15) and as an ereader ($2.99).

Lynn lives in Northern California with her husband, an endless parade of wild birds, and one dour skunk who passes by nightly. She and the skunk have an understanding.

Lynn has been an audio engineer, software developer, survived middle management, and is wildly enjoying her latest reinvention as a technical writer.

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