vanilla with malt, hot fudge and whipped cream
Story: Timeless { backstory | index }
Title: Ray of Sunshine
Rating: G
Challenge: Vanilla #13: a day at the beach
Toppings/Extras: malt (advent calendar day four), hot fudge, whipped cream
Wordcount: 414
Summary: Adele Merritt on a school trip aged eleven.
Notes: Hello, abandonment issues. My advent calendar prompts are all coming out kind of miserable!
The teacher had told them they could take off their tie and undo their top button if they so desired, but Adele hadn’t bothered to do so. Nose crinkled, she stood with her hands deep in the pockets of her blazer as her classmates picked their way across the fist-sized pebbles to make their way towards the glimmering ocean.
She didn’t know why. It’s not like they could swim or anything: they were in their school uniforms.
Stationed in the murk beneath the soggy pier, Adele was at least allowed some shade from the sun-it was admittedly only a weak sort of sunshine that day but it was uncomfortable. A seagull squinted at her from the rafters of the pier and dried seaweed clung to the rocks beneath her battered school shoes.
There was only a sliver of natural beach left now; behind them the horizon was a gradually rising wall of skyscrapers, throwing glares into her eyes from the mirror-like windows. The buildings closer to the beach were a little stubbier, the shortest standing at about twenty stories.
“Why ain’t you going to the sea?” piped up a voice from behind her.
Teeth tight together, Adele turned her head slightly to look at the boy sat with his back against the wall cutting the beach from the city, deep in the gloom under the pier. The thick pebbles made hollow clinking noises as they shifted beneath her feet and she turned to face Rory Mercado, an extremely pale boy with feathery hair.
He wasn’t there because he was her friend. He was there because he was allergic to sunlight.
Which, in Adele’s opinion, was the most stupid allergy ever.
Although also rather unfortunate, she had to admit.
“Don’t want to,” she replied, kicking at a rock. “What’s the point?”
“Wish I could,” Rory muttered, putting his elbows on his knees and his chin on his hands. Every inch of his skin was covered up to his chin and the brim of a floppy hat rested almost on the tip of his pointy nose.
Adele wished she was allergic to the sun. Or diabetic. Or that she had rickets or sickle cell anaemia or a missing kidney or an exploding appendix. Or that she only had one leg or that she was blind or that her liver was in her arm or anything, anything that meant she needed special treatment.
Then maybe her mother would have taken her with her when she left.