Around the Cul-de-sac by Christina De Paris

Author:Christina De Paris
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: 8th & Atlas Publishing
Published: 2021-08-04T13:45:32+00:00

TRADING FOOTWEAR

The Adidas sandals River had were rare. Instead of the usual black and white stripes, hers boasted black contrasted with vibrant green. Over the last several months, Sydney Lagunilla was plagued by the desperation to own a pair of the same sandals but would have patently taken any color combination.

The slides were becoming more prevalent, accompanied by knee-high white socks. The style was something soccer players tended to utilize when they shed their cleats at the end of a game or practice. Sydney was purely in it for the aesthetic. She had seen the fashion worn by her abu as his house slippers and Publix-shopping casual wear, but once they became statement pieces in youth fashion, she was manic with desire. Her dad’s father’s sandals weren’t the Velcro kind of Adidas with the bubbles on the soles, which were the ones she was after. His were the no-fuss kind, likely the same pair the practical man had pushing on a decade.

When she spotted River the first day of fourth grade with her Adidas slides, she knew she had to have her as a friend, regardless of her character. Sydney wasn’t too eager, first observing how she performed at P.E., and ultimately impressed by the girl’s long left tentacle extending to catch a softball in her mitt.

It was when Sydney heard River imitating Mike Myers in Austin Powers: The International Man of Mystery that she approached her. The spy action-comedy was one of the VHS tapes the Lagunillas watched on repeat for a duration, so seeing River gravitate to the blundering yet suave operative grabbed her attention.

Sydney’s friends Amethyst and Zuri were in the same class. Early on, they all befriended River and initiated her into their friend group. It didn’t take much. River was independent, intrepid with her absurdities. Eventually, the four girls just fed off of each other’s energies, rabid with observational humor and pop culture references. They would keep with what was current, which meant throwing out Austin Powers lines for what seemed like months, about how they weren’t going to bite each other...hard, erupting into hysterics. Amethyst and River were the most theatrical; they nailed the timing and British-accented delivery without hesitation.

After one particularly uproarious session bantering lines from the movie, Sydney decided she would write her new friend’s favorite line a hundred times in small print on a torn piece of paper the size of a portable sliding puzzle.

Clenching for the forthcoming laughter, the Lagunilla girl handed the piece of paper to River, who let out a side smile and said, “You forgot the ‘e’ in ‘bite.’ You wrote ‘bit.’”

Sydney was crushed, failing to spell a four-letter word correctly.

She mulled, How could I forget that long vowels say their names?!

This would have been less mortifying if she hadn’t written the phrase any less than eight dozen times on that scrap of paper. The temporary forgoing of intelligence, Sydney thought for sure, was going to cost friendship credibility. But River just moved on and, like a good friend, never brought it up again.

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