Charlotte Slivka
Misty and Maven
She just wanted to see what would happen. She thought Maven would float. She wanted her to, she should have. More plop than splash, and then she just sank so quickly, like she knew exactly where she was going and wasted no time in getting to the bottom. Sank so quickly Misty barely had time to retain the ghost image of Maven’s receding face, her eyes fluttering their plastic lashes all the way down. Open close open close bright blue blinking a Morse code of blame: goodbye forever, you did this, not me.
Misty stared wide-eyed at the circles on the surface of the water where her doll had just been. Her mind froze. She stopped breathing.
What just happened?
She pushed the impossibility of Maven’s gone-ness from the moment and continued to hold her breath. She thought that if she held her breath she could hold time and give Maven a chance to pop back up. Time would stop and not move onto a place where Maven wasn’t and Misty was alone.
A bubble, then two more burst the surface. Misty let her breath drop.
She pressed her palms into the mud where the pond met her fingers and lowered her face to follow the trace of bubbles down into the green cloudy depths to the deep grey shadows. Cold muck swelled up around the tops of her hands and oozed over so that just a short pink road of curved flesh showed through. Her knees, shins, and toes sank into a wet and boggy ground that rose to meet and consume her little legs in their ballerina tights and cotton canvas sneakers. Her face, so close the tip of her nose, touched the water, and the smell of green algae and stagnant decay stung her eyes and made her blink, each lash carrying away a tiny bead of water. She looked as hard as she could. Willed her eyes to see deeper, to the dark in the dark, to the darkest part for an outline that could be Maven’s. Closer and her nose and mouth were in the water, closer and her whole face broke the surface. She thought if she looked under the water then maybe she could see Maven because maybe they had the same eyes and now she could only be seen underwater. If she put her whole head in, maybe she could hear. If she put her whole head in, she could stop the screaming.
Her mother had told her to stay away from Scotty Reynolds. He’s not nice, Misty. He’s a mean little boy and you need to stay away from him. But how could she stay away when he lived right next door and was always there when she went to play with Maven on the lawn? Always staring at her. He said he wanted to play, too. Maybe he was mean because no one would play with him? He said he just wanted to touch her hair. Maybe Maven would make him nice. He said her long blonde hair wasn’t real and he could prove it. Scotty made a ponytail for Maven and then started to swing her around.
Stop it! Give her back, you’re hurting her!
You’re a dumdum Misty, you’re dumber than my little baby brother, you’re dumber than a snail, you’re dumber than your dumb dead doll!
Scotty flung Maven by her hair into some nearby bushes. As Misty ran to save her he shouted, She’s not real, she can’t do anything! Misty found Maven in some branches. Her hair, tangled in the twigs and leaves, had saved her from falling to the ground. Her arm had swiveled all the way back behind her so her fused plastic fingers pointed towards the ground. Misty followed the line to a large grey rock partially overgrown by grass and the bramble from the bush. It was green with moss and reminded her of a toad. She imagined a wizard had turned it into stone from a long time ago. What if it was a bad toad, what if it got what it deserved? It must have been a very bad toad. She thought Scotty was a very bad boy, and she wished she could turn him to stone.
Hey Scotty, there’s a frog in the bushes, come see!
Maybe the toad could do it, and maybe she could help. As Scotty bent over to look for the toad she smashed it into his head.
See!
She’d seen it on cartoons all the time: the big sound and the big bell would burst from the air above the person’s head and sometimes birds flew around like one of Saturn’s rings and the guy would turn to rubber and their eyes would spin and sometimes they even looked a little happy even the people who got hit with pianos, but this didn’t sound like that at all. It sounded like heavy snow that had fallen from the roof into more snow. Misty stood with the toad raised high in her hand, her arm sprung back from Scotty’s head as if she might do it again. The shock and fear had transformed his face into innocence, and she thought for a moment that maybe he could be nice. Then his eyes glazed, and the blood that had begun to well up at the top of his head found its way down the front of his face. Scotty looked like he had just realized he left his Power Rangers on the bus and crumbled to the grass. Misty dropped the toad and ran into the woods. Behind her she could hear Scotty’s mother screaming.